I stare dazed at the screen, cum on my hand, and click again. ‘You won’t last twenty seconds’, it says. I groan. What? ‘Play this game,’ it says, ‘you won’t last twenty seconds.’ I follow a mental cue buried in brain-fog, look at the time, note the seconds, click, and groan in pain. Rusty arithmetic lands me on fifteen seconds between click and cum – perhaps twelve. Why did I look at the clock and why is my groin burning? I smack myself in the face. Spunk splatters against my cheek. This pain is satisfying, at least. It gives some relief, like needling out a deep, suppurating splinter. I smack the other cheek, slam the laptop shut, and draw a deep breath. This can’t be right. I wipe off my hands and my cock, still flopping half-hard out of my trousers, open the laptop without looking at the screen, and hold down the power button until it shuts down with a deflating beep. While it’s rebooting I make myself a cup of instant coffee with lots of cream and sugar. The urge for a cigarette solidifies.
I browse to my porn stash, go for the video that gets me every time, and set the cursor to my favourite bit. Thin girl pumping her shaved lips. She’s red and moist and dripping when the suction cup comes off. It’s getting me hard and horny. Don’t ask me how that is possible, I must have cum twenty times today. I start tossing off. Fifteen seconds later I cum, bone-dry. I fucked Sheileen seven times yesterday. Same thing – got hard, got in, instant finish, every time. Marathon man turned hyperpremature ejaculator. She thought I was needy – she laughed. I wasn’t.
I call Horton. Coder turned gaming journalist, then back to coding when the market contracted – calls himself a programmer and a man steeped in this seedy world. It’s pot luck whether he picks up or not. He picks up. I had a one in five chance. I avoid the small-talk – he doesn’t mind – cut straight to my complication.
“I’ve never seen that ad.” he says.
“It's new – relatively new. I noticed it only a few days ago. As far as I can remember.”
“And you’re that affected? In just a few days?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re craving sugar? Even tobacco?”
“Yeah.”
“Jeezus. I’ve heard of nudging, but this is something else. What site were you on?”
“The big one.”
“Which is ‘the big one’?”
“Xcunts.”
“Xcunts, right – wait. Yeah. OK. What’s your ad say?”
“You won’t last twenty seconds. Big flopping boobs, cum geyser. Animated.”
“No. I don’t get it. Let me refresh. No, still nothing. And still nothing. What did you search for?”
“Do you need to know?”
“Ideally, yes. Ideally I should have your computer.”
“Ah, you know, that’s, eh, sensitive.”
“I realise.”
“Right,” I clear my throat, “try ‘pussy pumping’, that may lead you somewhere.”
“Gah.”
“I know you’re not a pussy man.”
He’s typing. “Still nothing. Look, I’ll see what I can find. I can’t promise anything without your machine. I wouldn’t be surprised if they dumped stuff on you drive. If I can’t find anything, I’ll let you know. And if I do find anything… Well, you’ll hear from me anyway.”
“OK. Thanks mate.”
“No problem.”
I decide to go to the store and get myself some fags. They all look the same. Just outside the store, I light a cigarette, inhale, and cough my lungs out. My body demands another drag. I cough again. My lungs burn. I must look like an idiot, bent over, holding a fresh ciggy like a virgin but coughing like a seasoned miner. I go home, make myself more coffee. Mingled with all the sugar and the lingering taste of tobacco it’s sickening. I need a wank. Twelve seconds later I cum dry and crash into the settee. I tear up. I never tear up.
My phone’s buzzing wakes me up from a sticky half-nap. It’s a message from Horton:
Found your ad. Don’t know if it would work on me but not I’m inclined to try. Couldn’t find much in the code. I know someone who’s into this stuff, might be more willing/able to help. Don’t expect it to be free. I’ll send you his number.
I call Horton first. He says his guy – Sierpinski – is clean-ish. I call him.
“Hello?” Sierpinski’s got a nasal but not unpleasant voice.
“Hello.” I say. “This is Fredrick Bayes, a friend of Horton. Horton Hunter. He gave me your number.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about an ad I’d–”
“I don’t do ads.”
“I don’t want you to do an ad, it’s about an ad which, well – how to put this? – has had some, eh, deleterious effects on me.”
“I don’t know why Horton gave you my number. I’m not a psychologist.”
“No, Horton thinks the ad might be, I don’t know, illegal or something. That it might use some sort of illegal code or technology, making people addicted to stuff.”
“Where did you see that ad?”
“On a porn site.”
Sierpinski sighs. “I would need specifics…”
“Xcunts.”
He takes his time to answer. “Yeah, I know them. They do experiment with grey areas. What’s the ad look like? What’s it do?”
“Well, for one, I crave cigarettes. I’m a non-smoker. And I used to drink my coffee black, without sugar, one cup a day. Now I finish a family-size jar of instant in two days, guzzle it down with gallons of cream and tons of sugar. And also – how can I put this? – I used to have stamina.”
“Stamina?”
“Yeah, I could go for a long time before shooting.”
“Shooting?”
Please don’t make this difficult now. “Yeah, shooting, cumming. You know, orgasm.”
“Right, orgasm.”
“Now I cum in ten seconds…” Has the line gone dead? “Hello?” I say.
“Still here,” he says. “Sounds interesting. Could you describe the ad?”
“Boobs flopping about, animated, cum geyser, greenish background, I think, ‘You won’t last–”
“Yeah,” he interrupts, “You won’t last twenty seconds. I’ve got it on my screen. And you say it does indeed do what it advertises for?”
“Unfortunately yes.”
“Blackouts?”
“What?”
“Do you have blackouts? Do you remember clicking the ad? Did you play a game? Did it lead to a website?”
“Now that you mention it, I can’t remember anything.”
“Blackouts, good. This is excellent, smashing. I’ll call you back.”
He hangs up without any polite exchange of pleasantries, and now I need a wank. And coffee, gallons of cream, tons of sugar. And fags. Fags until my lungs look like charred steak. I go for a walk. The healthier option. Perhaps I should start running. They say runners get high. I decide on the park even though the sky’s a concrete dome and the wind cuts like cheese wire – but it’s dry. Traffic is the same as any time of the day, any day of the week – between jammed and static, a constant rumble and whine of engines interspersed with horns and sirens desperate to get through. I fumble a cigarette between my lips – I’m feeling better already – light it and drag, filling my mouth first. I still cough. At the third fag, feeling out of place amongst the bare trees, I panic, get out my phone, and log into my bank account. There’s one transaction dating to yesterday, and more of the same going back four days. All small sums, not to xcunts as I feared, but to some LLC thing. I call the bank, ask them to block any transfers to that company. Certainly Sir, they say. It’s good being a valued customer. I cross the street, weaving trough the clotted traffic, and take the elevator to the loft – enough winter park for me today. I’m desperate for coffee, sugar, and a wank or two. I go for a shower instead, crash on the settee, and watch shit television. The Horror Channel’s doing a theme night on worms, they wriggle and crawl over the screen. Bore worms, brain slugs, flesh-eating annelids from hell, the list goes on. B, C, D, Z-movies. My phone buzzes five minutes into a gory, exploitative documentary from the seventies on elephantiasis tropica and dracunculiasis – Guinea worm disease – well past midnight.
“Hello?”
“Sierpinski here. I had a look at your ad. It’s murky to say the least. I haven’t managed to reverse-engineer all of it, but there’s definitely stuff in there it that I’ve seen on … doesn’t matter where I’ve seen it. So, question, could you come over tomorrow? Around 1PM? Make it 2. Yeah. 2PM. And bring your computer. Is that OK?”
“Eh, sure.” I say. “Where?”
“I’ll text you my address. Do come alone.”
“Sure, do I–” He’s hung up.
*
It’s a two-hour drive to Sierpinski. He lives halfway up a quiet hill by a small town. As I get out of the car, the memory of the inner city’s heavy traffic dissipates like a bad dream. He’s got cameras in his front garden, and lets me in before I am at the front door. It’s 2PM, needle-sharp. He leads me into the front room. I was expecting a basement with tangles of cables, feeble lighting, overflowing ashtrays, blinking LEDs, and fifties sound-effects, but it’s light, airy, minimalistic, all suffused with a slight waft of bleach. Sterile and a bit kitsch. There are various pictures in white frames of him and his wife and his little daughter and a pair of purple orchids on the windowsill.
“I’m sure they’ve got stuff on your drive.” he says, and motions me to hand over my laptop. He dumps it upside-down on a coffee table and starts disassembling and unscrewing stuff.
“Hey, don’t–”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“You’d better not–”
He dismisses me with a wave of his screwdriver, gets out the HDD, plugs it into his machine, and moves the mouse. Several designer screens flicker up. He drags windows from one screen to another and starts rattling away on the keyboard.
“Right.” he says after two minutes of clicking and shortcut wizardry. “It’s not even subtle. Cobbled together, no doubt. Amateur work. Disappointing.” He swivels in his chair, laces his fingers behind his head – tries on a triumphant look – and leans back. “Found the missing link.” he says. “I don’t know what it means or does. For that I’d need to run this thing in some container. All I can say is that whoever hacked this together used some nasty stuff. Truly nasty stuff. Nerve gas for computers. You haven’t been contacted by anyone?”
“No.” I say. “What for?”
“Blackmail, obviously.”
I shake my head.
“Did you check your balance for anything suspicious?”
“Yeah, small sums have gone to some LLC.”
“Not to the porn site?”
“No, I checked.”
“Right. Well. To all evidence we’ve got an idiot on our hands then, trying to make some easy money using technology that is well above his pay-grade. Like using an underwater nuke to catch a sardine.” He mimes an explosion, kaboom, mushroom cloud and all. “Does a bit more than just netting one small fish, doesn’t it? And there you are,” he says, “standing in the fall-out, showing the first symptoms of radiation sickness.” He pauses. “So, how to proceed? I’d suggest the following. You pay upfront, let’s say, half of my base fee. Starts at 15k–”
“What?”
“–plus expenses, hourly rates, etc.”
“I’m not–”
“In a week, a fortnight perhaps, I’ll get some code running that should, at least to some extent, mitigate the effects this gnawing little brain worm’s had on your mind. What does that sound like?”
“Extortion.”
He flicks his eyebrows up, then frowns. “Tsk,” he says. “15k plus one or two minor expenses is nothing for a guy like you.”
Now I frown. “How’d you–” He does the dismissive hand-waving again. Either he looked me up or he’s bluffing. He knows I’m desperate. “Alright, fine. But how do I know I can trust you?” I say.
“You don’t.”
I try to haggle, bicker back and forth, but hit a wall. He sends me home. Loose yourself in nature, he says, far from the lure of the city. I’m sure you’ve got a cute little cottage stashed somewhere. Take a friend. Throw away the fags and the coffee, cold turkey. And no wanking. The cunt even chuckles.
“This needs planning.”
“No it doesn’t.”
I go alone to the dales in a cottage only furnished with a landline, a small library, and an Aga. The 60W lightbulb in the living room is the single biggest power-guzzler. I break after the first night. At 6AM, I’m sniffling into the receiver.
“Horton?” I say at the first notion of response at his end of the line. I implore him to pick up.
“Hrmmh?”
“Oh thank god, it’s you.”
“Who is this?”
“Fredrick.”
“Fredrick? You sound … dreadful.”
“I’m dying.” I start sobbing.
“Hey, calm down – calm down.”
“I’m dying, and you want me to calm down?” My wail is steeped with incomprehension – it’s pathetic.
“Er? I don’t know what to say.”
“Could you come over?”
“Now? ”
“Yes. Please.”
“‘Please’? This isn’t like you. Where are you?”
“In the dales.”
“The dales ?”
I send a car to pick him up and bring him over, tell him to grab a dozen jars of instant, a dozen packs of fags. And body-lotion. My cock’s raw. He arrives, far later than I’d hoped, with only the lotion. I explode into petty argument. Each of my self-righteous retorts sears a bolt of white-hot fury through me. I grab the phone to smash his head in. He hits me right in the solar plexus – I wasn’t expecting that from a measly coder. I retch, and let myself collapse in a sobbing heap, hiding my head under the beige rotary-dial monstrosity. Horton stands there, speechless. I feel sorry for him. He finds his way to the kitchen and brews some tea. I get up and join him, my gaze down.
“I couldn’t bring anything,” he says. “You need to go cold turkey. There’s no other way.”
“I know.” We sip. At least I’m getting some caffeine.
“This isn’t the right place. You should have yourself admitted.”
“I can’t.” I say. “Won’t. They’ll lock me up in the loony bin. Indefinitely. This is beyond their silly pills. I need to be out when Sierpinski finishes his job.”
“When’s that?”
“In a week or so.”
Horton scratches his head. “This may sound freaky,” he says, “but I know a guy who’s got a padded cell. And gear to restrain you with, and people to control you, should that be necessary. He might be able to keep you safe for a week. But perhaps it’s over the top – you might feel better tomorrow.”
“I won’t feel better tomorrow. Let’s go there, now.”
Horton can’t get the guy to answer. ‘Now’ stretches from the immediate into the very elastic future. He rings back the day after. I haven’t slept in 48 hours, Horton in 24. My cockhead’s bleeding in patches – it can only take so much sustained friction. Every muscle attached to it is begging for a fatal shot of paralytic. Horton had to hit me again when I wanted to cut it off. I spent the night duct taped to the comfy chair. It was torture. He asks me who drove him here and calls for a car – he doesn’t trust driving that far alone with me in the car – and we’re off, back South. The driver isn’t too keen on letting me in, he thinks I’m a ghoul.
Horton’s guy’s mansion is one of understated opulence. I pace around his study while Horton does the talking – the lack of coffee and nicotine is grinding up my bones and nerves, pricking and prodding me into sleep-deprived hyper-excitation.
“Well, straitjacket, sleeping pill, and into the cell.” I hear the big man say. “I’ll call two boys.”
I snap and grab a pen, hold it up like a knife. Horton’s at my plexus again. I don’t care, drop the pen, and go for his neck. The big man kicks me in the knee and floors me, tough guys stream in, strip me, wrap my flailing body in something black and cold and force-feed me a pill. I scream the whole time that I don’t want to. Something pops and I go catatonic, get dragged into a small room, strapped to a field bed in some sort of heavy sack, arms over my chest, like a lunatic. I sink into the mattress when the lights switch off. Everything’s feeling fuzzy. My mind’s projecting its cinema on the back of my eyelids. I join the throbbing flowers and fireworks. When they fade, so do I.
*
“You need rest.” Jeff says. That’s what he said his name is. “You’re in bad shape. If it weren’t for Horton, I’d sent you to the hospital. I’m taking a serious risk keeping you here.”
“I need to see Sierpinski.”
“Sierpinski’s going to contact Horton, in due time. I’ll let you know.”
“I need to see him now.”
“Right now, you need to rest. Either you calm down, or I’ll get you to the hospital.”
“I need coffee.”
“Undoubtedly.”
I get agitated “And a wank.” I try to reach for my cock. “I need a wank!” My hands are in fucking sleeves crossed over my chest. “Let me have a wank!”
Jeff smiles. “Believe me, you don’t need a wank. I don’t now how your cock’s survived that onslaught, but I can assure you that it’d be better if you don’t have a wank.”
“Why won’t you let me have a wank?”
“In your case–” He chuckles. Why is he chuckling? “–because your cock needs a rest. And because it seems to exacerbate your various afflictions.”
“Why am I in this bag?” I sound like a robot now. I’m sure I’ve had the same answers before.
“To keep you from harming yourself.”
“What’s this room?”
“A padded cell.”
“A black padded cell?”
Jeff chuckles again. “A speciality cell. For people of a more refined taste.” Jeff smiles. I don’t like it. I don’t like him and his superficial magnanimosity. “Are you hungry?” he says.
“No.”
“You need to drink. I’ll send a boy.”
A guy comes in and I drink up. I go to sleep. When I wake up, my cock is straining, finally in an upright position. I rub it in the bag. Within ten seconds I cum. My cum lubes up the bag. I get hard again. Another ten seconds later I cum again. I needed this. I need more. So much backlog. I want cream. Sugar. The leather is slick. I’m in a leather bag – what am I doing here? My cock feels delicious. I fuck my spunk against the slippery leather. I cum again. I start laughing – a raucous, continuous cackle – and hump the leather bag. Two guys come in. One zips the bag open over my cock and holds it down. His grip is all I need. I cum. It’s starting to hurt. I fuck his hand, he lets go – too late. I cum again, dry. A maelstrom of blind need sucks me in. I try to snap up and bite the fuckers. One pins me down, one holds something over my face. The flowers are back. I feel a last spasm in my groin, like stroking a rug against the weave, then it fades into velvet smoothness.
I don’t know what day it is. I suppose it’s day when the guys feed and water me. The cell is different. This one looks like a dungeon. I can’t remember changing cells. There’s a cage in the middle and I’m chained in it. They’ve locked a thing around my waist, like metal underpants. It keeps me from touching my cock, or rubbing it against anything. When I rock my pelvis, my cock moves around a bit in the thing, but I can’t cum any more – I tried, days on end. I don’t need it any more, I tell myself. The straitjacket creaks – I’ve got used to it. They had me in a canvas one for a while, but leather is more soothing on the elbows. Water’s starting to lose its blandness. The previous days are fading to shreds of memory.
*
“Sierpinski’s called.” Horton says, outside of my cage. He can’t conceal some dejection from seeping through his gaze. “It’s all done. He’s got the code compiled and running.”
“Good. Get me out of here.”
“I can’t,” he says, “you have to stay in. Sierpinski’s agreed to come over with his stuff. There’s no way we’d get you to his place without being seen, or with you acting normal. Can’t do that.” Horton’s looking away.
“You think I’m mad?”
“Honestly?”
I nod.
“Yeah. Or at least going mad. And I have to warn you, Sierpinski’s not sure it’ll work.”
“It had better. I paid the bloody prick 15k upfront.”
Horton didn’t know that, his face tells it all. He’s ogling me. Dejection turns into horror.
“Yeah,” he says, quietly, “it had better work.”
Sierpinski enters the dungeon somewhere around what I assume is late afternoon. One of the feeding guys helps him carry a large screen. He’s holding a laptop. Horton and Jeff are there too.
“I don’t know if this will work.” he says.
“It had better. I paid you 15k.” I say.
He’s fiddling with the screen and his computer. “I couldn’t test it, obviously. Do you know that Monty Python sketch about the deadly joke? This is the same thing. I had to work on it in bits and pieces. Couldn’t even test the modules. Had to write an entire perimeter around it. Never trust Virtual Machines. Too leaky. And what good are they here? It’s all about interface, you know?”
“Sure.” I say.
“Right,” Sierpinski says, “everybody leave. I’ll give you the mouse,” he says to me, “you play the game, after we’re gone.” The feeding guy puts headphones over my ears, takes off the cuff on my right wrist, and slides the mitt off of my hand while the rest leaves. Horton looks concerned. The feeding guy scurries off, and closes the door. I’m alone, chained in a cage, in a dungeon, with a screen in front of me and headphones playing some nonsense.
‘You probably won’t last two hours, but you just might’ the game says. Not a catchy title. Who plays such crap? I click it nonetheless.
What happened?
I’m in a cage? Hanging in some leather contraption, chained to the bars? With metal underwear on?
“Hey?” I shout. “Hey? What the fuck is this shit?”
(I 2021)
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