Twin Van

Sasha had been on shift for an hour before he saw the mauve Skoda in his wing mirror, and he'd delivered four pizzas before he noticed it following him. It was dark by then, not so dark he could not see the make of the car, or see the last three letters of the license plate-AKM-but dark enough that he could not make out a face behind the tinted windshield.

He'd been followed before, as the Kidderminster fuzz had gotten the (not wrong) idea that most of the motorbike couriers had sidelines as coke dealers. That wasn't one of Sasha's sidelines, so it just meant being pulled over, searched, and then chewed out by the manager at Romino's Pizza & Kebab for late deliveries.

This didn't seem like the police, though. Something was wrong. Unmarked cars didn't have tinted windows and they didn't follow you for this long without pulling you over. Besides, who's buying coke on a Tuesday night a week before the end of the month? This wasn't London, after all. It wasn't even Birmingham.

He came to a green light, slowed down, and crossed just as it turned yellow. The Skoda followed through the red. For once, Sasha felt a surge of panic because he didn't see flashing blue lights. Definitely not the police.

His next delivery was for a regular, but one well outside of the town proper. There were dark, unlit roads with little traffic and no witnesses. Lots of ditches you could push a motorbike into and not have it discovered for a day or three. It only took a few moments to decide that this job wasn't worth being murdered for.

He reached a roundabout and on an impulse went round the wrong way, ignoring the blaring horn of the van he'd missed by an inch and barreling down a one-way street. He'd ridden the right way down this street enough times to know there was an alleyway wide enough for a bike but too narrow for any car, and skidded into it. After slowing down and switching off his lights, the faint orange glow of streetlights became visible in the distance.

As he rode along in the dark he felt incredibly stupid. He'd stayed up too long last night smoking hash with Greg and Greg's new girlfriend and he'd taken too much Adderall to perk himself up in the morning. This was paranoia, the dumbest kind of paranoia, the kind that fourteen-year-olds hitting their first bowl at a music festival or freakishly square cops who snap one day and eat a whole bag of edibles experience. Had there even been a car? There had definitely been a van, one that barely missed him when he went the wrong way around a roundabout. He'd almost died!

He stopped the bike halfway down the alley, turned the engine off, and took off his helmet. It was clear either end, and he hadn't seen lights drive past in any direction. His fringe was stuck to his forehead with sweat, and as he swept it off with a gloved hand he realised his hands were shaking wildly. He took a few deep breaths, took a cigarette from his pocket, and took a few drags after lightning it. He hadn't realised that his vision was spinning slightly, but it stopped anyway.

The adrenaline had worn off and left something cold and heavy in its place. There had been a car. It was some kind of Skoda, it was mauve or dark red, it had tinted windows, and he remembered the last three letters of the license plate. AKM. He'd seen it once, noted it in his mind, seen it again, and seen it again. It was the same car. It had followed him all over. It had gone through a red light to keep up with him. Just because he was paranoid didn't mean it hadn't happened.

Sasha made up his mind. He'd ride to a friend's house and hole up there for the night, call his boss to say he'd got knocked off his bike and couldn't finish his shift, and then try to figure out if anyone wanted him dead. Maybe he could start looking for another job too. Suddenly, call centre work didn't seem so bad.

He took a last drag on the cigarette, got back on the motorbike and started riding down the alley. Greg's house was barely a mile from there, and he felt a semblance of calm.

Just before he reached the end of the alley, his wing mirrors lit up like halogen lamps. A car was behind him at the other end of the alley, shining its full beams on his back, and in his mind he knew it was the Skoda. He revved and shot forward in a panic, accelerating towards the street in front of him, and slammed on the brakes a split second too late when he saw the side of the van that had pulled up in front of him.

He didn't remember going over the handlebars.

Sasha woke up with white circles pulsing at the edge of his vision and a sour, gluey taste in his mouth. He moved his limbs and they moved a few moments later. He was naked, and as he blinked his vision darkened, not because he was losing sight but because the room he was in was so blindingly white that his eyes had to adjust to everything but pure light.

The room was cold and bare, a grey metal floor with bumpy non-slip patterns rubbing rough against his naked skin, a sterile white ceiling, three sterile white walls, and one mirrored wall directly in front of him.

He was naked.

He yelped in shock, or he would have if not for the strange sludgy fog that permeated his head and slowed it down to a dull "Oh," that came out a few seconds later. His eyes didn't feel like they could focus, and as he stared at his reflection he felt as if he only saw bits at a time-his sweaty mop of brown hair one moment, freckles on pale cheeks the next, the half-finished koi sleeve on his left arm swum in and out, and every time his focus switched another wave of pain washed through his mind. The light that shone off the sweat-covered patches of bare skin on his chest and stomach seemed as bright and painful as a magnesium flare, and the light that glinted off the metal around his neck was even worse.

He wasn't completely naked.

He'd been collared.

As he touched numbed fingers to the steel collar, there was a shudder and a hum. He looked up and saw a cooling unit, a heavy one, like in a walk-in freezer. It was covered in droplets of condensation. A wave of even colder air washed over him.

Somewhere deep beneath the fog and pain, panic grew within him. He was naked, it was cold, and he was cold. It was going to get colder, and he would get colder with it and he was already so, so cold. He'd always been a skinny guy, he wore a vest from September through to late April, and everyone he'd ever lived with had yelled at him for setting the heating too high.

Cold killed people, he thought, and he needed to stop the cold. He would turn off the machine, or hit it until it stopped working, he had to. On unsteady legs he rose, almost toppling to his hands and knees before staggering to his feet, and as he pressed a shaky hand to the wall to prop himself up he felt even more heat leach out of his palm somehow.

It was then that he noticed the thick iron chain connected to the back of his collar, the metal so cold that it felt like searing heat as he grasped it, and as he moaned in dazed shock the door opened.

A woman walked into the room.

The woman was dressed in a bright yellow rubber apron and wore matching yellow washing up gloves. Her skin was brown and her hair was tucked neatly under a hairnet, and though Sasha could make out her features his brain couldn't seem to connect them together. She had at her side a black canvas duffle bag that clinked and rustled as she shut the door behind her. The noise the bag made as she dropped it to the floor felt deafening, and when the ringing in his ears stopped she was talking to him.

"Sasha Walczak, my name is Jane," she said, her voice underwater. "I am going to be looking after and looking out for you, and it's vital that you trust me."

He blinked, and his grip on the cold chain tightened. "What?" he slurred.

"This is important," she said. Her voice was strange, not local, not even English. Maybe American? She was staring into his eyes. "Sasha, do you trust me?"

"W-what? No! Who are you?" Another bolt of pain shot through his head. "What?"

A kind smile crossed her lips. "It's okay, I'll help you trust me," she said, and reached down into her bag. She pulled out a TV remote and a rubber device with a thick set of canvas straps, too small to be a belt. One end of it looked like a short but thick penis. "Sasha, in ten seconds you're going to open your mouth for me, and in fifteen seconds you'll be wearing this gag."

It looked far too large to be a gag.

Sasha reared back in panic and revulsion. "No," he said, shaking his head, "No, I'm not," he said, and then he said nothing as she took a step closer because he had sealed his lips tight, and then he raised his fists as adrenaline surged through his body and even the look of cold fury that filled Jane's eyes was not enough to make him waver. She stopped in her tracks and he stopped too, frozen in place and unsure of whether to back away or rush forward. Jane raised the remote control and pressed a button, making the choice for him.

Sasha felt a tug at his neck, heard the grinding of machinery, and was yanked back painfully by his neck. The chain on his collar was being drawn back by a powerful winch, towards a slot in the wall just over six feet high. He had enough wits about him that his head didn't slam back into the wall, but six feet was several inches too high for him to stand. The collar became a noose, cutting off his air as his legs scrambled against the smooth wall and his fingers clawed at the solid metal desperate to find purchase.

He did not see Jane take out a collapsable step, but as he gasped for air with his eyes bulging out she filled his vision, pushing the cock-shaped rubber between his lips and buckling the straps tight behind his head. She stepped down and away, clicked the remote again, and he collapsed to the floor.

She held her wrist up to his face, with the stopwatch readout visible on her smartwatch. One-five-dot-zero-zero.

"Fifteen seconds. Sasha," she said, and her voice was definitely American. "I promise you that if I say something will happen, it will happen. That's why you can trust me." She reached behind his head and tightened the straps by another inch, enough that he could feel the straps biting into his cheeks and his teeth biting against the rubber.

The gag tasted unpleasant, chalky rubber with a stink of diesel about it. Two rows of soft plastic flares swelled around the base as it settled, pushing up in front of and behind his teeth like a confused mouthguard. As he moved his tongue to adjust, it became humiliatingly obvious that the end was modelled on a penis.

"Okay Sasha, you're going to have to sit up straight for me because of the gag. It's important."

"Hwwfh!"

She raised the remote again, making him clutch his collar in instinctive panic, but as she pressed a button there was no movement on the chain but instead a hiss from within the gag. A compressed air cartridge inflated the gag from the inside. First, the rubber pushed against the top and bottom of his mouth, forcing his jaw wide. Next, two small bulbs on each side of the cock-shaped bit began to swell, squeezing past his molars, making his cheeks bulge out painfully until they were comically large, as if he'd stuffed a whole plum each side. Finally, the tip of the rubber cock pushed deeper into his mouth and prodded the back of his throat. A horrible sensation gripped his innards, and he gagged on his gag.

"Listen to me! You need to sit up straight."

A push nudged him in the right direction, and through the haze of panic he sat back, straightening his posture against the wall behind him. Rubber-clad fingers grabbed his jaw and raised his chin, holding him in place for a moment before letting go. He took a slow, shaky breath through his nostrils, and realized that in this position the rubber cock wouldn't trip his gag reflex as long as he remained still.

As if to spite him his mouth seemed to flood with saliva, which he had to swallow or else inhale. He chose the former, but each tiny gulp was a painful battle to suppress his retching. Something was cold against his leg, and with tears in his eyes he glanced down to see Jane cuffing both of his ankles. Each metal cuff had a short length of slim wire rope that fed through a metal eye bolt, and she screwed each of these bolts into two holes in the floor. Then, she pulled the wire rope through each bolt, taking up the slack and spreading Sasha's legs, pulling them wide until they were at a right angle. With his back pressed to the wall and the cuffs on his ankles, he could scoot forward on his butt or sit with his legs wide.

"Sasha, you're gonna lift your arms over your head for me, and I promise you'll do it in the next ten seconds."

He looked at her with terror and loathing, but couldn't force himself to move. His hands were clamped to his chest, and between the cold of the room and his unhappy nudity, he wanted to tuck them in as close as possible.

Jane stepped forward, and the tip of her rubber boot touched his testicles. He tried to scoot back but there was nowhere else to go, and his balls were trapped between the sole of her boot and the cold, hard floor. If she rocked forward an inch it would crush them into paste.

"You don't want to make me break a promise," she warned, applying just enough pressure to make pain shoot through his stomach and make him squeal. He lifted his arms in surrender. With a heavy-duty zip tie and another eye bolt she pinned his wrists together and to the wall, as high up as he could reach.

"Good little boy, back down for me," she whispered into his ear. "Exactly the way I knew you would."

She stood up, packed up her bag, and walked towards the door. Sasha was afraid to move his head to look at her, but through the corner of his eye she seemed to be looking over her shoulder at him. "The sooner you learn to trust me, the easier it'll be," she said as she opened the door, and a moment later Sasha was alone.

Above him, the hum of the cooler became a low roar. Air blasted down on him from the vents, buffeting him like arctic winds. He squealed in shock and a plume of white mist flowed from his nostrils.

There was frost rime on the ceiling. This was the kind of cold that killed you. The cold was going to kill him, and he was so cold, and every burst of foggy breath that left his lungs was a jot of warmth he could not afford to lose. He was shivering from cold and shivering from terror, and his only break came from his shivering forcing him to gag inadvertently.

He saw his hands in the mirror, already an unpleasant shade of puce, and he could not tell if it was from the cold or the lack of circulation or both. He couldn't feel them, and he knew he would die here. The certainty of his death felt calming for a few moments. Then he thought that he would never see Greg again, that Smelly would go unfed, that he would never get to visit Norolisk, and in these thoughts he found himself overwhelmed with despair and terror, only to be calmed moments later by the fact that he would die and he could change nothing, only to despair at what he wished to live on for. This continues in an awful circle, going faster and faster as he lost more to the blistering numbness.

That was when Jane returned. She wore a fur coat and carried a wicker basket stuffed with cloth. She set the basket down in front of the shivering boy, taking a yoga mat, an electric blanket, and a thermos flask out. Then she stepped over Sasha and parted her coat. She was naked underneath it.

She crouched down and crawled on top of him, breasts pressed on his chest, belly to belly and groin on groin. Her skin felt scaldingly hot and he was compelled to press against it, the warmth making him start to sob with relief, each hot breath in his ear an injection of pure life. The heat that radiated from her pussy and against his limp, shrunken privates felt as if it was melting him from the waist down.

"Nod your head if you want to live, little boy."

Tears ran down his cheeks as he nodded desperately. She stroked his hair, smiling.

"Good, good, that's what I like to hear."

She unhooked his wrists from the wall and let him lower his hands. The pain he felt as his circulation returned was nothing compared to the pain of the cold. He flexed his wrists and fingers as if to reassure himself that they were still there, but his relative freedom did not last long. Jane attached the zip tie around his wrists to the back of his collar, so that his elbows pointed outwards and his hands rested at the base of his skull. She turned around and fiddled with his ankle cuffs, giving him enough desperately-needed slack that he could almost touch his heels to his ass, and then slid the yoga mat underneath him.

Sasha was still freezing, but it no longer felt as if his back and ass were being burned from the cold. He tried to curl up into a ball, but the bonds on his wrists and ankles meant the closest he could get was a half-crunch position. Jane had dismounted him, and as the cold air blasted him he begged wordlessly for her to return.

She crouched again, but instead of sprawling over his front, she pulled a thick black object out of her pocket. Sasha stared at the thing as she squeezed some clear liquid onto, and his eyes went wide as he realized that it was a massive buttplug that she was coating in lube. He felt the tip get placed up against his asshole, but she didn't push forward. She was staring at him with a disturbingly hungry look in her eyes.

She wasn't pushing forward, but he didn't dare wriggle away.

"See that blanket behind me?" she said, "That's a heated blanket. Sasha, I wanna give it to you. I'll tuck you in nice and tight and then I'll plug it in, and you'll be warm as a pop-tart under there. But first you've gotta prove you want it. Do you want it?"

He knew the price she was asking for, and did not want to pay it. But he did not want to die there either. His gag muffled a sob as he nodded.

"All you've gotta do is push your pretty-boy butthole right onto the plug."

It had been months since he'd had anything back there, and that had been in much more enjoyable circumstances. This time it was not so easy. He was slow to obey and clumsy, and clumsier still because he did not wish to appear slow to obey. He scooted down and felt the pressure increase but it just felt painful. The last time he'd done this he'd been coaxed to relax, he'd been cleaned out, and he'd been more than a little drunk. Now, between the cold and the terror, he couldn't make himself loosen up no matter how hard he wished he would.

"Lift your legs up and push against it, like you're trying to push the plug out of you."

He meekly did as he was told, and the plug inched into him. He couldn't stop himself clenching against it, which didn't slow its progress but made his hole burn and cramp around it. It stopped moving halfway in. He looked at Jane, desperate for her to shove it in and get it over with, but her expression made it clear that she expected him to do the work. For a few minutes he rocked back and forth and tried to scoot onto it, accomplishing little but fucking it a half-inch in and out of his ass either way, and he was sure that she was letting the pressure off the base ever so slightly so that it wouldn't go in, but after one frantic rocking motion the thickest part slipped inside him. He moaned into the gag, squirming from the fullness, the burning, and the humiliating rush he'd felt as the plug briefly brushed up against his prostate.

There was genuine warmth in Jane's smile. "You know how to make a girl happy, Sasha. Now let me get you your blanket."

She pulled the blanket over him and plugged the cable into an outlet in the floor. It heated up immediately, the warmth enough to make Sasha give a garbled moan of relief as the worst of the cold was banished.