They went to the movies. It was in 3D, which was an even bigger trip than just being on the tablets. At one point, Matthew hit Lukas in the face with his hand, accidentally, as he tried to ward off an incoming tyre.

Afterwards, Lukas thought it was funny.

He was smiling.

‘Man, you were just going everywhere,’ he said. ‘It’s not real,’ he added, a moment later.

Matthew supposed he had been as nice to Lukas as was humanly possible.

And they had talked.

‘You know yesterday, how you were crying after the shower.’ Matthew had paused. ‘It wasn’t like. I mean, I don’t care if you’re gay. If that’s what you were worried about.

‘I’m not, though,’ he added, a moment later, when Lukas had said nothing.

They were sitting in the garage, in the car, ready to go. Matthew had said it before he started the engine. He sat there, and waited for Lukas to answer.

Lukas said nothing.

Matthew frowned, and started the car.

He had expected Lukas to say something, expected Lukas to tell him he was gay, but Lukas had just sat there, acknowledging what he said with a single nod, saying nothing.

He cheered up though.

And when they came out of the movie, they were smiling and laughing together.

They went to Wendy’s.

The movie had been pretty violent, and pretty funny too. There had been this part where this one guy got owned really bad.

The main kid in the film was about fifteen, and he looked a bit like Lukas, except he had a cheeky grin and a really bad temper. He had blond hair and was doing all this mischievous shit all the time while his best friend, who had all this funny shit to say, kept trying to calm him down.

It was a kids’ film, Matthew supposed, but it was meant for teenagers, because it was so violent.

In this one part, they hit this baseball over the fence and had to go into these people’s yard to get it back. The people were having a pool party.

There was this jock guy, who would have been about twenty-five. He had blond hair and defined abs and was typically handsome, like a college jerk. He wearing a pair of speedos, a red pair, and he had a huge, bulgy packet in them that he was obviously proud of, while he was strutting around.

When the kid (whose name was Jake) came into the yard, the jock guy was picking the ball up from the ground. He was a guy that Jake had already had problems with before, and he hadn’t expected to see him there. Jake asked him for the ball back, but the guy was holding it up in the air, where Jake couldn’t reach it. He tossed it into the pool, and said, ‘Why don’t you go fetch it?’ like Jake was some sort of dog. And then he tripped Jake up and pushed him, so that he went in the pool.

Everyone at the party laughed at Jake because he had been pushed into the pool with jeans and runners and his T-shirt on. When he climbed up the ladder to get out he was fuming, mad with anger, and his friend was trying to calm him down.

The college jock was standing over at one side of the pool with his hands on his hips while this line of boys about twelve years old took turns at punching him in the abs. He’d been doing this before he chucked the ball in the pool. The kids kept hitting him as hard as they could but the guy’s abs were like a rock.

Jake got in the line.

‘Can I hit you,’ he said, when he came up to the jock, his hair all wet.

The guy smiled at him.

‘Do you worst,’ he said.

‘Can I hit you twice?’

‘I tell you what kid, how about you hit me three times.’

‘Can I hit you from behind?’ he said, a cheeky grin on his face.

‘How about I just stand here and you tell me when you’re finished.’

The guy stood there with his hands on his hips, his legs apart, while Jake walked behind him. He smiled at some of the boys, raising his eyebrows like he was oh so confident.

Jake’s friend was behind the guy, and he had the baseball bat in his hand. Jake tried to grab it and they wrestled with it for a while before his friend let him have it. And then his friend covered his face with his fingers, like he was afraid to watch what Jake was about to do.

Jake readied himself with the bat. He swung it back and forth a few times, readying himself, and then he slammed it up between the jock’s legs, stepping into the swing, and smashing the end of the bat up into the guy’s balls.

Because it was in 3D, the guy’s gear was right up in Matthew’s face, stretched tight in the speedos. It was a big packet. And you could see that it was cock and balls. When the bat slammed into there was a loud crack.

The sound effects were unreal.

You saw the guy’s face. His eyes opened. His body went stiff. So that he couldn’t move.

Behind him, Jake swung the bat again, swinging it round once or twice and then cracking it right up between the guy’s legs again, only harder this time. The bat smashed into the guy’s nuts, though you could see it was smashing into his cock as well.

It was right up in your face.

There was a sort of crunching sound, as though the nuts had already been cracked, and they were now getting crushed.

The speedos were right up in Matthew’s face when the bat fell away, and you could see the jock’s balls fall into a sort of sloppy packet, like his balls were ruined.

‘Strike two,’ Jake’s friend said. He had said strike one the first time.

The jock fell backwards onto his arse. There was this quoits pole behind him. A little pole about a foot high that people had been throwing quoits onto. He fell right on it, and it ripped through his speedos and went right up his arse.

And again, Matthew saw this close up, like he was right up between the guy’s legs watching the pole slide up his arse.

The jock made a funny face, an “O” face, like it was a surprise, and he was sitting on the ground with his legs apart, the pole up his arse.

Jake ran up from behind him and swung the bat over the guy’s shoulders, using both of his hands, and using all the power in his shoulders to slam it down. He smashed it over the guy’s shoulders and into his groin, and this time there was a sort of wet, plopping sound. It must have smashed into his cock as well.

‘Strike three,’ Jake’s friend said.

The jock fell backwards with his legs apart, and you could see how the quoits pole was stuck up his arse. You could see the base of it there, with a quoit hanging around it, swinging, and they showed a close up of the packet in his groin, which looked like a sloppy mess, wobbling, like jello. Someone threw a quoit, like they were still playing, and it landed right on the jock’s groin, framing it, like his cock would have been the quoits pole if it was stiff. But it was obvious the guy had been totally fucked up. It wasn’t just like they were making out his balls were fucked. It was his cock that was mushed up too.

All the twelve year old boys who had been trying to punch the guy’s abs were smiling and laughing and they started high-fiving Jake like they had all accomplished something.

Jake handed his friend back the bat. He took the ball off him.

‘Oh, you can have the ball,’ Jake said, standing over the jock and tossing the ball onto his groin. It landed there, like it was landing in mush, in mud, made a wet plopping sound, making a little hollow for itself, and just sat there. ‘I’d give you another one if I had it,’ Jake said. But he was still angry, obviously. Still fuming. Not satisfied. And unable to control himself, which was the funny part of the movie. ‘Do you want the bat?’

The jock was staring up at him, his eyes open, paralysed.

‘I think he wants the bat, Randy,’ Jake said. ‘He needs a bat.’

‘Oh, no,’ Randy said, as though he could tell something worse was about to happen, but he handed Jake the bat like he knew he couldn’t stop him.

Jake stepped over the guy’s head, putting his feet on either side of it. You saw the jock’s perspective, looking up between the kid’s legs at the sky, water dripping down from Jake’s wet clothes.

Jake used the end of the bat like it was a golf club. He chocked the ball off the guy’s groin, and flipped the quoit off it like he owned it.

‘Are you ready?’ he said.

He pulled the bat up over his back, like it was an axe, like he was chopping wood, and went rank, hacking it down, time and time again into the guy’s groin.

The band stopped playing and all the people at the party stopped and turned around to see what was happening off at the end of the pool where they were. They stared, frozen.

All of the other kids had smiles on their faces, transfixed, amazed, and they were flinching each time the bat smashed into the jock’s groin, though they were enjoying it, obviously.

Jake just kept hacking away until blood started to splatter out from the insides of the guy’s speedos, splattering onto the guy’s thighs.

And then you saw the jock’s face with this dreamy smile, as he looked up at the sky, this dreamy music playing, and it was all slow while he could see Jake up above him, swinging the bat over him once, twice, three times, while he heard splat, splat, splat, but wasn’t connecting it with something that was happening to him.

Randy tapped Jake on the shoulder as he was about to heft into the guy again.

‘Do you think you’re finished?’ he said. He motioned to all of the people at the pool party who were staring at him, too shocked to move. One mother was trying to drag her boy away, but he was resisting her, turning his head to look as she pulled him away.

The rest of the kids were just open-mouthed.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I think I need to ram the message home.’

He waddled up along the jock’s body till he was standing with one foot on either side of the jock’s hips. And then he swung the bat down, one final time, with his biggest hit yet, swinging it right up from the small of his back and over his shoulders, like a club, slamming it down into the base of the quoits pole, ramming it right up into the jock’s arse with one final hit. Hammering it home.

Matthew watched it go up there, and flinched. Right in his face.

And as Jake rammed it home, the jock made an “O” face, which looked like pleasure, like he was enjoying it, like it felt good. And he kept this face, looking like he was enjoying a strange feeling, while Jake crouched down beside him.

Jake brushed the jock’s hair back away from his brow with one hand.

‘Oh, I’m finished, by the way,’ he said. ‘And I kind of think you are too.’

With his other hand Jake was reaching down and squeezing the guy’s gear. He had a handful of it. And then it was right up in Matthew’s face. Jake’s hand squeezing a big handful of red speedos, squelching the guy’s gear like it was jello, bits of it squelching out between his kid fingers like it was a balloon.

The final shot was of the jock’s face with pleasure turning into the beginnings of a worried look as Jake kept brushing the hair away from his brow, working his fingers through his gear.

In the next scene, you saw the jock walking into an emergency department, two of his college friends on either side of him holding him up. It started with a close up of the jock’s groin, still in the speedos, right up in Matthew’s face, and as the jock took one step and then another step, and then a third step, the mush in his speedos slushed from side to side, making a wet sloshing sound. It was hanging between the jock’s legs into a loose sort of point, like it was water in a plastic bag, swinging from side to side. The shot opened up and you saw how he was being carried by a friend on either side of him, his arms over their shoulders. He was still in the speedos, his toes dragging, as he tried to pedal himself, blood running all down the insides of his thighs, down his legs, his feet, and onto his toes.

As he walked toward the counter, they showed a rear shot, and you saw how the quoits pole was still rammed up there, a quoit swinging round it.

When he got to the counter, the nurse looked up at him.

‘I need to see a proctologist,’ he said, in the highest-pitched voice you could imagine.

There was a pause for laughter while the jock bit his bottom lip, turning red, embarrassed by how his voice sounded.

‘He needs to get something amputated,’ one of his friends said, hoisting the jock up a bit.

The other friend nodded at the nurse. ‘A few things,’ he said.

‘I think it might be alright,’ the jock said, in his ridiculous high-pitched voice. ‘I haven’t had a look at it yet.’

He looked down, and the nurse looked down. His friends looked down. And you saw the loose, saggy slush swinging in his groin, like a bag of water. The jock started pissing himself. Piss started flowing out of his slop, flowing from the point of the mush, like the bag had been punctured. It was flowing down his thighs and splashing on the ground between his feet, making a puddle of what looked like red cordial.

Outside the emergency room, Jake turned away from the door, where you could see the jock in the background. He dusted his hands off and turned to Randy with one of his cheeky grins.

‘You know,’ Randy said, as they were walking away. ‘If you don’t learn to control your temper that temper of yours, you’re going to end up really hurting someone one of these days.’

It was pretty funny, because it was obvious the jock had been totally fucked up.

The whole time all of this had been happening, when the jock had been getting wasted and so on, everyone in the theatre was killing themselves laughing. You could hardly even hear the movie. After the jock had got hit with the bat the third time, Matthew had turned to Lukas, laughing and smiling, expecting to see Lukas turn to him and smile back, but Lukas was pretending like he didn’t find it funny. He was staring straight ahead, eating popcorn, embarrassed, Matthew supposed, because it was the sort of thing he wanted someone to do to him.

There was a Wendy’s underneath the theatre, and when they’d got their food, while they were eating, Matthew started talking about the movie, about how Jake had fucked up the jock’s gear, and turned it into mush, into slop.

‘Man, that would’ve felt pretty good,’ Matthew said.

Lukas said nothing, but he was smiling while he chewed his burger. When he’d swallowed, he said, ‘Would you do that to someone?’

‘Fuck yeah.’