It was the third year of the war and now they were going to ransack the house once more! When I hobbled down from the attic to the porch they were already at the doors. I limped to them, waving my good hand as if it was the wing of the mill, quavering:

"No! No, there is not anything for you to help yourselves!"

"Shut up, you gimp," one of them cut me short. "We don't need anything. We just want the place."

Their coats were so soiled and faded that they could easily be grey, not blue, but I had enough experience to recognize them. There were three horses and four riders on them. One of the guys had a girl in the saddle in front of him - a girl in the scarlet shiny dress, so bright that it looked absurd against their dirtiness. Her head was settling on the shoulder of the soldier listlessly.

They dismounted. And then the one who had the girl with him plucked her down. He didn't let her step on the ground - just yanked her by her upper arm - so roughly that she flopped down on her knees, without being on her feet. There was a blunt 'thud' sound when her knees hit the marble steps - and at the same moment she gave out a long agonizing moan.

"Bitch!" one of the soldiers kicked her, right where her legs were jointed together. She cried again - a shrill sound full of pain - and started falling on her side. They by far didn't wait for her to stop groaning, pulling her up and hauling up the porch stairs. Her head sagged.

I looked at them gaping and my fists clenched painfully and convulsively. They were going to rape her! That was why they needed 'the place'. They were going to do it in our living-room - and I could do nothing to prevent them.

"Stanley! Stanley, what are you doing?" the screechy voice of my mother hailed me. Again by the name of my brother. The soldiers stopped and their eyes became apprehensive.

"Who's there? Speak!"

"It is my mom," I hurried gaspingly. "She is ill. She is out of her mind. Please don't harm her!"

"We are not going to harm her, you sicky!" the guy with a big black beard said. "Just don't piss around."

"I guess you don't have any hay there?" another one, with hairless freckled face, asked mildly.

"No," I replied the only thing they expected from me. I didn't think about what I was saying, I couldn't tear my eyes from the girl. Two of them held her upright - but she didn't stand her feet. Her short copper-red hair hung over her face, almost completely hiding it, and I saw some blood trickling on her neck from her ear. She looked so frail against the burly shapes of the soldiers, a pale creature in her torn dress, and I understood that her hands were tied behind her back.

She was not a decent woman, of course, I thought, no decent woman would wear such color now - but somehow it didn't matter for me. They were so rough to her, they hurt her cruelly and pointlessly - and it made my mouth fill with bitterness of disgust.

"Here, take the slut here," they dragged her inside. The havoc in our hall was never repaired after their last visit - the little table broken and the sofa ragged and the yawning gap in the rails of the stairs on the second floor.

"Have anything to eat?" the black-bearded one demanded glaring at me. "Bread? Whatever?"

"Please, no," I answered without hope that they would believe me. But they looked like they didn't care.

"Well," the freckled one said. "Get out of here. Now!"

They dropped the girl on her knees again and she scrambled a little, moaning so that my heart was tearing for her, and I thought she could have broken her knee-cup when they yanked her down form the horse - and they didn't seem to care about it!

"Shut up, cunt! You'll speak when we want you to!" the guy with the black beard hit her with his open palm on the face. Her head dangled - the new source of pain made her whimper - and then she coughed and spat out blood of her mouth - dark thick clots of red and something white in them. Terrified I realized that it could be her teeth knocked out. Her face was battered hideously, I saw now. Blue and purple bruises covered it almost entirely - and there was blood running out of her nose and lips.

"Please!" I stood frozen in front of them, I knew I was fishing for troubles - and I could only imagine what they could do to me if I made them mad. But I couldn't leave it like this! No, I knew they were not going to change their mind regarding her, not for everything I could offer to them - and I didn't have anything - but at least I could try. At least I could try to feel myself a man for once.

"What, gimp?" the guy snarled at me.

"Please don't hurt her so bad, please!"

"Fuck you, shut up, you freak!" the black-bearded guy started yelling. They were rough usually but with time passing they were getting more and more rampant. These things - advances, retreats - were wearing them out, and their nerves, too. "We are here for..."

"Her!" the freckled guy looked at me and chuckled almost hysterically. When he stopped abruptly his face again became mellow. "Don't worry, kid, we won't hurt her. It is not her. No any fuckin' her here! This slut is male."

Their laughter was like thunder. His words didn't have much sense for me at first and I simply disregarded them. It meant only that they were not going to spare the girl. And then I thought once again - and looked - and it became clear for me. They said she was male - and surely, she - he - was. I couldn't understand how I didn't get it at once. Her dress was torn on her front and there was no any woman breasts visible. Just a flat bruised chest with a tiny brown nipple erect with cold.

I gasped. It was weird. So weird that I simply couldn't find anything to say, I even couldn't move - and the freckled man commented for me again:

"He is a spy. A fuckin' dirty Confederate spy."

The spy with his hands tied behind his back didn't look at me. He didn't raise his head even once while I was standing there. And when the freckled man pushed me, almost gently, I just walked off. Back upstairs, painfully slow.

"Who is it?" the door to my mother's room was ajar - shadowed with the curtains pulled down, dim and stiff in the bright day. I didn't come in - I saw the brink of her bed there, with white sheets, and I answered as tranquilly as I could:

"It's me, mom. I'll shut the door?"

She didn't reply. I guessed she didn't mind and also I guessed it could only harm her if she was to hear something from downstairs. It could upset her. She had never been stable with her wits, my mother - and when dad walked away and was killed and then Stanley was killed - she drooped down at all. I suppose she didn't know Tristan was killed, too, and that about Dicksie we didn't have any news for a month already. I was being Dicksie, and Stanley, and even Lamont for her now.

I could go back to the attic - I loved this place, and there was a rocker there waiting for me and it was nice to sit there and rock, with the book on my lap. There was only one sunray through the boarded-up window and when I rocked I could keep the book so that the lines I was reading were in this ray.

Only I didn't go to the attic. I went to the arcade instead and sat there.

They were dealing with the spy for a while already - the guy with the black beard held him by his smooth blood-stained hair and struck him on his face, right-left, right-left, with a dull sound of moist flesh slapping. I could hear his voice cursing and his breath heaving. The spy didn't scream. Well, from time to time he made sound - so muffled as if his throat was clotted with a wet rag.

"Like it, you trash?" the third guy, short and rather ordinary looking, cursed and approached the spy from behind. I saw him raising his boot and hitting the spy in the left kidney. I guess it was too much for him. He made the sound as if he was choking and he fell face down - well, he would fell - if the soldier didn't have his hair grasped.

"Fuckin' cunt!" they were very hot of what they were doing and their tempers rose. "Shit!" the black-bearded one said again and kicked his belly. Then, when he let his hair go, the spy fell down of the floor prostrate and motionless.

"What did you do to him?" the freckled guy seemed concerned. "Killed him?"

When the other guy answered there was some uneasiness in his voice, too:

"I don't know."

"Kid! Hey, kid!" when the freckled one tilted his face up as if searching I understood he was calling me. I pressed myself to the wall knowing that they couldn't see me in the shadow. I was not going to show them my shelter. "Is there any water?"

"Fuck the gimp!" the black-bearded one spat on the floor indignantly. "We'll find without him."

They walked out, all of them, leaving the prone body on the floor. There was some blood on the floor where the spy's mouth was. I considered how long it could take for them to find the water pomp. It was in the back yard. I counted. I was counting while going down.

It was silly. I knew I didn't have to do it - I could get into unimaginable troubles by it - but, to tell the truth, I didn't care much. The body on the floor of our hall looked so strange for me - a blinding-bright vermilion spot on our soiled floor, a satin lacy dress. He didn't look like male from here at all - and if I didn't see with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it.

When I was in some paces from him the spy moaned. It was a ragged sound, almost too low to be heard and it made the little hair on my neck rise. The scarlet dress shifted. It was as if he tried to crawl - which was not very successful with his hands tied, anyway - and he smeared the trace of blood on the floor to oblong shape.

I made my last steps as fast as I could and I squatted over him. He lay face down, with his mouth half-open - and there was the thread of repulsive blooded spat stretching out of it. His eyes were not completely shut but I guess he couldn't see much with them anyway. There was blood from the ugly gashes on his forehead that made his lashes sticky. When my shadow dropped over him he stirred. He stopped groaning, his body pressed into the floor - and then he jerked convulsively, slamming his head against the floor.

I pulled back my hand that was reaching to him. I gasped probably. I didn't know what to say, what to do. In this small pause of quietness the spy turned his face to me. Actually, I think he tried to raise his head and it flopped down heavily. However, he was turned to me now - and his lashes trembled when he tried to look at me. I closed my face to him. I don't know why I did it. This way his face that looked like a blood-mask was only in several inches from mine. And suddenly there was one grey eye looking at me out of this bloody mess - bright and somber, with the drop of the pupil slowly focusing on me. The sight was startling. I sat back on my heels. Then I understood he couldn't open his other eye.

I didn't say anything and didn't move, partly terrified, partly astonished, and without knowing what to do. His battered lips parted - and a hoarse, almost incomprehensible voice whispered to me:

"Help me to die, boy... please... quickly."

I didn't know what shocked me more - the sound of his voice - and there was almost nothing human in it, still less girlish - or his words. I looked at the blood leaking on his lips and was dumb mute. The spy's face was anxious for several seconds - and then he sighed in despair. With his eyes shut his face became the ugly mask again.

Then I heard the steps behind. They had the bucket of water with them. They stopped seeing me.

"You cretin!" the black-bearded yelled at me. "What are you doing here?!"

"I told you to get out, kid," the freckled one said. "It is not for your eyes."

"I bet he pities the slut," the third one said. "He is the same Confederate as the fuckin' spy. They all Southern are."

At least two of them were so angry that I started being afraid. But the freckled one stopped them:

"No, he is not. He is not to blame for where he was born, right, kid? And I am sure he didn't do anything bad to any of us."

"He?" they laughed. They pushed me again - the result of my coming down was only that I had to stump upstairs again. I didn't hear any sound from my mother's room - but I couldn't, not with the door shut.

When they didn't see me any more, they started again. They poured the water over the spy, evidently to make him come round. The black-bearded guy took him by the dress and shook.

"Don't beat him again cold, Archie," the freckled guy said to his companion.

"Sure. Sure," the guy took his hands off - causing the spy falling down on the floor again limply. "I won't."

"I have something else for him," the freckled guy said. "Take this rag off from him."

For a moment I waited what they meant - and then I heard the textile of the dress ripping and I saw them baring his chest in the torn cloth. The spy in their hands was like a doll, a marionette, they just pushed and shoved him and he didn't make any sound, as if he was already dead. They didn't stop here and tore the dress down. From what I knew I guessed he had some gown under it but they ripped it, too. He didn't have any corselet, of course.

So soon they stripped him naked - with the rags of his clothes around his tied hands - and then Archie started ripping them off and the spy made some short pitiful cries. His tied hands flew up and down under Archie's rough hands.

"I think you will disjoint them," the freckled guy said - and I felt my face coming blushed hot.

Every new thing they were doing terrified me more and more. I was in a state of horror with what happened - maybe, the same as I would be if there was a girl they wanted to abuse. Well, the spy looked like a girl for me - still. Not always - but there were moments when I forgot about his male chest. She could be dressed like a whore - but he was not a whore. He was a spy working for the Confederates. Were they torturing him for information? I didn't know. They barely asked him anything. The truth was also, however, the spy didn't speak back to them at all, didn't even curse them. I fleetly remembered his voice asking to die. It made my chest clench inside. He had to be in terrible pain, in more pain than I could imagine.

And they were going on with him.

His thin pale body seemed even smaller without the dress - a crouched white form on the marble floor, smeared in blood and so bruised. He lay on his belly, with his knees pulled up and his tied hands in ridiculous bracelets of half-torn dress clothe stuck behind his back. Was it because I looked at them like this - with the soldiers towering over him and him stretched on the floor - that he seemed so dainty for me? But I took him for a girl in the beginning - he was not much bigger than a girl.

Suddenly I remembered again his face so close. He was not even a boy, I thought, he was, maybe, in his middle twenties - or did I think so because his eyes were so deadly tired?

"Enjoy it, bitch," the black-bearded guy said grabbing the spy's ankles and flipped him on his back.

There were huge darkened areas on his soft hollow belly - because of bleeding as they beat him, I guessed. And his left knee was dark-pink and swollen, looking unbearably tender. They sneered at him.

"Shit pussy!" Archie stamped his heel on the belly of the spy. I didn't notice if he restrained his force in any way - but, surely, if he didn't he would kill him straight ahead? And like this he only made the spy cry bitterly, all his body jerking, and there was a blood lump coming out of his mouth again.

"No, not here," the freckled guy said. There was a rather jovial smile on his face when he approached the legs of the spy. "You deserve it, pussy," he added - almost full of pleasure his voice was. I saw him raising his foot in the air and swinging it over the injured knee of the spy. I couldn't see it right from here - I didn't know if the spy followed him with his eyes - but he had to, because the guy made this demonstration for somebody? The spy didn't say anything, however. He convulsed when the soldier hit with his heel over the broken knee-cup. For a moment he was silent, only his head tossed back so that his throat arched - and I even thought he was not going to scream. When he did scream I clenched my ears with my palms. I was sitting on the floor - and I fell against the wall, pressed into it. My stomach was turning inside out.

They kicked his knee for a while, bringing him back to his senses when he fainted. A couple of times I heard the crackling sound of bone smashed - but soon it stopped. I knew there was nothing whole in his knee now, they must have mashed it soft. But he still continued to feel pain, I knew - though there was not much recognizable in the sounds he made. His voice fluctuated - rising to broken wails and falling to low, tearing moans.

"Fuckin' bastard! Shit!" Archie was impatient. Though it was a visible pleasure for them to hurt him they probably wanted some output, I suppose - and they had none. Archie kicked the spy in the groin - a lingering, terribly cruel blow, making the prone body jerk and rise from the floor. They laughed when they saw it. They found an entertainment for themselves. They started beating him in the crotch, registering every convulsion of his body, contesting who would make him moan louder and jerk more violently. They didn't stamp on his balls, however, they just hit there.

I thought my mother was hailing me. Frankly speaking, I heard her voice even through the door - and no wonder, she must have caught something. But there was no way I could stand up and go to her. I was frozen on my place, glued to the wall. Black despair was closing on me while it was going on and on downstairs.

My brother Dicksie was fifteen when he left us for the front. I was the only male in all surrounding estates who was at home - my damned leg that didn't move at all made me unsuitable for anything. My damned arm that I couldn't use.

When my father was leaving he took his gun with himself. Stanley and Tristan went with their ones - and Dicksie took his. And I never had no gun, you see.

But even if I had it, even if I had - there was no way for me to kill all of them. Not three of them. Never in the world.

But the thought of it made me weep suddenly - though I don't remember when I wept last time - and I didn't weep because of what I saw them doing with the spy. I was helpless. I was of no use. I was scum.

Through my eyes blurred with tears I looked at the freckled soldier squatting over the spy on the floor. He had the spy's face in his hand - as if trying to meet his eyes.

"You know, you made a pretty girl, Heloise," with some dark intensity he said. "Weird - but pretty."

I guess the spy wanted to spit at him. His head moved - but what he did only made some bloody spat spill out of his mouth. They laughed looking at it. The freckled guy let his face go. He ran his palms over he spy's throat, slippery with blood and other liquids. For a moment I thought, maybe, he was going to strangle him - and as the thought to see it seemed unendurable for me but at the same time I realized it was what he wanted! It could mean stop hurting for him!

I recalled again how he asked me to kill him - and I knew now I could do it. Even one-handed I could kill him fast and easy - he was so much smaller than me. Only I didn't know then, I didn't know!

But the hands of the freckled guy didn't stop there. He moved down, smearing the liquids over the spy's chest, and his hands lay down on his brown nipples - and he pinched suddenly sharply with all his force. I yelped into my sleeve, muffling the sound.

The spy didn't react. This pain must have been dispensable for him. The freckled guy went on squeezing cruelly.

"You liked to wear girl's dress, right, Heloise?' he asked with some strange expression in his voice. "You would like to be a girl? But you are not a girl."

And then he did a thing that looked unspeakable and incomprehensible for me. He lowered his face to the chest of the spy and put his mouth on his nipple. For a moment it looked like he sucked on it. And then the body of the spy arched - and I saw blood leaking from under of the guy's mouth. The spy shrieked.

Even with other shrieks he made this one seemed terrible for me. The freckled guy made some sharp movement with his chin - and then he straightened and spat something out of his mouth - blood - and something else, something like a bit of flesh. I looked at the bloody wound on the spy's chest. He convulsed and screamed again - and then he lay flat, senseless.

"You are crazy, Sam," Archie said.

I believe I passed out for a moment when I realized what he had done. I slid down against the wall and everything blackened in front of my eyes. But as soon as I was lucid again I couldn't stop thinking about it. I knew exactly what he had done. He bit his nipple out.

Downstairs they didn't argue any more and Sam was sitting close to the spy - Heloise, he called him - and he had a knife in his hand and he was cutting the knife into the wound on his chest.

"The fuckin' bastard was sorry he didn't have girl's tits," Sam was muttering. "I am sorry, too, I am sorry."

I knew the spy was in his senses - he thrashed under Sam's hands - but he didn't moan. Was he already past pain, I wondered. I would pray for it, only I was not in the state of mind to pray.

"I guess I know what I would like to do with this slut," Sam said. "Even if he is not a girl he still has a hole where to put something to."

The third guy looked puzzled.

"What do you mean? His ass?"

"Ugh, sure," Archie was glad to agree. "I would put my gun there. It will be funny to fuck him with the gun."

I felt like screaming. I saw him taking the heavy gun and pushing it between the legs of the spy. The black muzzle of it was pressing on his terribly beaten balls and it made him grunt feebly.

"No, not the gun," Sam said and though I couldn't see his face there was something like a smile in his voice. "I prefer to put something else into his hole."

I followed his hand with my eyes - as his palm lay down on his crotch and caressed there.

"But he is gross!" Archie exclaimed.

"You don't have to look at him," Sam laughed cheerfully. "I think he is the same hot there as any whore."

They were silent for several moments, regarding the possibility. I froze in my corner. I knew what they were going to do - and well, didn't they make themselves excessively clear.

I saw a girl raped by this time already and I never could forget it - but I had never seen it being done to a man. Heloise was the same male as I was - though at first I had thought 'she' about him and the name was this ridiculous. I felt cramps in my stomach. My feverish thoughts were broken when Sam stretched himself.

"Well, what you want but I'll take him," he said. "I want him in doggie position."

The spy didn't make a sound but I saw he was looking at them all the time when the conversation went. His mutilated chest was heaving and there were small short breaths coming out of him. Sam stooped and took his ankles in his hands and roughly flipped him on his stomach.

He had to be so destroyed by now that this rude movement made him howl animal-like. Sam didn't stop there, I saw him grabbing the spy by his blooded hair and pulling him up. How he managed to put him on his knees I didn't know. I shuddered thinking about the pain he felt in his knee. He moaned again - and stopped abruptly. I couldn't believe he was trying to control himself. They did so much to him that it was no longer possible.

As soon as Sam had Heloise on his knees he let his hair go. He didn't stand - he flopped down on his face - and it was not doggie position at all - with his ass stuck in the air and his head on the floor. Standing over him Sam unfastened his pants. I saw his prick - huge and purple with the filled veins. He kneeled behind the spy.

He looked such a tiny thing like that, on his knees and with his face pressed to the floor - even not like a girl but like a child, only his ass butted obscenely. Sam behind him seemed so big and his fat penis incompatible with the slight form of the spy. But I saw him preparing himself and he pried Heloise's ass-cheeks open. In the next moment he sent himself inside to the hilt.

The spy didn't shriek. All his body shuddered but there was no sound at all. Sam stayed like that for a very little while and then he pulled out.

"Bastard is not tight," he said contemptuously. "I bet he had somebody up before there. He is stretched like a whore," he continued while sending his dick inside the spy in long motions.

I didn't know if it was true or not. The spy made curt shallow gasps but didn't moan or anything. Big hands of Sam looked cruel on his bruised skin. Sam dug his nails into Heloise's flesh, pulling him closer and pushing from himself.

"Do you like it?" Archie said sounding fascinated.

"You'll like it, too," Sam smiled under his breath. "Wait a little."

He was panting of what he was doing - as if it was work for him. There was a wet slap sound when he hit the crack of the spy with his pelvis. His big hairy balls dangled in the air, with every stroke pressing to his skin. There was blood spreading under the spy - from his injured chest - and soon I saw some drops of blood spilling from his rear end. Sam fucked him to blood.

With time being Sam was moving faster and faster - so fast really as if he was slamming his belly - and Heloise's sharp inhalations became faster, too.

"Ooh, yes, yes," Sam repeated. "Like that! Here we are!"

He cummed and popped out of his ass at once - with a loud sound that made them laugh. His cock was limping in the air and he didn't tuck it back to his pants. I saw Archie glancing wryly at it and it seemed to me there was a short grimace on his face. However, the hunched body of the spy interested him more. He unfastened slowly.

"Come on," Sam said cheering him. "Plug it to him."

"I will," Archie said. "Not this way."

He grabbed Heloise again, pulled him and turned him on his back again. The spy was unresisting like a dead thing, falling outstretched as soon as Archie left him.

"Shit!" Archie said. I watched him kneeling and grasping the spy's left ankle. He pulled his tortured leg up, holding him open. I saw some more blood and whitish slime leaking out of his hole. The place between his ass-cheeks was glistening and scattered. Archie punched him in his belly making his body tremble before he inserted his dick into the hole. There was a long smirk spreading on his face.

"I didn't do it for quite a while, guys."

When he started drilling his face changed again. With a hiss he grabbed the bruised genitals of the spy in his hand and made a fist. I knew it brought sharper pain to him than the penetration itself. Archie didn't let him go. His hand was mauling his balls and cock while he reiterated:

"All is good but I don't like it! I don't like this shit!"

After a while the spy stopped shaking. I thought the pain was so intense for him that he quitted reacting to it. His leg was on Archie's shoulder now, the swollen knee hunched, and his small foot was swinging in the air. I saw Sam having another hard-on - he grabbed his dick and started jerking off.

The third guy was one too many. At first he just watched all this, patting his cock through the cloth and then his face became indignant and impatient. Sam noticed it.

"Put it into his mouth," he said. "Put it!"

The guy moved to the spy's head and stopped there.

"I am..." he shrugged. "He is a crazy son of bitch, I need my dick still."

"Then break his jaw!" Sam sounded annoyed. "What's the problem? Break it!"

"How?" the guy was still was reluctant. He raised his boot and stamped it on the spy's face. Even with everything else what was done with him Heloise responded. He made a groan, caught in his throat and his head fell awry. The soldier squatted checking him and I understood he didn't achieve what he wanted.

"Don't kill him right away," Sam warned.

I watched how the guy took his gun and pushed the spy's head to make him lie flat. He put the butt of the gun on his face, to the bloody hole where his mouth was, and hit. Now I heard the crunch. The spy's head flopped up and down, dangling. He shrieked again. Probably the guy knocked out more his teeth. He hit once more - and there he was. I understood he had done it because he squatted back and pulled his erect prick out of the pants. I didn't see him putting it to the spy's mouth - but I saw him making long sharp movements with his hand he grabbed his hair with.

Archie was panting. He drilled so hard and so fast and he grunted. The limp foot of Heloise was dangling in the air, pale small thing reminding me about a doll again. Archie was scrabbling his knees in the pool of blood now, his pants had to be soaked in this blood - but he didn't notice it.

"Fuck! Fuck! Damned bitch!" he breathed out, one of his hands still torturing Heloise's organs and with his other fist slammed and slammed under the spy's ribs, to the place that was dark-blue by now and seemed so soft as if he had everything destroyed there.

Then Archie froze and kneeled like that for some moments. He pulled out with a sigh. The thighs of the spy hit the floor with a dull sound. I saw more blood leaking on the floor.

With a moan Sam cummed, too. Open-mouthed I looked at his white slime flowing on the belly of the spy. He kicked Heloise again - without receiving any response. It was the guy doing his mouth who snarled.

"You had your pleasure and now you think it is good to hinder me?"

"Ouch!" Sam laughed. "No, sorry. Take your time."

It had to stop, I thought. It had to stop. They'd cum and then there would be nothing else for them to do. They would kill him. At last they would kill him.

Three of them stood upright over Heloise. Well, I couldn't see him alright behind them - just the parts of his body and a lot of blood on the floor. I saw his feet, turned so unnaturally as if they were broken, and his red hair, dark and matted.

"Well," Archie said. "What's now?"

"I guess it has to be finished," Sam said and while for a blink I rejoiced because I thought it could mean only one thing - they were going to kill him - but at the second moment I felt the creepiest coldness spreading through me. His voice didn't sound as if he was going to give any mercy. "The fuckin' slut liked to present girls but his balls were too much for him. We'll look after it."

Nobody else said a word. To tell the truth, I didn't feel any more despair even. I knew it was soon to be over. It was just impossible that a person could survive something like this for long.

Sam kneeled again, with his knife in his hand and grasped the genitals of the spy. He was not in convenient position, so, he pulled Heloise by his balls closer to him. The spy whined thinly.

"Pour some water on her! I want her to feel it."

Archie did his bidding. He poured the water over his face, washing some blood from it - and I saw the spy's eyes again - both open - clear and waiting.

"Feel it. Feel every cut of it," Sam said.

When he finished his hands were in blood farther than his wrists - like crimson sleekly gloves, I thought. He stood up having what he took in his hand.

"Now, open his mouth," he ordered. The spy was still alive. But he was dying, I thought, he would bleed to death soonest. I knew he was in his senses - only he didn't scream.

"Stop it," suddenly Archie waved his hand. "You'll smother her if you put them into her mouth."

"What else you want to do with her?" Sam chuckled.

"What to do with the spy? The spies are hanged."

For a moment Sam glared at him and then he nodded.

"Good. If you want it."

They took the spy in their hands and dragged him. There was a wide blood trace on the floor after them. They took him upstairs. When I understood it I crawled deeper to the corner, hid myself under the wall. Only they didn't pay any attention to me.

There was a rope in Archie's hands and he was doing a loop out of it quickly. There, where the rails of the stairs were broken, they stopped. Sam and the third guy held the spy upright, though with his feet limp on the floor. Archie fixed the other end of the rope to the post of the rails.

"Well," he said, somehow his voice became almost placid. "Are you going to pray, Heloise?"

I thought he could be praying - only they wouldn't hear it with his jaw broken. Archie took his hair in a grip and raised his head. He froze for a moment.

"Don't look at him!" Sam cried and giggled. "Hang him!"

Archie threw the loop around his head. He took away his hand keeping the spy upright and Heloise's head tumbled down. The loop stuck against his chin. And then he raised his head again. It was a very slow motion, full of anguish - but he did it anyway. I saw how he tossed his head to let the loop slip down.

And at the next moment Sam pushed him away.

I know I didn't scream. I didn't make a sound - even the slightest gasp. The rope sang as a string when it became tensed - and on the end of it, close to the floor the body of the spy convulsed only once. He died fast - he had his neck broken. For some reason they gave him this one mercy.

* * *

I sat and looked - not there, downwards, but with some blind eyes to the men on the second floor - and I heard the shrilly sound of the screeching post. The men were silent. They were quiet for a long time, something that seemed like several minutes for me.

Then the third guy whose name I didn't get to know turned and saw me.

"Look," he said. "The gimp. He watched us."

I exhaled. My fear almost made me empty my bladder. They moved. They approached me, swiftly and threateningly.

"Liked what you saw?" Sam said, his voice full of menace. "I told you to get out. It is your own fault."

With fixed eyes I followed how he was taking his gun off from his shoulder. I couldn't breath normally. Fear paralyzed me. I was going to die - right now. I knew it. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't be ready for it.

"Want a bullet in your head?" Sam asked.

I yelped. I couldn't control myself any more. I moved - and I pressed my forehead to my hands, hiding my face from them. I didn't want to see when they shoot at me.

They were silent again - but I heard their breath too close to me. Then I felt the coldness of the metal muzzle digging in my hair. The muzzle rested against the top of my head.

"You have to swallow it, gimp," a voice of one of them, I couldn't recognize whose, said. For some ruthless moments the muzzle pecked into my skull. Then it withdrew.

"You don't say anything. To anyone," the voice said. And then I heard their steps on the stairs.

I went on sitting like this, my body in cramps, my bad limbs numb and aching - long after their horses walked away along the alley. They didn't linger. They didn't take anything.

Well, they even left something.

When I was able to move again the long shadows from the open door lay on the blood pools on the floor. The blood seemed black like that, dark-crimson, with the thin film on it. I glanced only once there. I straighten my body with effort and went to my mother.

At first when I entered her room and heard the silence in it I suddenly had an anxious thought that she died. I hadn't come to her when she called - and she died, maybe, smothered in her puke. I was startled with the sudden happiness that the thought brought to me. But, of course, she was not dead. She had pissed and shitted herself but she was tranquil now, sleeping.

Slowly, I went downstairs and put the water on the fire. I was not in a hurry. I moved up, having the water with me. I washed her and changed her sheets - as it was habitual for me. I didn't register already what I was doing - but I tried to keep my mind on these simple duties. I fed her after she had come round and she stretched her hands tied to the posts of the bed greedily, trying to hurry up my spoon.

"Dicksie?" she looked at me capriciously; I didn't correct her. "You know, Dicksie, I don't eat carrots."

"Sorry, mom," I said. "I forgot."

I knew what I had to do when I had finished with my mother. The day was completely gone by then - and I lit a torch for me. The body was swinging slightly in the tiniest draught. Like that it seemed longer than it was when he was alive, with his toes just in several inches over the floor. And even then I took the rag at first and washed the floor. There was so much blood that I couldn't use the pot - water in it became thick at once. It took time for me - with all these walks to the pomp. I closed my eyes working. I puked once. I couldn't help it. I puked and wept, sitting on the clean spot of the floor and so well aware of what I was doing.

When I finished at last I went upstairs again. It was past midnight already and every part of my body ached dully and maddeningly. I knew if I just sat and closed my eyes I would fall asleep at the same minute. I didn't sit.

I cut the rope with the knife and when the body hit the floor - not too much, there was not a long distance - I gasped because of my carelessness. I toddled down. There was no way I could take the rope off with only one my hand, so, I cut it. I knew I injured his throat like that - but it didn't matter now.

Heloise's body, so small and longish and thin, lay on the floor in front of me - looking so odd. I don't know what it looked like - blooded and strangely colored, his smooth hair crusted in blood and almost black now. He didn't look like a doll either, only, maybe, like a very broken doll.

I stooped and wrapped my good arm around him. It was the only way I could raise him. I pressed him to my chest and stood up. He was so small! He would be as tall as my shoulder, I thought, when he was alive. And even though his body was limp I could carry him without difficulty.

I clenched him. I carried Heloise to the sofa - and oh, I knew it was the first time when I had anybody's body, male or female, pressed so tightly to me. When I put him on the sofa I understood I was making little sounds - as if I was choking.

His pose was obscene - I put him on his back and there were these tied hands arching his limp body, making his mutilated groin stick forward. I kneeled down and cut the rope around his wrists. They were blackened, her hands. Even with everything else of his body abused these things that didn't look like hands at all made my throat contract. I moved them, I put them forward and took them in my own hands. They were cold - but not too cold. I held them, I didn't squeeze them. But I held them for a long time, kneeling like this.

There was no reason to warm water for him as he couldn't feel it anyway - but I did it. Maybe, I thought it would be easier with warm water. I knew how to wash, I had a lot of experience with my mother and Heloise was even lighter than my mother.

I ran the wet rag over his face and washed his hair of the blood. His mouth was slack, maybe, because of his broken jaw, but for some reason his lips didn't seem so swollen any more though I was never to see their real shape. I found out that he had his ear-lobs pierced - but I never saw his earrings. They tore them out when they seized him, I thought. I moved the rag down.

It was taking time - to wash him - but I was not in a hurry. As slow as I could I was and as thorough. And when I washed the parts of his body from the blood film he started looking in another way for me. Not as a battered human - what he really was and so terribly that if I thought about it I was afraid I would scream. All these bruises and abrasions on his frail thin body could be as if something he was made with, some integral part of his appearance. He was hideous. And still, while thinking like that, he could seem beautiful for me.

His skin was smooth and hairless almost absolutely, apart from the fluffy patch of red hair on his pubis that dried soon and became shiny in the light of the torch after I had washed it. His bruises was like pulp, mushy and smashed - but somewhere his skin was still pale and ivory-like and I ran my fingers over it carefully.

His knee was destroyed. It was soft under my fingers, no knee-cup bone left - and it was swollen twice of the normal size. Only it didn't matter to me. I felt my penis hard under the cloth of my pants. Hard and painful and engorged for a long time already, I couldn't say when it started - but I guess when I touched his lips with my fingers. I didn't know why it was so, it couldn't be, I didn't have to - but I was turned on by the spy - by the dead body of the spy - and I couldn't do anything with it.

I stood up looking at him on the ragged sofa, he was slightly glistening with the water drying. The gaping wounds on his chest and in his crotch were dark. I was choking again, I don't know why.

His feet were only little longer than my palms and I took them in my hands - the part of his that was not so terribly hurt by them. I raised his feet and came closer, pressed them to my raging hard-on in my pants. I moaned and rubbed his feet against my crotch. I knew it was not for long until I came, right in my pants - but there was nobody who would find it out.

When I put him under the earth in the background alley of our house I didn't cry. I looked at the friable patch of the ground and I didn't think about Heloise. I thought about my empty house, and my lunatic mother, and my brother Dicksie from whom I'd, maybe, never hear anything again. And every day in front of me was full of despair.

The End