He turned his head to see his arm was draped over a man's chest. He snatched his arm back. It was an older man, graying beard and moustache. He was laying perfectly still, skin cold and just as grey as his hair. Shawn scuffled with the silk sheets and the comforter thrown over him to get away from the guy. Still, there was no movement. Shawn stood naked beside the bed, staring at the man in bewilderment.

After clearing his eyes of sticky sleep, Shawn looked more closely at the man. There was blood, caked and brown in both of his nostrils, a stream of the same down his left cheek. Shawn yelled, "What the fuck is goin’ on here?!" He was full of repulse, rage, confusion, yes even fear. The man was still motionless, eyes closed. Was he dead, Shawn asked himself?

Shawn gathered up his clothes, all strewn over the floor surrounding the bed, hurriedly got himself dressed in spite of a nagging ad unfamiliar pain in his rectum. "Did I wear this shit out last night?" he gasped at the odd style of clothes he was throwing on. My God, he cursed. What did I do last night?

As soon as he was dressed he scanned the whole apartment he had found himself in briefly for any personal effects that might have been missing. Same stuff, always, all here, he noted: keys, wallet (still containing his cash, credit cards and drivers' license), breath mints and empty condom wrapper. He shuddered at the last item on his mental list. Where's the condom? Shawn grimaced and panic set in.

"Not on the floor, not on my dick. Please, oh please dear God let me have flushed it in my sleep or something." He flew quickly through the apartment, careful not to touch too much with his bare hands. Nowhere!

He threw back the comforter off the older man's side of the bed, revealing the full ugly nakedness of his body. Horrified, Shawn saw the spent condom, stained brown and red, wrinkled and sagging from the man's limp penis. He reached for it cautiously, mortified and disgusted. He removed the condom with thumb and index finger and ran it to the bathroom and flushed it. He washed his hands thoroughly in the sink with antibacterial soap he found. Normally the condom would have been on him, not in him. He screamed to himself, his mind reeling at just the disgusting thought of what might have happened. He barely even noticed his face in the mirror as he turned to leave. He checked everything again and made a bolt for the door, making sure to clean up whatever he could of his finger prints and hairs, etc. He had determined by now the older guy was dead from a heart attack, hemorrhage or something. He did not need the blame for this.

Opening the door with his sleeve-covered hand, Shawn fought back the urge to puke on the spot. This was too unreal to be happening. Suddenly, the door flew open and three men in black suits, matching fedoras and dark sun glasses pushed him back into the room. He felt heavy fists in his gut and was pushed to the floor, completely off balance. His head felt like it would explode from his hangover as it bounced off the foot of the bed. One of the huge men stepped on Shawn's crotch and dug his heal into his balls. Shawn screamed in pain.

"Stay there," the man said. The other two men scoured the room while the first one continued to grind the flat of his foot into Shawn's testicles. Shawn lost it and threw up on the floor.

What seemed like an eternity later, the three men gathered together near the apartment door, which had somehow been closed during their altercation, and spoke amongst themselves in whispers that Shawn couldn't overhear. One of them looked at him. All three of the men were decked out in a weird FBI, men-in-black style that really made this whole morning seem far less plausible to Shawn’s already tormented brain.

"You're really a pathetic little weasel, aren't ya, Shawn Drescill?" the man mocked.

"Who are you? What's going on here?" Shawn asked in a voice that sounded so weak that it even surprised him.

The one man laughed. "We're the executioners." He paused. "And it's your turn to die."

Puzzled, Shawn tried to scramble back to at least a seated position.

"We followed you, actually. We saw you trying to seduce this old faggot here at The Cap and decided it was dyin' time for the both of ya. But from the looks of the old fuck....you did half our job for us."

The other guys started laughing.

"Look, I don't know what's going on here. I'm not gay or anything."

"Funny...you sure talk like a damn fag."

All three of the men in black laughed with each other. Shawn checked himself. Something was not right. Had he just spoken with an accent? Had he looked smaller somehow in the bathroom mirror earlier? Had his skin been smooth when there should be a nice manly hairy chest and arms? He pulled up his sleeve and gawked for a moment at almost girlishly smooth arms. Down the neck of his shirt he revealed a smooth chest.

"Please, look, I just don't know what...I...this isn't me! I don't know, but...aagghhhh!!!!" Shawn was speaking with a stereotypical gay accent and voice. He became very disoriented, stammering through syllables, not words. What's happening to me?! He screamed inside. For the first time since he was 8 years old, Shawn almost wanted to cry out of fear and frustration.

The one man reached down and picked Shawn up by his throat. Shawn helped him of course, the guy's huge, strong hand almost crushing his neck. "One more fuckin' word out of you, and I'll snap you in half. As funny as you sound...it still makes me sick to hear fags talk. Got it!?!" Sprayed in the face from the angry man’s frothy spit, Shawn just nodded in compliance.

"Good," said the evil grin of the man holding Shawn's life in his hands.

They forced him out of the apartment and into the parking lot. Shoving and hitting him as they went, they worked him to a blue and white full size Dodge conversion van and threw him into it through the sliding door on the side. They climbed into the van with him. One jumped into the drivers' seat and buckled himself in and started the van. Another slammed the door shut while the third handcuffed Shawn's wrists together behind his back and also to a low rail in the back of the van. The two men then took their seats, buckled themselves in, and the van started moving. Why are the buckling in, Shawn pondered.

When the van pulled out of the parking lot, Shawn felt his stomach sink, and a huge wave of panic and anxiety grabbed him. Where are they taking me? What's gonna happen? Why? How? What's happened to me? I hate fags! I beat homos! I hurt them! I am not one of them! How can I convince these guys? How did this happen?

Shawn examined himself. His mind was clearer finally from hangover and sleep. The headache still pounded, his stomach still churned, but he could think. He was indeed smaller. He almost fancied that somehow he had gotten thrown into someone else's body. Impossible. But this whole day was impossible. I should be the one beating this fag body I am in, he toiled within. Rage overtook him.

"I don't know how this has happened, but this is not my body! This isn't even my voice! It's not me! I'm with you guys! I hate..."

By the time he said the word hate, a brick smacked him in the face, thrown by one of the passengers. He reeled, writhed on the ground, face against the floor of the van, his nose throbbing and teeth feeling loose. "I hate fags!!!" he screamed and spit out blood.

"This one's special, ain't it?" asked the driver. "I think it deserves real special treatment."

One of the passengers got up from his seat, a roll of duct tape and a dirty sock in his hand. He walked to the back of the van and pinched Shawn's face so hard his jaws popped open, betraying him to the nasty, smelly sock. The man quickly taped the sock in and returned to his seat. Shawn immediately struggled for breath through his bloody and swollen nose. He managed to clear an air path just large enough to not suffocate and concentrated himself on maintaining it.

"Well, Shawna," mocked the driver, "we'll be at your new home in about two hours. I recommend you behave for the rest of the trip. Things can get ugly in this van."

Shawn whimpered and felt tears forming in his eyes as the van sped on. The windows were dark somehow from the inside, so Shawn couldn't see where they were traveling. He saw trees as blurs whipping by, so he suspected they were heading to the country. Perhaps his new home would be a ditch grave, he thought. His face was aching. He kept biting on the sock to ease the pain in his teeth. He fought but lost wars against every betraying tear that sobbed out of his eyes. The worst part was the cold quiet that settled into the van, with only the throbbing in his head to keep him company.

Time passed like molasses oozing across a flat table. Shawn gathered his thoughts during the drive and wondered if maybe a sudden death now by speaking out in the van might prevent an extended one later at their destination. The van slowed, spun around and stopped. The smell of McDonald's food filled the van after a quick order; none for him of course. The van sped off and the three men ate noisily. The driver turned on some old bluegrass music and sang along, as if the sound of guy songs might somehow torture the little queer in the back.

I don’t think he’s hit a note yet, Shawn thought. The cuffs on his wrists were really digging into his skin. The sock eventually lost its foul taste at least. His breathing was a little less labored as time passed on nameless roads leading to an end that could only mean stark horror for Shawn. He shifted a bit.

All of a sudden one of the passengers jumped out of his seat, moved to the back of the van and stepped on Shawn's face, pushing it to one side. Shawn felt a needle jab into his neck. A few moments later, all went black.

* * *

Was I dreaming? Please, by all that's holy let it have been a dream.

It was Shawn's first conscious thought after a very dark but brief sleep. Secondly his body shivered. Shawn felt very cold. He looked around himself quickly. No, it had probably not been a dream. There were three men, all huge men, wearing black suits with black fedoras and dark sunglasses standing on three sides of him. He was naked, tied to be quartered to four heavy metal rails set at each corner of a hard wooden table. One of the men had a scalpel in one hand.

Shawn panicked inside and began to breath heavily. His mouth was empty of the sock and tape and his nose somehow felt better. There was less pain in his face also, he thought. Where was that nagging headache? Why was the room so unbearably cold?

"Sleepin' beauty's up," said the man with the scalpel. "Your mouth is clear right now ‘cause we wanna hear ya scream. You're nowhere anybody's gonna hear ya. So scream all ya want." He smiled evilly and waved the glinting blade of the scalpel above Shawn's face.

"Please. Don't. Just kill me. Please!" Shawn pleaded. He’d rather just die now than be cut to pieces.

All three men laughed horribly. The one with the scalpel rested his blade on Shawn's trembling stomach. The blade was cold to his skin. The man put latex gloves on, snapped them against his wrists for effect. He then put a surgical mask over his face and picked up the scalpel.

"Hold him for me."

A second of the three men also snapped on some latex gloves and stepped around the table from the first. Shawn was looking down at himself as the man separated his shriveled and terrified penis from his balls. Up to this point, everything had been happening so quickly for Shawn that he barely had time to rationalize anything. Now, everything was moving in slow motion. He was out of breath, sweating. He saw the man holding his penis but he couldn't feel it. They'd already apparently numbed him, and it seemed clear where they planned to cut him.

"Oh, God, please, no!" he screamed.

"Hmph. I ain’t holdin’ this," the second man mumbled and taped Shawn's penis to his belly with medical tape he'd procured from a tray near Shawn's head. "It's a special one, I say, though. Treat it special."

"Ya know, you're right," said the scalpel man. "Let's give this one a choice." He looked up towards Shawn. "What will it be? We cut off your nasty, worthless, shit stained dick? Or, do we cut out those balls what's been getting’ ya in all this trouble? You decide! Ya got five minutes or I cut every fuckin' thing off yer miserable little body. Even yer fuckin' nipples." Scalpel man scraped Shawn’s left nipple with the blade end of the scalpel, sending a shock of pain and pleasure both through him that went all the way down to his toes.

The three men laughed again and left the room through a door past Shawn's feet. It was all dark beyond the door. Shawn struggled against his tethers but found no give. I have five minutes to decide. This is insane! Why did they leave the room? It's worse with them gone, Shawn thought. He felt hot tears slip from his eyes again. "Damnit!" He scowled trying to force them back in. "What have I done to deserve this," he muttered to himself.

It was suddenly a time for his whole life to start returning to his mind's eye. Years became seconds in the halls of his memory as seconds felt like years passing away on that hard table. He saw himself in scene after scene seducing, fucking and leaving woman after woman from his past. Then a sad but pretty face appeared to him. He'd picked up an amazing red head one night when on a business trip to Virginia. He growled inside at the face as he remembered her. She had tricked him. When he had gotten her into his motel room bed, was fondling her small but nice breasts, he was unpleasantly surprised to find a small penis between her legs.

He watched himself as if on a movie screen beating the tranny to a horrible, bloody mess and throwing it into the hall of the motel, screaming obscenities at it for its evil and filthy deception. He saw himself a few times after that having taken opportunities to hurt homosexuals and transsexuals as he might encounter them in brute, physical ways which right now made him almost ashamed of himself.

"Cock or balls?" the question drifted back to him. The three men returned. Shawn bit his cheek. Maybe he did deserve this. As the three men returned to their positions at the table, surrounding Shawn, a thought occurred to the helpless and hopeless creature now lying still on the harsh meat cutting slab of its fate.

"Well, fudge packer? What'll it be?" asked the cold one with the scalpel, or was it even the scalpel itself that mocked him?

Shawn held his tongue. The man slapped him across the cheek. "Answer me, fucker, or I'm serious; it's all gone!"

Shawn closed his eyes and grit his teeth, refusing to answer. Tears streamed from his eyes, but he welcomed their warmth this time.

"Alright," said the scalpel, "time to execute."

Two of the men stepped away from the table as scalpel moved to Shawn's right side. He grabbed Shawn's testicles and pulled them up, away and tight. One of the other men returned to the table with a piece of thick wire and bent it around the pull of Shawn's scrotum and tightened it with pliers. Shawn felt much of nothing, tried to stifle his fears but couldn't control the heavy breathing of anxiety. His scrotum soon turned purple from restricted blood flow. His swollen testicles were separated from him. He pushed the panic down again, crying, afraid, trying with all his effort not to explode in a frenzy of madness

Scalpel moved, tested the tie and the taping on Shawn's penis, and with an approving laugh, pressed the blade of his instrument to the under side of the wire. Shawn screamed in spite of his exerted self control. In a moment it was over. The smell of hot blood filled the chilled room. Scalpel dangled Shawn's severed, gory testicles over his vision. Drips of blood and liquid spattered on his face. Shawn was in a nightmare, he thought, and closed his eyes against the evil of it. Scalpel put the testicles in a small container on the table near Shawn's head and sealed it. When the man in black returned to Shawn's crotch, darkness consumed the writhing, frightened little thing on the hard wooden table. There wasn't much thick meat to cut through on the runt, so it came off without much of a fuss.

* * *

Hating the light, hating the darkness, but hating the light more, Shawn let his eyelids peel apart. He'd hoped for death and been denied again. He'd hoped for dreams and had them shattered repeatedly. He'd dreamt of freedom and found himself bound, every time. His whole body ached. His head pounded, his cruel headache having returned. His nose was probably broken and was now useless for air. His crotch burned. He looked around himself, hesitantly. He was in a quaint bedroom, soft pillows under his head, a nice mattress beneath him, a light blanket thrown over his naked body, and the sound of a slight warm caressing breeze coming in through an open window near the bed.

Shawn carefully sat up, regretted it, but stayed upright regardless. The pain was mind numbing. As he sat there, collecting his thoughts yet again, he refused to even muse about what more could be done to him. There were bandages and gauze packings, clean and well secured to his swollen groin, almost with a surgeon's care in the mending. There were similar small bandages on his chest covering he assumed holes where his nipples were now absent. Scalpel man had been true to his word, it seemed.

Finding the strength to explore this new place was Shawn's next goal. Gritting his aching teeth, he wobbly managed to swing his legs out of bed. With great caution he slid to his feet. A wave of dizziness impaired him for a moment. He waited for it to pass then stood upright. He made his way to a nearby door, each step a labor in burning, stabbing agony and weakness. He opened the door to a scene that startled him more than it horrified him. The three men in black were sitting around a table filled with breakfast, chatting in such a casual tone that it seemed the scene were something more from a B horror flick than reality. The room was too bright. The sounds were too crisp. The images were too blurry. The scene pretended to be far too normal. One of the men looked up at Shawn as he entered the room. He motioned without a word for him to join them at the table. A padded seat sat empty at a steaming plate of eggs and what looked like sausage links and toast. Shawn made his way to the seat as instructed.

"Now there's a much better little thing. You just keep right on doin' what yer told," said the man who'd invited him to the table.

Shawn carefully sat down into the cushion, yelped from the pain of the act.

"Eat up, and we'll getcha back home. Hopefully you'll make better decisions in the future, right sweetie pie?"

Shawn ignored the mockery and took into hand the fork placed at his plate. He let his mind wander a bit through a fantasy in which he would gore everyone here to death with his fork and his mighty hand, suddenly recovered to super human strength from what had befallen him. He would be like Samson slaughtering the Philistines. Even if he died in the process, at least he'd stop others from this evil. Fantasy ended as coffee was poured into a small mug near Shawn's left hand.

Shawn started with the eggs and a bite of toast. The taste of food in his mouth, even though his teeth still ached, reminded the rest of his body of how famished it was. He began to eat quickly, ignoring the leers and evil snickers of his surreal hosts. Were they trying to make this as horrifyingly abnormal as inhumanly possible? The sausage was good, a little spicy, but good. Perhaps it tasted better because he was so damned hungry; Shawn didn't really know and didn't care. He finished off his eggs and used the rest of his toast to help add more texture to his sausage.

"So how's the food, Shawna?"

A simple nod was Shawn's reply. Maybe the no speaking rule was back in place. Either way, Shawn chose to avoid as much further abuse as he could.

"Good. Glad ya like it."

"Figures," said the man who had been serving out the coffee. "Don't matter how I cook it, the fags always like the taste of their own junk."

* * *

A scream. A scream like bloody murder. A scream of sheer terror. A scream of horror that could have transcended all human consciousness. A scream that meant no matter what, something needed to be tended to in the most urgent of ways. A scream so unearthly that no source to its cause could be conjectured.

Rachel ran out of the bathroom where she had been brushing her teeth and gargling away morning breath. She threw out the bathroom door and stopped short in her dash just past the entrance to the bedroom. White with horror and trembling, breathing heavily, sweating a cold sticky sweat, sat the guy she'd been so allured to the night before. She trembled herself now. Is he a psycho? Oh, shit, what have I gotten myself into!

"Please, don't hurt me," she pleaded to the guy. He just sat there, motionless, breathing heavily, staring off into space. “Oh, shit,” she said. Don’t let him look at me, dear God don’t let him look at me, she mumbled as the next few seconds flew her into a panic. She ran for the door, picking up her evening gown on the way and not caring about her nakedness. The guy just sat there in the bed, a giddy, almost insane yet very relieved look on his face as she slipped out the motel door.

Rachel threw her evening gown on as quickly as possible, slammed the door on the freak she'd let herself be seduced by and ran off to her car in the adjacent parking lot. She jumped in, turned the key and drove off with all haste. "Okay, that' the last time, Rachel," she said to herself aloud, out of breath and looking at herself in her rear view mirror. She pulled into the safety of Sunday morning traffic. "That guy freaked out! That was too close! No more one night stands! No more!" She straightened her boobs in her dress a bit better at the first stop light she came to. "I don't believe myself. Why do I get into these situations! Never again! I mean it! Fuck, I don't even know that jerk back there’s name!"