Matthew didn’t know if he did want to see it.

Lukas was facing the brick wall as though it led somewhere.

What the hell could it be?

Still, Matthew wanted to know, even though he felt chilled just being down here, remembering how it was down here, in this damp cold cellar, where he had had his body cast in plaster.

And stood naked in front of Lukas while Lukas dripped cold, wet plaster into his arse crack, and underneath him, and all around his groin, smoothing it with his hands. There was no way Lukas was going to do anything like that to him again. He had made a fool out of Matthew.

But Matthew did want to see what was beyond the wall.

He nodded.

Lukas bent down, got down onto the concrete floor on his knees, and was counting bricks, by the look of it, feeling the wall, and trying to count from what looked like a section of the wall that had no mortar in it.

Matthew frowned at it.

There was a ragged vertical line, where there was no mortar between the bricks, though there was little light back here, and it was almost dark.

Lukas found the brick he was looking for. He pushed one side of it, and it pivoted outward. He reached behind it, into the cavity. He had the key in his hand, the old fashioned key that he had got from his father’s study. He turned it, and again Matthew heard a solid “chock”. The lights in the cellar dimmed, though Matthew saw movement. A brick, about waist high, moved, half of it popping inward, half of it popping out. It was a tiny movement. It had moved a few millimetres at the most.

Lukas stood up, in almost total darkness now, and moved the brick. He reached in behind it, though he seemed to have a different key now, a key that he had found in the first cavity. He was struggling to turn it in the lock. Eventually, there was another loud “chock”, though this time it sounded metallic, with a soft clang that resounded beyond the wall.

‘Can you help me? I can hardly get it open on my own,’ Lukas said.

He held one hand on the brick, and was motioning to Matthew to put his hand in the cavity, and help him pull.

Matthew had an impression of the hours upon hours of being alone that it must have taken Lukas to find this door, because it was a door, Matthew realised, as they slowly swung it open. On the inside it was metal, iron, and there was a grill, like a prison door, though on the other side of the grill was brick.

There was a step up.

The room beyond the door was utterly dark.

And they had only made a gap just large enough for a person to squeeze through.

‘The lights will come on,’ Lukas said. ‘But you have to go in and pull the door behind you. And lock it.’

Matthew freaked. He flinched.

There was no way he wanted to go in there. There was a strange smell. Wood and iron, and something bitter.

How the hell had Lukas ever found this? And ever found the courage to walk in there and pull the door closed behind him?

‘Come on,’ Lukas said. He stepped through the narrow gap.

Matthew stepped in and stood beside him, feeling their bodies brush up against each other. He was blinking in the darkness.

‘Can you help me pull it?’

Matthew couldn’t even see it.

The lights in the cellar had dimmed till they were barely visible.

He felt forward and felt his hand brush up the front of Lukas’ body, the back of his hand touching the softness of Lukas’ groin. He moved his hand up, gathering Lukas’ T-shirt, as he brushed it up Lukas’ body, trying to feel where Lukas’ hand was. Lukas found his hand, and guided it to something, a handle of sorts. An iron ring.

They pulled together. Pulling brickwork along with a solid iron door. It clanged as it closed and they had to keep pulling until they heard the latch click.

It was as dark as a cave.

There was no light.

‘Hang on,’ Lukas said, his voice sounding small. ‘I can’t find the keyhole.

Matthew put his hand out, until he was holding a bit of bunched up T-shirt in the small of Lukas’ back. After a minute or so of feeling Lukas struggling, he was holding Lukas around the waist from behind, his hand on Lukas’ hip. And then he heard the lock chock.

At first nothing happened.

Matthew grabbed the back of Lukas’ T-shirt as he turned.

He peered forward, and realised that there was a pale glow flickering into life. A whole series of lights, set around the room, above head height, on the walls. Sconces. Iron sconces. And with flames in them.

‘It’s gas,’ Lukas said.

Matthew’s eyes adjusted to the gloom as the flames flickered dimly. He blinked, trying to make out what it was that he was seeing. There was a whole range of enormous objects ranged around the room. Man sized iron frames. Wooden frames with teeth. Tables with winches and pulleys. Chairs with razor sharp spikes. Man sized chambers lined with needles. Metal devices that clamped and screwed.

He was standing in a torture chamber. A medieval torture chamber.

He put his hand around Lukas’ waist, putting his hand on Lukas’ stomach, and held Lukas against him.

‘It’s a museum,’ Lukas said.

Matthew nodded, but didn’t let him go.

These were the machines of the inquisition. And the place had been made to look medieval, both the floor and the walls were made of stone. It was enormous.

Lukas led the way through the room.

Each of the machines had a plaque, with the name of the machine, and information describing how it was used. They stopped at each one and talked about it, even getting up or into some of them: the Iron Maiden, the Inquisitional Chair, the Rack, the Hanging Cage, the Wheel, the Head Screw, the Head Crusher, the Boots, the Judas Cradle, the Coffin Torture, the Saw Torture, the Foot Roaster, the Knee Splitter. There were fifty or more.

The Iron Maiden was a sarcophagus filled with spikes. Matthew imagined what it would have been like to have the door closed on him. His body would have been pierced in a hundred places. The inquisitional chair was a chair covered with spikes, with leather straps that would have been tied down tight. The Saw Torture looked kind of funny, because it was where someone got hung upside down, and sawed through the middle, between the legs, while the Judas Cradle was a steep kind of pyramid that they sat someone on before they chained heavy iron balls to their ankles. The point of the pyramid would have gone up into their arse, widening it. That would have hurt, Matthew thought, scratching his hole.

On a long table in the centre, there was a whole array of smaller instruments, and some of these were much worse than the machines. They walked along it, Matthew reading the names as he looked at the instruments: the Pear of Anguish, the Cat’s Paw, the Mask of Infamy, the Breast Ripper, the Genital Ripper, the Thumb Screw, the Heretics Fork, the Genital Cage, the Testicle Crusher, the Wedging Torture.

He stopped at the Testicle Crusher and read the information, and then he picked it up and looked at it. There was a ring, which went around the person’s scrotum, holding it in place so that the guy’s balls were between two iron plates. The bottom plate was pitted with little holes, and there were two shallow depressions, where the guy’s balls would sit. Underneath the top plate, there were a whole lot of long needles, which would have pierced the guy’s testicles, going through them, and slipping into the holes underneath them, while the plates were screwed together, crushing the testicles flat.

Pierced first, and then crushed flat. Matthew wondered if he could do that to Lukas.

He held it up against his groin to try and see how it worked. He shivered. No. He couldn’t use this on Lukas. It would hurt too much. At least, he thought so, though it would be good if Lukas did let him use it. He was only going to get to do it once.

There was another one, almost the same, though without spikes. He supposed that would be okay, though it was just like a vice. There wasn’t any difference. And there was a vice in the garage.

He didn’t think he ever wanted to come down here again.

Matthew turned his attention to the Pear of Anguish, an iron spike with a pear-shaped end. The pear shape went up someone’s arse. It had a screw at the other end, which turned, opening the pear once it was inside the person. Lukas wouldn’t like that. That would really hurt. Though it would be kind of good, Matthew thought, if, when he was doing Lukas’ nuts, he got to do some other stuff as well. Lukas could at least let Matthew stick it into his arse, even if he didn’t get to open it.

Next to Pear of Anguish was the Genital Ripper. It was a four-pronged claw, used to grip into the person’s genitals at the base, piercing them, before they were ripped away from his body. The information said they were sometimes heated first.

Matthew frowned and put them down, and then he saw a little crocodile, about twelve inches long, forged out of iron. He picked it up, wondering what it was. It was perfectly made, though obviously very old. He turned it over. The tail opened the mouth, like a pair of scissors, and inside the mouth there were sharp little needles, though they were all over the inside of the mouth, and all down the crocodile’s throat. He frowned at the plaque and read it. They were called the Crocodile Shears:

‘The Crocodile Shears had a very specific purpose: To mutilate those who had attempted to harm a prince of the royal blood.

The interior design closely resembles a tube containing numerous spikes inside and larger ones at the tip. Although it was sometimes used to mutilate the fingers, its most common purpose was to mutilate a man’s penis. After first closing it on the penis, the torturer would secure it, locking it into position. In some instances, a man was hung by it, or had his penis ripped away from his body by some other means.

This torture method was frequently also a way to execute victims, as the arterial damage that ensued from the torture provoked death very frequently.’

Lukas had his back to the table and was leaning against it.

Matthew looked at his groin. He could unbutton Lukas’ jeans, unzip them, and pull them down to his thighs.

He looked at Lukas, and then held the crocodile out, holding its mouth open against Lukas’ groin.

‘Please don’t,’ Lukas said. ‘Please, I didn’t do anything wrong.’

Matthew smiled at Lukas, imagining how the crocodile’s mouth would close on his cock. It was right there, right under his jeans, and he didn’t have any jocks on. Matthew pressed it into Lukas’ groin and closed the mouth, catching a bit of Lukas’ jeans in the tip of the crocodile’s mouth. He squeezed the shears tight, flipped the iron clamp and locked them into position, bumping them into Lukas’ groin a couple of times.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not too bad.’

‘Are you ready?’

Lukas nodded.

Matthew ripped the crocodile away from his groin, imagining how it would be to rip Lukas’ cock off.

‘Ahh!’ Lukas screamed, clutching his groin. ‘My cock!’ He started to stagger around, like it was a death scene. ‘Oh! Oh! Please help me! My poor little cock! I’m bleeding. I’m bleeding.’

He fell to his knees, gripping his groin, framing it with his hands.

‘I’m bleeding to death.’ He fell onto the ground with his legs apart and stared down at his groin, his hands beside him, following the fountaining blood with terrified eyes, moving his head up and down with every gush of the geyser.

Matthew smiled at Lukas. This was the sort of thing that had cracked them up laughing when they were kids, though it was the first time Matthew had seen Lukas act like this in years. He was good at it, like everything artistic.

There were a whole lot of brands on the table that Matthew had already looked at. He picked one up, a heavy iron rod with a lion on the end of it. He pointed it downward and poked the lion into Lukas’ groin.

‘Sss,’ he said, making the sound of flesh burning, and imagining Lukas getting a lion branded onto his groin as he pushed it hard and twisted a little. He felt like lifting the pole and smashing it into Lukas’ gear like a golf club, but he pulled it away.

‘Is it okay?’

‘I think so,’ Lukas said, getting up.

‘Do you mind being cockless?’

‘Nyah. I kind of like it.’