That next morning, we were awakened early by the sounds of Stevie in the bathroom. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say, he was ill. Roddy and I knew at once what was wrong, though – Stevie had just had his balls pricked with Neutersol Rapid, not Regular or Plus, and the main side effect of the Rapid formula was flu-like symptoms for about the first twenty-four hours.

“Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to be up to playing baseball today,” I mused.

Another thing I won’t bore you with is the details of the baseball tournament. It was something called ‘double elimination’, and there were six teams in the ‘Major Boys’ bracket competing. The Mustangs (or rather, Geldings, as I thought of us!) were but one of them. This meant that the six teams would be ranked on their statistics from all of their regular season games, and labeled by ‘seats’, or positions. This would determine who played who in what game. It was all very confusing to me, but in the end, when you lost two games in the tourney, your team was eliminated. We’d already played the team sponsored by Southside Chevy (a nondescript gang of boys in yellow and gray uniforms. I doubted any of them were neutered) and beaten them, so it was our turn to play Dairy Prince, who had beaten Northside Ford. As Roddy and I were the new boys in town, we hadn’t seen all of these other teams yet.

About the team names – local businesses sponsored the teams, which meant that the business owners got together with the coach and paid for the uniforms. Of course, the business name and icon went on the players’ shirts, so you got all of this advertising for your business being shown off on the back of a little baseball player. Only in America…

I also have to wonder who the genius was who outfitted the Dairy Prince team all in white. Granted, they looked nice – for all of two minutes! It must have been a laundry nightmare!

But back to Stevie.

You’ve already read about what happens with Neutersol Rapid, so you’ll know that he basically presented with a bad case of a twenty-four hour flu virus. It would pass right on schedule, as it always did, and Dr. Bruce was in agreement that the only thing to be done for him was to keep him hydrated, comfortable, and quiet. We all agreed that it was best not to move him, and Roddy and I assured Dr. Bruce and my grandparents that we wouldn’t catch it. We used the story that we’d already had an outbreak at Southdown, and we’d got some immunity. Lucky for us, they believed it. There was, however, one symptom that they didn’t know about.

“Something’s happening to my dick!” Stevie wailed, after another round of some rather serious vomiting.

“It’s normal,” Roddy assured him.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” Stevie cried, as we got him back to bed with a cold cloth on his forehead. It was about all we could do.

“Errrm, I forgot that we were using the Rapid formula,” Roddy confessed.

“Thanks,” Stevie groaned, as that particular side effect hit him full force for the first time. He arched his back, his little two-inch erection (IF that) throbbing to the point that it looked like his circumcised cock would just burst wide open, and shot an impressive load of … stuff … out onto his chest. I don't think it was pleasurable, either, the way he cried and begged us to make it stop. You should probably skip down by a few paragraphs, because this is going to get disgusting.

Roddy explained that spontaneous ejaculations were a part of it, and Stevie was terrified. He’d never been able to masturbate to an orgasm or ejaculation before, and given his age and the size of his genitals, it wasn’t conceivable that he could. Of course he could play with it and it felt good, but he was far too young to squirt. As far as a climax, well, I don’t think he’d had one before. At least, his description didn’t sound like a climax to me. Not that I’d know one if it sneaked up behind me and bit me on the arse! I’d never had one either.

It was a bit more disgusting than all that, though. As the Rapid mix was doing a fine job of quickly dissolving Stevie’s balls from the inside out, the leftovers had to go somewhere. As his underdeveloped reproductive plumbing filled with ‘liquid-testicle-waste’ and blood, call it that if you will – that’s what it was – something had to blow. It was like opening a cold fizzy drink on a hot day, really. His cords were full, his prostate was full, and it had to get out. Hence the ejaculations. All that fluidic pressure must have been stimulating the nerves (before they too would be destroyed) and out it came in a flood of runny, bloody, watery, tan fluid.

“Oh my God!” Stevie cried, “Wha’s all THAT?!”

“What’s left of the insides of your balls,” I told him, as I scrubbed him off with another washcloth. The last thing we wanted was for this stuff to stain the sheets!

“It hurts!” Stevie wailed, “Feels like I’m on fire inside!”

“That passes,” Roddy assured him, but we sent a text to Simon just to be sure. He called back at once.

“Let me talk to him,” Simon said, and we did that.

“Listen to me, Stevie,” Simon then calmly explained, “It will hurt for the first few times, yes. You’re going to have raging erections come and go for the first day. You’ll also have it all come shooting out in unplanned ejaculations. The remnants of your balls have to go somewhere, and shooting it out is the only way it can get out. After the next couple of times, the sting will go away, too, as the nerves inside your urethra get used to it and a few of those die off, too. I’d say you’re in for a long day though. The last boy I knew, Morris, I think, had ejaculations of brown, bloody cum all day long. But he was well into puberty and potent, too; you’re not, so it will be less on you.”

“I don’t like it!” Stevie cried.

“Would you rather have a swollen scrotum full of pus and blood, with itching stitches in it for two weeks, and being laid up in bed all that time?” Simon countered.

“No?”

“Well, then, look at this way – you’ll be back in the tournament by tomorrow afternoon at the soonest, maybe a bit tender down there, but after that, you just go on with your normal routine. Your balls will quietly continue to turn to mush, and in a few weeks, maybe not even that long, they’ll be gone,” Simon informed him. “Very short recovery time. If you’d been cut, you’d be missing the rest of your season.”

“Oh,” Stevie admitted, as his erection deflated for the moment.

Then Simon spoke with us again.

“I can’t believe you two were party to this,” he admonished us. “You DID make sure that Steven wanted to be neutered?” We told him that yes, Stevie did. We’d been very sure. After some of the things that the other boys on the team had told us, not to mention how I was feeling about it all now, Roddy and I would never have done it just on a whim. We, of all people, would know better.

To sum things up, we kept Stevie comfortable as best we could until our game that afternoon. Lucky for us, and him, Stevie’s mum was all for the idea of not moving him. He had a little sister, and his mother didn’t want TWO sick kids on her hands! I don’t blame her. If having a child was like this, then I was certainly glad that I was sterile! Having his balls pricked and getting sick had immediately turned Stevie back into a baby. That was where Grandma came in.

“If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s care for a sick child!” She informed us, as the next round of vomiting and diarrhea hit Stevie. That was just as well, since Simon wanted to speak with Grandfather and us in private.

We retired to Grandpa’s home office, where Roddy and I got quite a shock. The old man had a satellite Internet-connected computer system down there, and it looked as if an IT department had exploded all over the room. He fired up one terminal, and I was impressed to see him using a program for video conferencing. I could see everyone back at the Centre quite clearly on the monitor, and oddly, it made me a little homesick. Isn’t that strange?

There was also another man waiting for us in Grandpa’s office, which sort of surprised me until he flashed his badge at us. “Swearingen, FBI,” he offered, “Nice setup you’ve got here, Judge.”

“Paul,” Grandpa greeted him, “This is Ricky and Roddy,” he introduced us, and we shook hands. I liked this Agent at once.

“So, these are our bait-boys, huh?” He asked. Roddy cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’ve been wanting to get a look at this Dr. Geller ever since my wife started taking our son, Larry to see her. I don’t think much of this idea of neutering little boys, to be honest. How they got that law passed here is beyond me.”

Simon then appeared on the screen, and I could see his newly remodeled office at the Centre in the background. Melanie was there, too. So was Jan Raxworthy, along with the Roebuck Twins, Manchit Khannah, Mark Maitland, and Jack Elliot.

“You say you took photos and video?” Simon asked.

I pulled out my new camera and connected it to the computer.

“Getting it all now,” Jan muttered in the background.

“Just like that, plug it in?” Grandpa asked in wonder.

“Well, I’ve never hacked a US Judge before,” Jan confessed.

“Just keep your virtual nose where it belongs, son,” Grandpa warned him. Agent Swearingen just laughed.

“Come have a look, lads,” Jack said, pointing at his own laptop, “That’s von Gosch, all right!” Jan must have networked them all together.

“And this other fellow’s definitely Captain Donald,” Mark put in. “I remember him.”

“What about this CD collector they mentioned?” Manchit asked. “Anything on him?”

“Haven’t seen him,” I told them, as the camera continued to happily fire its data off into the heavens and over to Simon.

“Aren’t they just adorable in those uniforms?” Melanie crowed, “Those tight trousers, and little round bums…,” Simon interrupted her, and I could hear a printer firing up in their background. This could turn quite embarrassing, quite fast, I worried.

“DO you mind?” Simon said, “We’ve not got time to watch the video of their last game!”

“But back to Mr. CD-Man,” Jamie Roebuck spoke up. I was surprised. Normally, the Twins would have just sat quietly and listened. They were very self-effacing.

“We saw him at the restaurant,” Roddy said, “But not since.”

“So he IS in town?” Jon Roebuck asked, as Melanie fired up another video on their end:

“That’s definitely our Dr. Geller,” Simon confirmed.

“That’s sick,” Swearingen muttered.

“OH MY GOD!” Melanie squealed, “Look at WHERE she kissed him!”

My face turned brilliant red at once.

“That’s child molestation!” Grandfather grumbled. “I’ll have her for ten to twenty years for that! EACH time!”

“Stand in line behind the law here, sir,” Mark offered in his rich baritone voice, “Simon tells us she’s wanted by almost everyone.” (Recall that Mark had undergone some experimental procedure with stem cells to reverse his neutering. It had worked, and Mark now had a new set of balls that seemed fully functional and were driving him through puberty. I guess that was the end of his recording career as a boy soprano?)

“Interpol is just going to love this,” Manchit agreed. “Despite the laws, isn’t it illegal to remove a boys’ penis, unless he has cancer or is a transsexual?”

“Clause 828a doesn’t allow for penectomies,” Melanie added, “And Mum says that the clause for neutering is probably going to be revised.”

“And they don't do SRS surgery in legitimate establishments, at this age, though,” Jack said.

“That’s just going too far,” Swearingen put in, “I think Larry’s seen HER for the last time!” He seemed to be getting a bit agitated. “While we’re on it, anyone know what Lupron is?”

“It suppresses puberty for several months at a time,” Melanie replied. Swearingen began to look ill.

“Well, she wants to cut MINE off,” I put in, “As treatment for my kink-problem where I can’t pee right. She said she’s done it before, too, to other boys who made a special trip to her Malaysian base to have it done.”

“Right,” Swearingen muttered, “Forgot you grew up over there,” he said. “Interesting.”

“She told you this?” Jamie Roebuck asked.

“She’s already confessed to nullifying some kid named Kyle,” I replied. “Told me and Jimmy about it once when she was in one of those moods of hers. Used to scare us silly.”

“There’s more,” Roddy piped up, as he began dropping papers into the fax machine for them.

“You stole her files?” Grandpa gasped.

Roddy nodded. “Me and Gran. While Ricky was being, ahhhh, examined,” Roddy explained, “I was doing all the filming from inside the ceiling vent.”

“Wondered why the angle was so odd,” Jon Roebuck commented. “Sneaky!”

“Learnt it from you two,” Roddy smiled at the webcam, “And after the exam, I pulled the fire alarm. Everyone went dashing out, and I grabbed up all the files I could find that had boys’ names on them that I recognized. Here’s the one on Michael Sherwood.” He faxed it over.

“That’s inadmissible in court,” Swearingen pointed out.

“So?” Roddy retorted. “It’s the truth?”

“Reverend-what?” Mark asked, as he began reading the fax about Michael’s case.

“Think ‘Vicar’,” I explained.

“Bastard,” Jack grunted. “Bet he WOULD like to have his choirboys all neutered, and not just for singing!”

I should probably mention that Jack had been buggered by a Vicar in the past, and while he joked about it a lot, it was clear that the fucking he’d received had done quite a bit of damage to his psyche. Jack wouldn’t set foot in a church anymore.

“This Jamie Grigor-character sounds interesting,” Manchit spoke up.

“Oh, Tyler’s sooooo cute,” Melanie cut in.

“Do you MIND?!” Simon interjected irritably.

“Jamie used to wet himself a lot, on purpose,” I offered. “Michael and Jamie are both choirboys, and Bradley was experimenting with other boys, I think. Kerry’s mum never even told him why he was being castrated. He doesn’t have a clue. Neither does Jeremy.”

Simon rolled his eyes and put his head down on the desk as his team of “experts” reviewed my baseball team. Swearingen did the same thing, with a great sigh. “Lupron,” he muttered. “No wonder Larry’s such a crybaby lately.”

“I’d say we’ve got plenty here,” another man’s voice then spoke up from Simon’s side of the teleconference. “You say a man who likes choirboy CD’s is stalking them, too?” He then leaned into the picture. I didn’t recognize him.

“Yes, Agent Green,” Simon replied, “So good of you to come! Have a look at what Roddy and Ricky have for you. Who do you think this fan of Roddy’s could be? Someone else from ‘Sugar Plum’, or perhaps someone from ‘Made Safe’ that we never met? Perhaps they can get a photo of him?”

“No,” Green said curtly, “‘CD-Man’ isn’t a threat, is he Paul?”

“Uh, no,” Swearingen replied, and I realized at once that our CD collector must be an MI Agent who’d followed us over! They’d suspected something all along, and even sent a guard along to follow us! Then again, how could they not, once I’d thought about it? Swearingen knew who CD-Man was, so that put our minds at ease a little. But he also wasn’t telling us.

But that also meant that once they’d busted Carl Scott’s exporting ring, and found out he was in with Dr. Geller, that they knew that Jimmy’s papers and mine were all false. My heart skipped a beat, and Grandpa saw the look on my face.

“You’re fully legal now, Ricky, don’t worry,” Grandpa assured me. “I’ve seen to THAT.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Visions of being exported back to Malaysia and just dumped in the jungle didn’t really look all that appealing.

“I’d suggest to the boys that they go on with their cricket tourney as if nothing were wrong, and let us coordinate with US Federal Marshals and the local Police,” Green suggested.

“Baseball, sir,” I corrected him.

“What?” Green asked. “Oh, yes. Sort of looks like cricket. You call THAT little thing a ‘bat’?”

I thought there might be a sexual innuendo in there, but I kept quiet.

“So, Dr. Geller wants to cut your penis off, does she?” Green then asked me. I knew I’d heard that name somewhere before, but I couldn’t place him just then. Of course, Simon would later tell me that Green been one of the Agents involved when Carl Scott had committed suicide at the pier. That was some story, and it was obvious that another shake-up was coming at St. Anselme’s School!

“Yes, sir!” I answered with some heat, “And she’s not going to! I’ll wear a permanent catheter first!”

“I have an idea,” Green looked seriously at Simon, then back at the webcam. “Why don’t you just lead her on, Ricky? Let her think you’re all for it?”

“When will you see her again?” Swearingen asked. “Larry’s in the Rookie league, so I don't know beans about the Major league?”

“We play tomorrow,” Roddy supplied.

“And she wants to come and watch me,” I added.

“How many more games do you have?” Simon asked.

THAT proved to be a question that only Roddy’s keen mind could answer. The rest of us got lost at once.

“Since it’s double-elimination, and there are six teams, and we’re the number one seat,” Roddy began with a deep breath, “We’ve already played Southside Chevy and won. Dairy Prince beat Northside Ford, which throws Ford into the losers’ bracket with Chevy. We play the Princes next. If we win, and we WILL, that will put Prince into the losers’ bracket. We’ve yet to play SafeHome Insurance in tourney, but beating them put us in the number one seat. They play Spade’s Hardware, and I expect SafeHome to win. Ford will probably clobber Chevy, making it Ford vs. SafeHome. SafeHome will probably clobber Ford, pitting them against the Princes, since they’ll only have had one loss if we beat them and play losers’ bracket last. If not, then we play Safehome while the Princes wait to see who takes that game. I’m betting it’ll come down to us and Safehome, based on what the other boys have said.”

“Did you follow all that?” Green asked Simon.

“Not at all,” Simon admitted. “Are you taking bets?”

“I got it,” Swearingen said. Of course, he would get it.

We laughed.

“Our game is tomorrow, so we’ll keep you posted,” I promised.

“It’ll be your perfect revenge, Ricky,” Simon promised me.

Briefly, we did beat Dairy Prince, thus knocking them down into the losers’ bracket. That gave us a brief respite, while the teams with one loss each tried to battle their way back. Ford absolutely killed the Chevy team, and there were a lot of tearful boys that afternoon, as that eliminated Chevy from the tourney. (Losers’ games took place on the field opposite us, so we could stay and watch). Our win also gave us another day for Stevie to recover, while SafeHome took on Spade’s. They beat them, but not by much. That knocked Spade’s into the losers’ bracket, and Dairy Prince easily eliminated them. There were a lot of tired boys at the end of that double-header day (two games played, same day), but not us. We were still waiting.

I should also mention that Dr. Geller DID come to our game against Dairy Prince, and she cheered us on as if she were a team-mum. A lot of people gave her some really odd looks, especially the boys, but since my grandparents put on the act of accepting her, it went OK. And the photographers were there as well, spending a great deal of time chatting on their Bluetooth-equipped mobile phones. Gran would later tell me that Dr. Geller had taken an inordinate number of calls as well, and her mobile number went right to Raxworthy when I tricked her into calling MY mobile to invite her to come to the other ice cream place, The Freeze, with us after the game. After all, it would have been tacky to go to Dairy Prince after just beating their team. Agent Swearingen went with us, bringing his son, Larry, along.

I won’t go into much on Larry, as he doesn’t factor into the story at all. Suffice it to say, he got a new paediatrician while his balls were still attached, and he never had another Lupron injection. Grandfather handled his parents’ rather ugly divorce some months later, I was told, and Agent Paul wound up with full custody of his son. Larry’s mum wound up being charged with child abuse, as there was no valid medical reason to be delaying Larry’s puberty. But there I am, getting ahead of myself again...

“Agent Green will have those phone logs,” Jan promised me, as I noticed Dr. Geller getting a CD-ROM from faux-photographer-Donald. (His shots were pretty good, though, even if there were a high number of images that accentuated my bum while running bases!) Agent Paul, as he insisted we call him just “Paul” in public, seemed a bit put off that the photos of Larry that he’d purchased were in fact shot by two dealers in boy-eunuchs.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Stevie, the next morning after having had his balls pricked.

“Mooshy,” Stevie smiled over his large breakfast of eggs, sausages, and toast. His appetite was back with a vengeance, we could tell, as we gave him a rundown of the tourney so far. After all, he’d lost a whole day and more. We took it to mean that ‘mooshy’ described his balls. “They don't even hurt anymore, and they’re like, getting flat already. Like a deflated balloon!” He whispered, when Grandma got up to get some more milk for us. “And all that awful squirting has stopped. I think I can play today.”

“Any more erections?” Roddy asked.

“A few,” Stevie replied, “But they don't last.”

“You’ll probably have your very LAST one, then, before tourney is over,” I assured him. “At least we’ve got some time off while the losers all slug it out to see who takes us on next.”

There was another double-header to determine that, and we all decided to go and watch. Dr. Geller wasn’t there, but the photographers were, and Roddy and I kept on our guard to see WHO they were photographing. Our small digitals had zoom lenses, and we could easily pretend to be taking pictures while watching THEM. Several times, we caught them targeting us with their long lenses.

“Yeah, we’re being watched,” I told Roddy and Stevie, as von Gosch and Donald kept up their act. But they were making a bit of cash with it, so it must have been OK with them to just wait on us to play again.

To make a long story shorter, Ford faced SameHome and lost. That eliminated them. Then SafeHome took on Dairy Prince and literally ran them into the dirt. I didn’t think any of the smaller boys on Dairy Prince were eunuchs, but I had no proof of that, as I said before. It must have been devastating to some of them, because one of them went into the toilet crying and we never saw him come back out.

However, the SafeHome boys were a LOT bigger than us, and I began to wonder just how we’d beaten them in the first place? Luck? And if so, would it hold out?

So, with Dairy Prince now out, that slated us against SafeHome for the prize two days hence. If you think that’s complicated, if we’d lost to Dairy Prince, that would have set off two more games of losers’ brackets…

And Coach Sherwood trained us hard.

By the end of that night, it was all we could do to just go home and fall into bed after nearly drowning in the bathtub – we were THAT tired. I thought my arms were going to fall off from so much batting practice, but I did knock quite a few of them over the fence. Coach seemed very impressed with that, calling me a natural. He took it easier on us the next day, though.

“My balls are like, not balls anymore,” Stevie told us, while we took a break at practice the day before the big game. “You should feel ‘em! They’re like model clay?”

“Pass,” Roddy smiled at him. “Been there, done that,” He quoted a local commercial. Americanisms, it seemed, were rubbing off on Roddy.

“What did you DO?” Jamie Grigor asked, as he overhead Stevie.

Stevie blushed. “I uhhhm, well, I used that package me and Kerry found, and…,”

“Oh my God! You stung your own balls out?” Michael cut in. I recalled Simon mentioning that phrase once. I think it was about his brief stint with some sex-addicted American exchange student at Southdown? Jason? Jared? Something…

“Yeah, they’re all like, pulp now,” Stevie said proudly, “And numb!”

“Ouch,” Bradley said flatly. “Well, welcome to the Nutless Wonders club, I guess,” he added sullenly.

“What’s wrong, Bradley?” Roddy asked him, “Why does what Stevie wants bother you so badly?”

“Because I didn’t want it,” Bradley retorted. “I liked having balls, and I liked having hard-ons and playing with it! Hell, in a few months, I bet I would have been squirting, just like my cousin! He says it’s really great, and now I’ll never know!”

“So you won’t miss it, then?” I asked. “If you never had it?”

“Well,” Bradley fudged, “I guess not. Still, though…”

“Well it’s not like YOU like girls,” Jeremy began, but Bradley gave him shove that toppled him over in the grass.

“Shut up, micro-dick,” Bradley warned him. If it bothered Jeremy, you couldn’t tell; he just went back to watching Roddy and me.

“Oh, come on, Brad,” Jamie added, “Everybody knows, like how it used to be before you got cut, like the rest of us.”

Bradley’s face flamed as he looked at Roddy and I.

“You know, you’re really not gay, now that you’re a eunuch,” Roddy assured him. “You’re technically no longer male, and being gay is when someone of one sex is attracted to a member of that same sex. So if you still like boys, well, seeing as how you aren’t one any longer, that’s OK.”

“Now you’ve got an excuse,” Gary piped up, and we all looked at him.

“Never mind,” Bradley shook his head. “Can we talk about something else other than my sex life – or lack of it?”

I was a bit surprised by the fact that everyone seemed to know that Bradley was gay, but that none of them were bothered by it. Must have been another of those “eunuch things” that I was quickly discovering.

But by then, it was back to practice. After all, the big game was tomorrow.

Not to get ahead of myself again, but the big game was delayed for a few days. Having some of your players kidnapped will do that, I suppose!

Now, before you all go getting upset and thinking things like, “How could they have been so stupid?” you need to realize that we knew they were stalking us, and I KNEW how bad Dr. Geller wanted me. What I didn’t know were just what lengths she’d go to in order to GET me, or to what lengths she’d go in order to get some more boys for her new business venture.

I suppose things could have gone much worse than they did, and while we weren’t totally unprepared for it, we’d been planning for a typical abduction from the ballpark. Agent Green in the UK with Simon, and the local Police and ‘Feds’ that Grandpa assured me were watching us, never expected an assault like the one that took place. They also never expected all the other calls they’d get that night, but I’m getting ahead again.

As it turned out, Stevie’s dad had to work late that night, as did Kerry’s mum. Larry got sick on nachos and chilidogs, and Agent Paul had to take him home. Grandpa offered to take us all home in the Lexus, which had never been so dirty in its short life as it was with four filthy baseball players in it. I should have suspected, as so said Roddy, that putting the four of us together wasn’t a good idea. Looking back, seeing as how Donald and von Gosch had planted that packet of Neutersol with Stevie and Kerry, that should have been a sign.

And we missed it.

We were on the way home, with Stevie and Kerry planning on staying for one of Gran’s banquets, when the black passenger van came up behind us out of nowhere. It bumped the back of the Lexus – hard – and spun us off the road and down an embankment. We came to rest in a ditch, out of sight of the main highway, in a tangle of airbags and seatbelts. Grandpa was only stunned, and he had his mobile in hand when the first man in a black ski mask punched him right through the window glass, knocking him out. He then threw the mobile into a nearby stream.

The four of us were busing trying to climb out of the car, which was sitting sideways and thus pinning the two doors on the passenger side shut. I had just enough time to trigger my mobile, autodialing Simon and sending the a text of the American code “911”, when three other men joined the first.

And they had guns.

Feeling the buttons on the mobile behind my back, so they’d not see it, I then dialed Simon again.

“RICKY?!” His shrill voice said.

“It’s happening – they’re taking us! Don’t talk back!” I said. I then slid my mobile, still on, down the back of my baseball pants … trousers. I hoped that the mic would still pick up clearly.

“Get out of the car, slowly, and keep your hands up,” von Gosch warned us. You’d have thought he’d have tried to disguise his voice. That, and I recognized the crook to his left arm, from all the times he’d pointed that camera at me.

We all did that, and they marched us back up the hill towards the black van. Oddly enough, another smaller black RV passed us and didn’t stop. “Get in, one at a time,” Donald said. Again, we could tell it was him. After all those photo sales pitches? He also tended to clear his throat a great deal, and that was a sign. The other two, I have no idea. All I recall was that one was shorter than the rest by about a head, and he sounded very anxious and angry when replying – but only when spoken to. He also had a British accent, in a warbling baritone voice.

The only time he spoke out of turn was when he asked if he could rough us up a bit, and von Gosch assured him that if any of us so much as had a hair out of place, then “Geller won’t so much as take your temperature, let alone repair what they did to you!”

I gasped at that, but Donald wasn’t surprised. “The boy’s smart, just like she said,” he muttered, as we were ushered into the van. It wasn’t a busy stretch of highway either, especially not at that hour. Everyone was home from work already, it seemed. Looking back, a police escort might have been a good idea. That was IF the Police hadn’t already been so busy –but we’ll get to that.

“Get them hidden before the old man wakes up,” von Gosch ordered them.

“You’re not gonna kill him?” The other man asked, not the short one, and indicating that he was an American. No British accent at all. He must have been one of those contacts that Dr. Geller had here, and I immediately lost any use for them that I had left. Wanting to kill Grandpa sort of that did that to me, you see. I was then determined that I was going to get them for this, if it was the last thing I ever did.

“No,” von Gosch replied, “I don’t commit murder. I draw the line there. He has no idea who we are; let’s not complicate things further.”

“But you’ll sell neutered boys?” The American asked. “At least I knew where mine were going?”

“They’ll be well taken care of,” von Gosch replied. “Pretty little Caucasian-American-boy-eunuchs like them? They’re priceless!”

The back of their van was outfitted as a typical RV (recreation vehicle – an American thing) might be: there were some small seats, a small couch, a miniature table, and padded walls. All in all, it was very nice. That was until Donald raised up one of the couches, and I saw a recessed area filled with gray foam padding with the shape of a small body cut into it. One of the wall panels also opened, revealing the same cutout shapes vertically.

This was no recreational van. It was a van for transporting boys secretly.

“Get in,” He gave me a shove, and I did that. As I got in, I could see Roddy fidgeting with his hat and whispering to the other boys. I got in, and once I had fitted myself into that cutout of a body, I found I couldn’t move. Then Donald lowered the couch again, and I was trapped – immobilized – in darkness. I couldn’t even hear, but for the sound of a small fan running.

As I would later find out, I was actually in a hidden compartment level with the floor of the van. It was really quite comfortable, and I knew I should have been frightened. But the fact that Dr. Geller wanted me, and these men were now very obviously working with her, assured me that I was safe.

But what of my friends? What would become of them if this went wrong? What if the American Police and Federal Marshals lost us? And what about Agent Paul, who was supposed to be tailing us?

Our abductors had made a mistake, though – they hadn’t searched us. I guess since baseball trousers have no pockets, and our hands were up, they figured that we “were clean”, as they say. I guess they didn’t expect me to hide my mobile in the crack of my arse?! Amateurs…then again, maybe my bum WAS getting big…

“Simon?” I breathed, struggling with the tight foam to just get one hand under me. It was useless, so I just had to yell and hope they couldn’t hear me.

“Ricky?!” Simon was calling, “RICKY?! What’s happening? Talk to me!”

“Simon!” I answered, yelling, as I couldn’t bring the phone up to my face, “Can you hear me? They’ve run Grandpa off the road and grabbed us! They’ve stuffed us in the floor of a specially altered black van, and we’re moving!”

“Green’s on it, and so is Jan,” Simon assured me, “Try and keep the line open while we locate Swearingen!”

“Fisher’s phone is transmitting,” Green added, “They’re together. GPS has them headed down State Road 95 towards some tiny little burg near an Interstate on-and-off-ramp. Nothing there, really, but for a petrol station and an abandoned factory?”

“Keep the lines open, Ricky, and be quiet!” Simon advised me. “Help’s on the way!”

“I think Dr. Geller is coming, Simon!” I advised him, “She has a deal with one of the short kidnappers, to repair something someone did to him!” Then I did what he told me – I shut up and waited.

After what seemed like a very long drive, we were taken out of our foam-rubber coffins and blindfolded. I had no idea where we were. I wondered how long the batteries in our mobiles would hold out as we were marched in through the back door of what sounded like a large and empty building. Our cleats echoed loudly on the hard floor, and it was hard to walk in them in there.

“About time you got here!” A woman’s voice called out, and I recognized Dr. Geller. I yelled to her, and I wanted to run to her, I really did, but the short fellow had a hand on my shoulder and was squeezing it. And it hurt.

“Doctor!” I wailed, in my best performance yet. “What’s going on? He’s hurting me!” I cried.

Dr. Geller came over and hit the short man across the face – hard. Then she grabbed me up, moving me behind her as she pulled my blindfold off.

She also had a gun. A bit of distrust in this business deal, I think?

“If you touch him again,” she threatened Short-Man, “So help me, I’ll turn you into a woman before you can say ‘vagina’! And take those blindfolds off! They’re all lost anyway.”

“Yeah, right,” Short-Man mumbled, as our kidnappers motioned for us to follow them all on into another room. I could see a bit of light coming from under the crack of the door, and we all went in.

The room appeared to have once been someone’s office, and I assumed that we were in an abandoned warehouse. How cliché, I thought. What wasn’t cliché was the arrangement of medical instruments laid out on a desk. There were IV kits, surgical tools, a roll of wide, gray tape (Kerry called it ‘Duck Tape’), what looked like padded restraints of some type, and the whole place smelled of alcohol. Another desk was covered with a white sheet, and it smelled stronger over there. But the telltale sign was the bloody waste in the far corner.

Dr. Geller had set up a makeshift surgery, and she’d been busy already.

I swallowed, hard.

“Once we get you all prepped,” Dr. Geller informed the four of us, all the while holding me close to her, her free hand roaming here and there as I clenched by buttocks together (hoping Simon wouldn’t yell again! Voices coming out of my arse might be a giveaway?), “Then we’ll get you all neatly packed in the vans like the others. You won’t mind the long drive, as you’ll all be sedated, of course.”

What others? I wondered, as it dawned upon me that they must have already grabbed some of the other boys, too. I glanced at the bloody sponges and cloths again – surgical waste…

I swallowed hard. If I was going to get her, and the rest of them, I was going to have to be brave.

And I was scared silly.

“Wh-where we going, Miss?” I asked her, in a performance that should have gotten me the American Academy Award, the Oscar! “Are we going back to Malaysia?” I added hopefully. “Britain’s so cold and rainy and I miss the sun and green!”

Roddy and the others got my queue and kept quiet. Roddy winked at me.

“North, up-country, yes!” Dr. Geller answered sweetly. “Morris, secure the boys in that room over there and get them cleaned out, but gently!” She warned him. “You’ll all need a very large and uncomfortable enema,” she warned us, “It’s a long trip, and we can’t have you needing to go, or having accidents in the van. While you’re cleaning up afterwards, we need to secure the others for transport.”

That was it – confirmation. They’d grabbed someone else, too. Probably a lot of ‘someones’. I prayed that Simon was hearing this, that someone was recording it. How many other boys had they grabbed, and how many of them had already been castrated?

They forced us into another room and ordered us all to strip. It turned out to be a public restroom with several stalls, and I was surprised to see that the utilities were still working. Someone had already set up four large enema bags, ones that looked as if they’d burst our guts if all that soap and water were pumped into us!

I had no choice. I stripped off, as did the others. They took our clothes away. Roddy kept his hat on, but no one seemed to mind. As I peeled off my tight trousers, my mobile fell out. Short-Man grabbed Kerry with Donald grabbing Stevie. Von Gosch got a hold of Roddy, and of course, Dr. Geller took me. Our hands were bound with that Ducky-tape in front of us, so we couldn’t reach around and pull our plugs.

“I’m going to have to punish you for that, Ricky,” Dr. Geller sounded disappointed, as she crushed the mobile after first taking the battery out.

She was right – it wasn’t pleasant. Matron knew how to give a soothing enema back at school, but this stuff – whatever it was in the mix – made us all have terrible cramps. The nozzles were also quite large. They hurt going in, and both Kerry and Stevie were struggling and crying as the procedure began. The nozzles were to prevent leaks, and once we’d all begun to swell up like water balloons, they rolled us over onto our right sides and elevated our feet. It was just awful.

“Let’s go check the surgery room,” Dr. Geller suggested, “They aren’t going anywhere at the moment, and I need to make sure that Per-, I mean, HE’s got the others all packed up and ready to roll.”

Leaving us unguarded? Another mistake – and she’s almost let another name slip!

“They’re gone, we’re alone,” Roddy said to no one, “and they crushed Ricky’s mobile!”

“We’ve got a fix on your position, and we’re on the way,” Roddy’s hat said.

“Brilliant!” Stevie groaned. “God, I’m gonna bust!”

“Give us about ten more minutes,” Swearingen’s voice said from out of Roddy’s hat, “And keep her talking! We’re recording!”

“Make it about half an hour,” Roddy groaned, “We’re not going to be much use with several litres of water in our guts and huge plugs up our arses!”

I won’t go into the disgusting details about the next half hour, but suffice it to say, we were all given more painful enemas, the next round with something that fizzed, until we were all discharging clean solution again. It was so exhausting that there wasn’t much fight left in any of us when it was all over. All I wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep, despite the fact that we were all getting scrubbed down with some kind of soap that stung my skin.

“I think we’ll see to this one first,” Dr. Geller suggested, as if asking my permission when she got Stevie to his feet. “He’s still got his little balls in, and they have to come out!”

“Don’t bother,” Von Gosch replied, giving Stevie’s mooshy balls a squeeze. “He used the Neutersol packet I dropped in the toilet. Didn’t you, boy?”

“Y-yes, sir,” Stevie squeaked, obviously terrified. I couldn’t blame him; Roddy and I knew the plan while Stevie and Kerry didn’t.

“I never trusted that stuff, although Carl, Max and Benny just swore by it,” Dr. Geller replied, as Donald half-dragged a weakly struggling Stevie to the makeshift operating theatre. “I think he’d be just as cherubic as Ricky without a penis, don’t you think?”

“You don’t have time for that now,” the other American, the taller one, snapped at her. “Just prep him and get him packed up!”

Now how was I supposed to answer THAT one?! I looked her right in the eye, and firmly said, “Doctor, please! I just wanna be able to pee again! Please cut mine off first, please?”

“Of course, Ricky, dear,” She promised me, and I knew it had been recorded.

Trick ME into letting her castrate me, would she? Trick me into making sure I’d be forever sterile and impotent, unable to even have a wank if I wanted to? I’d get her for that, and for lying to me. There was no law that said I HAD to be castrated. I could have just been given a vasectomy.

I was going to get my revenge, and I was sure that that statement had just done it. Whether I was asking to have my penis cut off or not, it was still illegal for her to DO it.

About then, Short-Man came in carrying a bundle in his arms. It seemed to be all he could do to carry it. With a shiver, I realized that that bundle was a boy – and that the boy was prepped and ‘packaged’ for transport – just like the rest of us were going to be.

“’E’s the last ‘un,” Short-Man said.

The boy was obviously unconscious. He was dressed in what looked like some kind of very tight, white, form-fitting underwear. It wasn’t unlike the sliding shorts we wore under our baseball trousers, or the tight shirts under the jerseys to absorb sweat. There was an adhesive across the bridge of his nose, one of those strips that hold your sinuses open, and he had a thin tube going up one nostril. His eyes were taped shut with surgical tape, and his ears were plugged and his head covered by a snug white cap of some kind. A large tube was also taped into his mouth. Two different IV’s were already attached to his arms, which were secured to his chest with more tape. There was a catheter coming from his padded crotch, attached to a bag secured to his lower leg. His legs were also wrapped in tape at just above the knees and at the ankles. White, snug socks covered his feet. As Short-Man adjusted him, I could see a wire coming from the boy’s backside and noticed a black cuff around the boy’s upper arm.

I gasped. It was a terrible thing to see.

“Don't worry, Ricky,” Dr. Geller assured me. “Little Dylan’s going to be very comfortable during shipment, just like you all will be.” Then she turned to Short-Man. “Get him loaded in the other van. Make sure all the lines are hooked up, and check his dressings. I don’t want him to start bleeding. We can’t afford to have any of them stop breathing before we get to Missouri!”

“What?!” I squeaked, realizing just then who Dylan was: He was the devastated boy from the Dairy Prince team who gone into the toilet to have a cry, and who had – apparently – never come back out.

“D-did you c-castrate him just now?” I asked, and Dr. Geller smiled sweetly.

“Might as well tell ‘em, seein’ as ‘ow the little squirt prob’ly got it figured out,” Short-Man snorted. “Simon always said ‘e was quick!”

So, this short British fellow knew Simon and I? I glanced at Roddy, who was thinking the same thing. In fact, the look on Roddy’s face told me that he already suspected this fellow’s identity. A fellow student, perhaps, who didn’t like Simon? Maybe the one who’d sent the note to Simon, threatening him?

“Jazza Morris,” Roddy muttered. Morris looked sharply at me, although he kept his mask on. “I remember you!”

“Shut up, songbird,” Morris snapped at Roddy. “You’re jus’ lucky they’re holdin’ sway o’er me with the good Doctor fixin’ what that bitch - Melanie’s mum – ordered done ter me when Simon thought it up!”

“You always were an arsehole,” Roddy taunted him.

It looked like Morris wanted to hit Roddy, but as he said, he couldn’t.

“’s’OK, Rod,” Morris sneered at Roddy, “When Simon pays off and I’m healed up right – when I’m a MAN again – you can think about that while you’re pickin’ poppies in the mountains in Thailand!”

“Yes, maybe once you’ve got money, you can stop being a common thief!” Roddy taunted him bravely, and I wished I could have been that brave.

“When I gets that dirty money from Simon, and buy off Doktor Zuniger’s research, what worked fer Maitland, I will!” Morris spat.

But my eyes were still on Dylan throughout this exchange. I couldn’t help it, though. Despite the fact that I knew Dr. Geller would take good care of me and not let anything happen to ME, the sight of the nearly mummified boy frightened me so that I pissed myself and started to cry. It didn’t do much for the others, either, as Stevie was being secured by Donald and not really liking the idea that Dr. Geller was planning to remove his penis!

“It’s OK, Ricky, we can fix him up when we’re there, as I want to do you first,” she assured me again, kissing me on the cheek, then turning to Stevie. She gave him an injection, and then put an IV in his arm. Stevie went right to sleep, still mumbling protests. I began to pray that no one grabbed Roddy’s hat.

“You see, you’ll all be heavily sedated. It’s a long trip to California in the vans, but I have some contacts along the way. We’ll stop off here and there, and check you all over. You see, Ricky, you’ll all have an oxygen line, and the large tube secured in your mouth will insure that you can breathe, once you’re all hooked up to the equipment in the van. It’s called ‘intubations’. The IV’s will keep you all fed, sedated, and hydrated, and the catheter will drain your urine. Of course, your bowels are all clean, but the anal plugs also prevent leaks and have temperature sensors. The cuff on the arm is for blood pressure. It’s all electronic, and the laptop will be networked to others and monitoring all your vitals continuously. If anything goes wrong, we’ll know so that nothing will happen to you!”

“Wh-what about airp-p-ports?” I managed, as Morris carried Dylan out.

“Well, once we get to my contact in Los Angeles, we’ll transfer you out of the vans and pack you all in special lead-lined crates. Very heavy, but X-ray proof!” She said happily, as she began to ‘package’ Stevie for transport. “You’ll all be very well insulated, and you’ll sleep through the whole flight over the Pacific, too. When you wake up, you’ll be in a nice, soft bed in my new place up-country – back in the warm jungle where you grew up! Won’t that be nice? I’m having your old friend Jimmy brought back, too! It’ll be just like old times!” Dr. Geller almost giggled.

“Los Angeles?” I asked, trying to buy time.

“Yes, I had a client from there once, who bought a boy named Tommy from me. Paid a great deal for him, and he’s more than willing to help us. You never met Tommy, he was before your time at my orphanage, but you and Jimmy would have loved him. His, ahhh, benefactor, shall we call him? He’s in the shipping business, so your transport is all prearranged!”

“Oh,” I muttered, realizing just how well-connected Dr. Geller must really be. She’d certainly covered all of her bases.

“Of course, he’ll want a small tip,” she glanced at Kerry, “And with all those new Asian boys we’ll have to take care of for the locals, you know! Oh, Ricky,” she sighed. “You’ll be such a great help to me! Jimmy and some of the others can bring in more money for us, and what we’ll make on the sales of the neutered locals will set us up for life! We’ll be remote enough so that they’ll never find us, and local drug barons will provide protection for us while we provide them with neutered boys for labor…and other things.”

“Wh-what about my f-friends?” I choked.

“They’ll have nice new homes somewhere in Arabia,” von Gosch snickered. “Well taken care of. Those Sheiks are wanting to trade up, what with all their oil profits now. They just love their pampered little white bum boys, you know, and American eunuchs are too hard to come by!”

I just stared at Dr. Geller as my blood ran cold. Of course it sounded like a grand plan to HER, but to the rest of us, it sounded like a nightmare. I personally had NO desire to go back to the hot, bug-infested jungles of the Orient to be her assistant in this new human trafficking ring. Granted, there were plenty of unwanted boys there, but they deserved better than to spend their days as neutered slave labor by day, and passive catamites by night. And how long would it be before I wound up turning my virgin bum to some pervert? And was Roddy even coming WITH me? The thought of him being shipped to Arabia made me nearly vomit.

Then she turned to Kerry.

“Donald, get the ginger prepped for transport, would you?” Dr. Geller asked. “Then pack up Roddy,” she paused, “And DO get rid of his hat!”

“What do you want to do with the baseball clothes?” Donald asked, as he pulled Kerry over to another exam table. Kerry didn’t struggle. He was too shocked to even squeak a protest.

“Just throw them in a dumpster somewhere,” Geller waved him off. “We can’t risk a fire.”

“Miss,” I cried, trying to keep up my act, “Can’t we please keep just the hats? Please?” I whimpered. “It’d mean so much?”

“Anything for you, Ricky,” she almost crooned, as she swabbed down Stevie’s little cock with a brown liquid and catheterized him. I glanced over to see Kerry being sedated as well, then Donald began prepping him. In a few minutes, they looked just like Dylan.

There was nothing that Roddy and I could do, standing there naked with our hands bound. Morris then came back in and reported that Dylan was safely packaged and stable, along with ‘the others’. He then dragged Roddy over to another table, just as Dr. Geller began sliding a tube up Stevie’s nose.

About then, Morris pulled Roddy’s cap off and out fell his phone.

Morris caught it and glared at Roddy, raising his hand to strike him.

But he didn’t. Whatever Geller has promised him stayed his hand again. But he was getting angrier and jumpier by the minute, I could tell. This was all taking too long for his liking.

Roddy stared at the mobile, but the look on his face was defiant.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Dr. Geller shook her head. “You are a sly one, aren’t you, Ricky? Perhaps I underestimated you? You’ll have to be severely punished when we’ve arrived home, you know?”

“SIMON! NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME!” Roddy screamed at the mobile, right as Morris dropped it and crushed it under his heavy boot.

“Watch closely, Ricky, love, because you’re next!” Dr. Geller promised me, as she finished getting Stevie packaged. The taller man carried him out, and by then, Morris had turned his attentions to Kerry.

Finally, it was just me and Roddy left.

They put us up on the tables, tore the tape off our wrists (which hurt like hell!), and began getting us dressed in the tight white clothing. Then they strapped us down. The plugs were still inside of us, and all the moving around with that huge thing inside of me was making me crazy. In a way, I was looking forward to being sedated; that way, I wouldn’t have to feel it.

I glanced over to see Donald and von Gosch coming back in, but in the shadows, something was moving behind them.

Two darker, shorter shadows.

It was hard to see, with the lights shining in my face as they were, but the shadows then jumped forward and Donald and von Gosch went down with groans and the sounds of dull THUDS! As the shadows literally flew into the light, somersaulting in the air over the now-insensate forms of our captors, I could see that it was Jon and Jamie Roebuck!

“Take that, Doctor Death!” Jamie sneered, as the Twins landed in a defensive crouch, sizing up the situation.

“The fook’r’yoo two doin’ ‘ere?” Morris yelped, as he pulled a gun.

“Drop it, kid,” Agent Paul’s voice called from the shadows, as Dr. Geller, her hands occupied with my little cock and a catheter, couldn’t do much to help Morris.

Tall-Man pulled a gun as well, but from the shadows came the sound of another gun being cocked.

“I’d say we got us a stalemate!” Morris laughed, as the Twins just stared at him.

“Not quite,” a familiar voice replied, and from out the shadows stepped Simon!

He was holding a sleek silver handgun, and it looked as if he knew how to use it. “We’re wearing Kevlar underwear, actually – the Queen’s own issue. Are you?”

“YOU!” Morris shouted, turning his attention to Simon. “’ow the hell did you get here?!”

“Private jet,” Simon shrugged.

“You’re gonna pay for what you did to me, Scott!” Morris began to rant. “You gonna pay for all the humiliation and butt-fuckin’s Jazza got, after you had that bitch shoot my balls full’o tha’ poison!”

“Have a rough time in Youth Custody, did you, Jazza?” Simon grinned, and it was a grin that made my already-cold blood freeze even more. “Find out you just didn’t have it in you to be the aggressor anymore? Gone all docile and obedient, have you?”

I had never seen Simon look like that before.

Gone was the soft and prone-to-weeping eunuch that I remembered from the airport only a short while ago. Gone was the face of the kind and reserved boy who had befriended me when I’d first come to Britain. Gone was the serious student, the contemplative face he usually wore replaced by one that more than said that he was capable of using the gun that he held.

“Scott,” Agent Paul said, but Simon just shook his head.

“No, this one is ALL mine,” Simon said in a deadly voice. “This is a matter of National import for the Crown, I’m afraid, and if you interfere, it could turn even nastier than it already is.” Simon then glanced quickly at me. “How DARE you threaten my friends?” Simon demanded of Morris, “How DARE you try to blackmail a SCOTT, especially one of the Queen’s own Special Agents?”

Now, keep in mind that we all knew that Simon had done something involving the military (you can read about that in “Simon in the Orient”), and that he still obviously had those military connections. It was just that none of us knew just how WELL he was still connected. Apparently, there was more to Simon that met the eye.

“Oh, I’m scared!” Morris scoffed at him. “What you gonna do, Simon? Shoot me? You ain’t so tough, Scott! I remember you bleedin’ and cryin’ in the mud when I stomped yer arse the last time at rugby!” Morris paused, glancing at Tall-Man, which proved to be a mistake. “Besides, you OWE us,” Morris went on. “All the plans you ruined, not ter mention what yeh done ter ME! You think this is it, Scott? You think I’m the only one out there what hates yer guts for all the crap you done?”

“So this is the nefarious Simon,” Tall-Man grunted.

“And are you lot so stupid as to think that we didn’t already know this?” Simon asked, “Do you honestly think that MI is THAT stupid?” He then turned to Tall-Man. “And how have YOU been, Dr. Benjamin?” Simon asked. “You know, it really was a stupid move to have Dr. Joli try and assume a new identity to grab Jason Johnson and Jimmy James from their new homes. Joli’s face is on every wanted list in Britain, after what he did to little Harry Ricketts. Never,” Simon said firmly, “Fuck with the son of a high ranking military officer.”

Tall-Man gasped.

“Oh my God!” Roddy gasped.

Simon, mixed up in MI, too? I wondered, as Dr. Geller (since she couldn’t do anything else) finished catheterizing me and stepped away from us. “Benny?” She said warningly to Tall-Man.

“Joli’s been apprehended?” Benjamin asked.

Simon nodded. “And we found out where Tommy Chow Bing Wah went. It seems he was being held against his will by Joli, can you imagine? I always wondered about him.” (Tommy was before my time at Southdown; he was an arrogant boy who thought he’d replace Simon as the lead chorister, but had failed and withdrawn from school, only to vanish. Not the Tommy in LA, California, though – different ‘Tommy’.)

“NO!” Morris screamed, “It wasn’t supposed to go like this!” He turned to Tall-Man, rather, Dr. Benjamin. “You all said that once I got Lord Manningham’s dirty money outta Scott, and this other Jolly-guy grabbed the other two castrates, that we’d all head for Thailand and Dr. Geller would help me! I…I can’t live like this!” Morris’s voice began to squeak, and he jerked his mask off. He was crying now, actually wailing. “She’s gonna … she HAS to! She promised! I can’t live with Scott having ruined my life AGAIN! I can’t live as a neutered …a…a EUNUCH!”

“My world, welcome to it,” Simon shrugged. “You miss fucking girls, don’t you, Jazza?” Simon then began to taunt him. “Miss having that nice, big morning hard-on to start the day with a good wank? Don’t like it, that the only way you can now climax is to have a dildo or a man’s cock up your bum? Well, you get used to it. I did. But just so you know, girls can be really dirty and creative in pleasuring their eunuchs. Melanie knows how make me orgasm, did you know? She’s really quite fun.” Morris glared at Simon in desperation. “I love her very much – and YOU threatened her,” Simon added darkly, as his finger twitched.

“I won’t go back!” Morris yelled, as he raised his gun. “And you’ll still PAY! I’m gonna hurt you jus’ like YOU hurt ME!”

Simon didn’t hesitate, nor did he flinch.

Morris pointed his gun at me, and the sound of the gunshot was deafening.

I thought I was dead.

For a moment, Jazza Morris didn’t move. He then raised a hand, dropped his own gun, and touched his chest. When he pulled his hand away, it was covered in blood.

“Yeh’ve k-killed me!” Morris gasped, looking as if he were unable to believe it.

Simon just stood there, the smoking gun in his hand, his face impassive.

Then Morris crumpled to the floor.

“Let’s not make this any uglier than it already is, Dr. Benjamin,” Agent Paul offered, “If you come along quietly, perhaps we can get a few of those charges of child abuse, pandering, and illegal surgery lessened? You might even see daylight in fifty years?”

Dr. Benjamin dropped his gun. He carefully put his hands on his head, but it was a ruse, it seemed. He spun around, pulled a scalpel from inside his jacket, and slashed at Agent Paul with it. Paul jumped back, and as he did, something fell out of the ceiling and landed on top of Benjamin. Benjamin went down with a great OOOF! as Manchit Khannah rolled to land on his feet and came up to place a solid punch to the side of Benjamin’s head. After all, he was a “demon-fast boxer”. Benjamin went down and didn’t move.

“This the one what sold Jason Johnson to that paedophile ring here in the States?” Manchit asked Simon, who just nodded slowly.

It was all too much for me to take in. I had no idea then who these men were, until Simon explained it all to Swearingen, who obviously hadn’t had any idea either. Swearingen looked dumbfounded. “HOW do you get mixed up in all this shit?” He asked of Simon.

“MI’s been chasing this lot around ever since I first tangled with them,” Simon informed him. “Sorry to have left you out of the loop, old boy, but it was a matter of National Security. The Crown really doesn’t like the idea of British boys being sold as slaves to foreign lands. Nor do I, for that matter,” Simon stated.

“S-Simon!” Roddy gasped, “Y-you killed him!”

Simon shrugged again. “Diplomatic Immunity, combined with self-defence,” Simon explained.

“Who ARE these men, then?” Swearingen asked, as his radio buzzed.

“Perimeter’s secure,” an oddly familiar voice called back. “We’ve searched the vans, and S.W.A.T.’s got ten boys here in one van, and nine in another with a gang of accomplices. Ambulances are on the way. Now we know where all our local backup went – kidnap calls!”

“Go ahead and move in,” Swearingen agreed, “The boys are secure here, one … uhhh … man down, a perpetrator.”

In through the door then walked none other than ‘CD-Man’, along with Jack Elliot and Mark Maitland.

“You’d’a thought they’d’a hired some better bully-boys out there,” Jack mused in that tough Geordie accent of his, rubbing his knuckles. Mark was carrying a cricket bat, and it looked rather abused.

“I’ve been wanting to bash ol’ Hipkin over the head for years now,” Mark laughed.

“HIPKIN?!” Roddy gasped, “OUR Mr. Hipkin? I thought he disappeared after Elliot and Simon busted that last paedophile ring?”

“We found him,” Mark grinned, “He was guarding two other vans out back, packed full of your little baseball friends.”

“He weren’t very good at it, neither,” Elliot smiled, “Wuz ‘e, Mark?”

About then, another older man came shuffling in the side door. “What’d I miss? Ain’t we ready to go yet?” He wheezed. Apparently, it had taken him a while to get from there to here, and he’d missed the big bust outside!

Simon turned and pointed his gun at him. “Short parole, there, Meggarty?” Simon asked casually. “Wondered where you’d vanished to?”

“Oh, dear,” Dr. Geller sighed.

“Scott!” Meggarty gasped, holding up his hands. “I knew you wuz trouble the minute I laid eyes on yehs!”

“Oh my God!” Roddy repeated, “Our old janitor?!”

“And serial rapist, just ask Martin Moony, or Adam Logan,” Simon almost yawned. “Care for another go at him, Manchit?”

Meggarty backed away and let Green take him into custody. His face was quite white, and I’d later come to find out that Manchit had really torn him up in a sting operation that he and Simon had orchestrated when the old janitor had been raping boys at Southdown.

“Shit,” Dr. Geller muttered, as all eyes turned to her. She peeled off her rubber gloves, dropped them, and then freed me and Roddy of our restraints. “I guess this means we won’t be living up-country with all your little friends, Ricky, dear,” she sighed, helping me to sit up and just holding me. I stared at her. It was all I could do!

From outside, the sound of sirens filled the night.

“Y-you didn’t?” I asked her, but the setup of the room answered that question. I looked at the bloody surgical wastes again.

“All those good castration, for nothing,” Dr. Geller sighed. “Oh, well. At least this town’s got a couple of baseball teams worth of little angels now,” she sighed, with a dreamy look. “And they wore white,” she added whimsically. I thought she might have just gone over the deep end!

“Bloody hell!” Roddy gasped, “She’s neutered the whole Dairy Prince team!”

I felt ill again. All of those boys, castrated against their wills…

“Agent Pearson, so glad you could join us,” Simon then said.

“Well, I’ll wager this is finally the end to all this boy-neutering and smuggling?” Pearson asked. “Hello, Roddy, Ricky,” he greeted us. “Are you both quite all right?”

“Y-yes, sir,” Roddy managed. We would later come to find out that these two Agents had been working with Simon all along, ever since Carl Scott’s demise and the fire at the Grand Met, and that Pearson had in fact followed us over with his lady friend.

“Thanks for coming, Marcia,” Simon greeted her coldly.

“Least I could do, seeing as ‘ow they were charging me as an accessory to Carl’s crimes, yeh bastard,” Marcia sneered at Simon.

“That’ll do, Miss,” Pearson snapped at her, “Are these the men?”

“That’s them,” Marcia identified them. “Carl was having that one,” She gestured at Morris’ still form, “keep track of some boys they wanted when he sprung him from Youth Custody and put him in St. Anselme’s School – some Chinese kid named Jimmy, and this fucked-up American faggot, Jason Johnson.”

“And the other one’s Dr. Reuben Benjamin, one of MY American contacts,” Dr. Geller offered, sounding beaten and just heartbroken. “He had a contact in Missouri, where he was living,” she volunteered. “He came back here after his alias in Britain, ‘Dr. Spicer’, was exposed in the last big paedophile bust.”

“That one we knew about,” Pearson put in, “When Simon mentioned something about Jason Price’s story about the Library’s social club for shy children. It didn’t add up, and led to the bust at the House in the Weald.”

“Sounds just like the bust here, when this Benjamin/Spicer fled from us,” Swearingen offered. “He hung quite a few of his clients out to dry, those that like to dress up and play history games,” he added in disgust.

“But how were they all getting in and out so easily, fake passports?” Swearingen asked.

“My uncle,” Simon spat the word, “Max Riche knew some fellows that later became airline pilots and security,” Simon explained. “Friends in low places. Fortunately for us, Carl left behind notes in the … MY … safe.”

“Seems all these paedophile rings were interconnected after all,” Green mused, nodding to Simon.

“They usually are,” Simon nodded slowly, turning to Dr. Geller. “Care to name more names, Ma’am?”

Dr. Geller gave me a long look, but I didn’t care.

“Tell ‘em about Tommy in LA, and that Parcel Service man you sold him to,” I said coldly. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you tell ‘em where little Kyle – that boy you nullified – and his daddy live? Probably in Colorado? Near our next stop on the way to LA?”

Dr. Geller looked absolutely flabbergasted.

It was over. My revenge was complete.

“You might as well spill it, Miss,” I added. “It’s over.”

And Dr. Geller did.

By the time the mess was cleaned up, and we’d all been admitted to the local hospital for twenty-four hours of rather boring observation, Dr. Geller had spilled her guts.

She’d known Dr. Benjamin (aka Dr. Spicer in the UK) while in the States at medical school and had kept in contact all those years, as they’d both had an intense interest in paediatric urology. While Benjamin was running his paedophile ring to cater to the whims of American men who liked their gelded bum boys (eunuchs, or course, which he was all too happy to supply), Dr. Geller was busy plying her trade in the Orient. When Jason Johnson (one of Benjamin’s victims) had fled America with his father for a fresh start in Britain and had met Simon at Southdown, busting THAT paedophile ring, Benjamin had put on his persona of Dr. Spicer and fled to his contacts – Carl for one – in Britain to continue his trade with Jason Price and the like. They even played their sick games in the same manner. As we said, that ring got taken down by Simon and Elliot recently.

Dr. Geller had since then hooked up with Carl Scott and Max Riche, which had in turn connected them with Dr. Joli through Simon and Southdown Hall. This had brought in the resources of the AWOL Captain Donald and Dr. von Gosch from ‘Operation Made Safe’, the latter with whom Dr. Geller was already acquainted with as well through Benjamin/Spicer in America. Once the network that Carl Scott had established via Operation Sugar Plum and Operation Made Safe/Westward Ho was all in place, it had amounted to the formation of the biggest paedophile ring that the USA’s FBI or Britain’s MI had ever run across.

Mr. Percival Hipkin, BA (Cantab), our missing teacher from Southdown, was simply one of the more overly interested customers that had been involved in Spicer’s ring, as well as having been privy to even more information by being one of Simon’s teachers for all of those years. He’d needed a new career when Dr. Holroyd had busted him for fucking Paddy Wright, but had ordered him to just vanish. He’d done just that, coming to American through one of Max Riche’s old contacts, but not before he’d put Jazza Morris onto attempting to blackmail Simon and extort money to finance it all. Hipkin had been working here with some locally recruited thugs to kidnap the other boys – men who just wanted money, and who didn’t care where it came from. They’d kept the local Police busy chasing kidnapping calls that evening, but this silly American notion that a boy had to be missing for twenty-four hours before they could act had given them plenty of time to deliver their victims to Dr. Geller for castration.

And of course, right at the epicenter of it all, had been Simon.

The bust made headline news, and the lot of us were at once besieged by the media.

“And just who’s to stop us?” Some pushy reporter demanded of Simon, as he and his “Knickers Club” stood guard at the door to our hospital room.

“Yes, what authority does a teenage boy have in all of this?” Someone demanded. “Where can we get some REAL information?”

“And just WHO do you think you ARE?” Another demanded, and Simon set the Roebuck Twins upon the more pushier reporters. I’m told there were a few injuries.

“Scott – Simon Scott,” Simon replied coldly, quickly flashing his wallet at them. “And terrible things tend to happen to those who mess with me. If you’d like to harass someone, then I’d suggest you go and interview Dr. George Holroyd at Southdown Hall, UK. He’s the foremost authority on the education of boy-eunuchs.”

About then, the FBI and MI men stepped in to handle it.

That dispersed the media forthwith.

I never did find out what sort of credentials Simon showed them, but one thing was for certain – ever since his own neutering, it seemed, anyone that crossed Simon’s path and annoyed him, especially where innocent boys were concerned, met with exactly the fate that they deserved.

As for Dr. Geller, she did do something good before she was led away to face many, many charges. I doubted if she’d ever see the light of day again, but before Agent Paul hauled her off, she did make one rather odd request – she wanted to be the surgeon to correct my little problem with peeing.

“Out of the question!” Agent Paul had exclaimed, but once they all realized that Dr. Geller was, in fact, THE best paediatric urologist in the area, they gave in. I had a hand in it, too, I’ll admit. After the ordeal we’d just had, I didn’t want anyone else touching me.

It’s hard to explain, I know. Given the fact that Gran had signed papers (incriminating, they were) to have Dr. Geller remove my penis, she couldn’t do that while under close supervision. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, I suppose. But keep in mind that Dr. Geller had pretty much been the closest thing to a mother that I’d ever had, and I was in fact sad to see what was going to befall her. She’d taken care of me all those years, and I dreaded to think what would have become of me if she hadn’t rescued me from Carl Scott’s trawlers. If only she hadn’t had that sick hang-up with gelding boys…

In the end, it was a simple snip of my suspensory ligaments via a laparoscopic operation under local anesthesia that cured me. It was over in five minutes. My little cock drooped down, almost giving it another inch in length once the ligaments were cut, and my pinched urethra problem was cured. No more catheters, and I got to keep my useless little cock after all! I thanked her, and I meant it.

In the end, I guess you could say I DID love her, but it would take me a long time to admit that. And when I finally did, all I could do was cry when she was gone.

I heard that Dr. Geller and the others all got what amounted to life sentences, even with the possibility of parole factored in. The USA wanted them, Britain wanted them, the Malaysian government was after them, and even the French Ambassador had something to say when the Crown finally got around to trying them in Britain! I was just glad that Roddy and me didn’t have to testify in person. I don’t think I could have handled it. At least, not well. In short, Grandpa Benson came out retirement for a short period, and he literally nailed them all to the proverbial wall.

I never saw Dr. Kristen Geller again.

A few days later, as I said, the baseball tournament was back on.

Our team was a bit rattled, recall, seeing as how the local Police had been kept very busy the night that Simon and his friends had arrived to rescue us. It turned out that not only Dylan and the Dairy Prince team had been abducted with us, but also the whole of the Mustangs! With so many kidnappings being reported all at once, it was no wonder none of the Police could have followed us the night we were taken. My friends had been found in the vans that Hipkin and Meggarty had been guarding, but none of them were any the worse for the experience. They were just annoyed that they’d missed all of the excitement inside the factory. Me, I could have done without it. After all, seeing someone get shot isn’t what I’d call a pleasant experience.

Well, Dylan and his teammates were a bit rattled. He’d never been kidnapped before, and no one had ever threatened to cut HIS balls off, either! When he’d finally been informed on the whole plot and what had been done to him, he simply fainted and had to see a therapist for several weeks. They all did. Poor kids. I guess being made into a ‘surprise-eunuch’ will do that to some?!

Finally, it was time for the playoff game. In a nutshell, it was long and ugly, with more than a few injuries and people being ejected from the ballpark. For a while there, I honestly thought it was going to turn into a championship rugby match.

I won’t go into great detail of that last game, but for some reason, the announcer’s commentary of the very last inning (we had to play nine of them, as were tied at 1 each since the third inning) stuck in my head:

So that was how mine and Roddy’s introduction to American baseball came to a close. Our team won the pennant, along with a rather tasteless and cheap trophy. Still, the silly thing meant a great deal to me, and I’m not sure why.

“So, what do you plan to do with the rest of your summer, Ricky?” Simon asked me that night at the Bensons’ dinner table.

It was a huge party, with everyone there. Even Agent Paul had come with his son, Larry, as well as Coach Sherwood and the whole team. It’s not like Grandma and Grandpa didn’t have the room for it, and the old folks sure knew how to throw a party!

I was still amazed that Simon had brought everyone from Britain to help in rescuing us on such short notice, and even more surprised that they’d all dropped whatever they were doing that summer to come and be witnesses. After all, they didn’t owe US anything, and the hearing wouldn’t be for weeks. Poor Dr. Holroyd, I’m told, hit his liquor cabinet pretty hard that night when he found out that a few of his best students – the eunuchs, of course – were up to another international adventure, this time in America!

Maybe it’s some bizarre bond between eunuchs; I don’t know. All I know is that I was happier than I could ever remember being before.

“Well, we do have the traveling All-Stars Baseball League,” I reminded them, “And our holiday’s not over for a few weeks, on into September?”

“You ARE staying, AREN’T you?” Michael Sherwood asked, almost sounding panicked. Tyler Moretti looked like he was about to cry, right along with Stevie. (No complications there, you should know. Stevie’s balls were pretty much just shapeless mush now.) I still think they were still in shock over winning the Tourney.

“Don’t leave,” Jeremy said, which were the first words he’s spoken since his kidnapping.

“Which brings up your next point,” Mark Maitland reminded Simon.

“Go on,” Melanie gently nudged him. “You’ve been rehearsing this since the boys left!”

I had no idea what she was on about, having only met up with her after we’d all been taken to hospital that night. Simon, it seemed, had been rather firm in keeping Melanie out of harm’s way.

“Ricky,” Simon said, and I could see his expression changing, as if he were about to say something that was going to cost him a great deal, “I…I’m of age now, you know, and with Melanie’s mum’s help, you know, being a Magistrate and all…”

“Oh, do get to it, Scott,” Manchit grinned at him.

“Well, seeing as how you and Roddy are orphans, legally, and wards of the School, I’ve taken…taken the liberty of filing some documents,” Simon said haltingly. “I know what it’s like to be all alone in the world, not having anyone who really gives a damn about you,” he begged pardon from Gran, and she nodded.

“So, it’s entirely up to you both, you know,” Simon went on, “But if you’d like, even though it would only be for about three years, Selena’s got it all set up for you to become MY wards. You’d live at the Centre with me, and you’d be dayboys at Southdown from now on. No more living at the School full time in those cramped dorms. I’d be your legal guardian, if you want me, unless you’d like to…”

But Simon choked and looked away.

I looked at Grandma, but the look she returned was sad.

“Ricky, dear,” she said, “It’s a great thing, what your friend is offering you. But you and Roddy are also welcome – the both of you – to come and live with us, if you’d rather do that. Everything we’ve got is already yours anyway, and what with Linda gone,” she paused, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin, “It’s just not the same here. It’s been so exciting, so ALIVE, with the sounds of children in this big old empty house again.”

I didn’t know what to say.

I looked at Roddy, but he was apparently too stunned to reply as well.

Of all things! Having lived my life with nowhere to go, and being at the mercy of whoever just happened to get stuck with me – now there I was, confronted with the choice of leaving all of my friends and everything I knew back in Britain, and moving to another strange country where I didn’t really know anyone or anything, OR staying in Britain and refusing my Grandparents offer of a home after their thirteen years of searching for me.

Relocating - again.

I didn’t want to hurt my Grandparents’ feelings, but so far during my short stay in America, the food had nearly killed me, the weather was out to get me, and I’d been kidnapped! That, and a great many things that I learned from my new friends on the baseball team just didn’t make that much sense to me. It was all quite frightening, this strange culture, and I wasn’t really sure that I could go through all of that kind of adaptation again. Just coming to Britain and fitting in at Southdown Hall had been hard enough the first time.

That, and I couldn’t ask Roddy to go through it, either. I knew he’d already been through a great deal as well – being an orphan, being adopted, not having that work out, to say nothing of how he’d been treated by the Knight-Foxes and being orphaned again…

And I also realized that I couldn’t face leaving him behind if he were to say “no”. Roddy was my first, best friend, and I couldn’t comprehend being without him. We did everything together, just like brothers. Our ordeal with Dr. Geller had made me realize that, in that they’d have probably sold Roddy off to an Arab while I went back up-country to Malaysia. And I remembered how that had made me feel.

Finally, I turned to face my Grandparents.

“You’re both retired, and you got the means to travel, right?” I asked shyly. Silly, of course they both did! “So you could come and see me any time, right, if I go back to Britain?” They said they did, and I think they knew where I was going with that. Not having had parents before, I guess I wasn’t expecting that. Of course, they already seemed to know what I’d say!

“Ricky, this has to be what YOU want,” Grandpa told me, “And I think what you’re proposing is just the perfect solution!”

That sly old fox! He’d already figured it out for me!

“Simon tells me there’s a wonderful old house just sitting empty, costing him money, up in Lymington-Haven?” Grandma put in. “And it’s smaller than this place. We’ve always wanted to see more of Europe, haven’t we, dear?” She asked Grandpa. “Ricky won’t mind if we sell this place, would you, Ricky?”

I couldn’t believe it! It was the perfect solution.

That left only one thing.

I looked at Roddy, and Roddy nodded shyly. I could feel his warm hand take mine under the table, and he smiled at me. We then got up, each of us moving to stand at either side of Simon.

“Simon?” I asked in a very small voice, “I don’t know how to thank you for all you did for me when I first came to Britain. I don't know how to thank you for figuring this all out, and for saving our lives. If it weren’t for you, we’d be traveling across the USA right now, headed for a plane in California, and no one w-would ever s-see us again!” I could feel the tears coming then. Silly, I know.

But Simon understood.

I could see it in his eyes.

“Simon,” Roddy added. “We’d love to come stay with you!” He squeaked, as his resolve gave way, along with mine. So much for that stiff upper lip.

Simon grabbed us up then, each of us crying on his shoulders as it all finally hit us. I could tell that Simon was in tears as well.

He always said that that was one of those silly eunuch things, and that night, I finally understood what he meant by that.