Chapter Text
Winter, Year 13 of the 2nd Century of the Khamsin Dynasty (13.2.K)
Max had been born a slave, he believed.
He didn't remember for sure-- it wasn't as if anyone kept him informed. But he couldn't remember ever being anything else.
He was lucky he even knew how old he was. He usually heard it mentioned when he was sold off somewhere new. "He's 18 now," someone said last time, "so, all kinds of options." He hadn't known what that meant at the time.
He knew now.
Sometimes he missed his mother. But he wasn't sure it was even a real person he missed. Maybe it was just the idea of a mother that made him cry some nights.
Most nights he didn't have time to cry. Most nights, they were working.
The man (Max didn't learn his master's name for a long time) started by filling the tank, a tall, cylindrical thing that must have cost him a fortune. The sides of it were reinforced with great, wrought iron bars, but the rest of it was thick, tempered glass. When Max fell into it, his frantic struggles could be seen clearly.
When he was sold, Max remembered the man asking repeatedly if Max could swim.
He couldn't, of course. That was half the point.
Max would sit atop the tank as the water slowly filled it, as the man let a crowd gather. At first, in the warm months, it was just the fear of drowning that made him tremble. Those were the easier times.
Now, in the winter months, it was both fear and the cold that made Max shake, bound atop the platform above the slowly-filling water tank. The little, spangled magician's assistant costume did nothing to insulate him. It didn't even really cover his body. It was just a skintight, translucent shirt, and matching stockings with garters. Locked into his ankles were a pair of weighted, heeled slippers. His hips, cock, and bottom were completely exposed. But, despite what he knew was coming, he would pray for the tank to fill slowly--or to develop a leak.
Because once it filled, the show would start.
Act one began when the man started taking bids for the rubber handballs. There were perhaps a dozen of them in all different colors. They were about the size of an egg, but perfectly round save for the hole running though the middle of each one. They weren't heavy enough to break the tank, but they did hurt if they hit Max instead of the targets.
When enough people had gathered and bought balls, then the show would start.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the man would cry, "you are about to see feats of skill and daring not attempted by anyone else in the twelve continents!"
Was it really a feat of daring if it was only performed in order to keep from drowning, Max wondered?
The audience started throwing the hand balls, and Max protected his face as much as he could with his hands bound. Soon enough, someone always hit the targets. They were spaced out on Max's platform showing the spots which, when hit, would make it collapse.
Then he was down in the icy water, the weights on his shoes taking him straight to the bottom. He scrambled to collect however many handballs were at the bottom of the tank, as fast as he could. He could slip out of the bindings easily enough. Getting all those handballs up his ass was the real trick, the real show.
His life depended on putting on a good show.
"Doesn't matter to me if you live," the man had explained to him during his training, "not if your ass doesn't perform." And then he'd had dropped Max in into the tank to try again. He made him try it over and over, until he got it right.
So every show, Max slipped out of the cord binding him, then started stringing the big beads onto it before his breath ran out. He was thankful that the man at least allowed him to oil up his hole before the show--it made the awful process so much faster.
He had to spread his legs and start getting the beads in there before his breath ran out. The first one was always the hardest. There was no way to stop and prepare his hole, no time, he just had to bear down and PUSH. He might feel a tear; it didn't matter. The man would only let him out when they were all in.
The next few were easier, but then when they started to all knock against each other inside him, it got harder again. They pushed around inside him, stretching him, hurting him. Still no time to stop! Push--push them in, and then frantically look for the weighted rope, descending through the water, and grab hold of it.
The man, dressed in his magician's costume, would finally pull Max up. That was act one almost done: making the balls disappear.
But, of course, they had to reappear next. The man stood Max at the edge of the ledge on top of the tank and bent him over, then made a show of making the balls reappear, pulling them out with the cord they were strung on. As each one came off, he handed it to Max, who licked them clean and placed them into a waiting dish.
And as each one dragged though Max's insides and tugged against his hole, Max got a little more erect. He couldn't help it. The stimulation combined with the relief that he'd escaped drowning again somehow stripped him of all control he might have had. He just had to stand there and let everyone see it, as if he somehow enjoyed this. Sometimes the man even paused in his presentation of the handballs, turning Max around in mock surprise as he "noticed" his erection, then chastising him for being so slutty while he was supposed to be helping with the magic show. The audience found this very funny.
The man always made Max take a bow afterwards first turning him to face the audience to show off his stiffening cock, then turning him for a second, backwards bow with his legs spread and his abused hole facing the audience.
In act two, they made a rabbit disappear.
The man wheeled out the platform with the bicycles. Then he dramatically pulled magicians hat off the seat of Max's bike to reveal that it had no real seat. Instead, in place of the seat, there was a rabbit. Or rather, there was a rather phallic-shaped carving of the animal, polished and mounted on the one wheeled bicycle. Max didn't even ride the bike- it was affixed to the small platform. But he climbed on top and sank down onto it, gasping as the thing stretched him open. Then he placed his feet on the pedals and rode in place as the man climbed onto a second bike (with no rabbit, of course) and juggled the balls while riding around the platform.
The motion of his legs pedaling around made the rabbit jab into him hard, in uncontrolled stabs. There was no way to be careful; all his concentration went to staying balanced. He just had to endure it. And by now, his cock would be fully erect, bouncing around in a way that the audience found quite comical.
At first, Max didn't understand how he could stay hard with the pain of the horrible rabbit. It was too big to ever get used to, and the motion of the bike made his body rock up and down into it so hard he started crying almost immediately. He was stretched open, so far open, he felt he would break, and yet his cock got so hard it stuck straight out, bouncing around with the motion of his body.
After the first few performances, he realized: the man was drugging him. The water he made Max drink before the performance always tasted strangely sour. That had to be why.
Somehow, it didn't make it any less humiliating.
After a short period of solo juggling on his own, normal bike, the man made as if to begin the tandem juggling. It was a common enough act for side shows: two jugglers would perform on bikes or tight ropes, showcasing increasingly complex juggling patterns.
This, of course, was a different kind of show. The man never taught Max to juggle more than two at a time. So when the third ball came his way, Max invariably dropped it. He had to climb off the rabbit and go fetch the ball, which would invariably be in the hands of an audience member. He had to take it in his mouth, then scurry back to the bike and climb back on that rabbit. And every time he had to get it back inside, it hurt more. It was just too big to get used to!
The worst thing about this part of the act was that by now, the drugs and the anal stimulation had him so hard he was dripping. He tried to retrieve the ball as fast as he could, but inevitably someone would start touching him, and then he lost control.
Whatever was in the cocktail the man gave him before the show, it was powerful. When the first audience member touched his cock, Max was gone. He would hear himself moaning, in a desperate, whiny voice he barely recognized. Then he'd be humping against the hand or boot or whatever it was, until the man made a show of dragging him away, chastising him for ruining the juggling show.
This was how they transitioned to Act 3, a trapeze routine and Max's punishment for "ruining" the show.
The man rolled out the bars, which they'd assembled before beginning the show. The trapeze was attached to a crank: once Max was affixed to it, the man turned the crank around and around to hoist his unsatisfactory assistant up.
To begin, Max hung upside down from his knees. His legs were folded over and bound ankles to thighs with legs spread. The man took special care to bind his ankles to the outside of his thighs so they wouldn't block Max's bottom. Then the man brought out a ringmaster's whip and gave Max a series of lashes. The thing that saved Max, here, was that they normally needed to do another act tomorrow. If his bottom were already torn open, the show would be ruined. So, the man didn't hit him hard -- he just got Max's bottom nice and red and stinging.
But by this point, Max lost whatever remained of his composure. Perhaps that was by design. The adrenaline of trying not to drown wore off, and the fear and drugs took over. He cried harder and harder as the third act went on, with the constant change in position as the man worked the trapeze. Upside down, then right side up, then hands cuffed to a second trapeze as the man laid a series of marks on the front of him. The man lashed all across Max's belly and thighs, then pulled up his tight, sparkly shirt and did his nipples. To the delight of the crowd, he even did one lash across Max's groin, making the boy yowl.
The begging normally started when Max was upside down again, this time bound with all his limbs stretched out all different directions, each to a different trapeze. The man liked to trace the whip all around his face, wiping at the tears. Then he trailed it up the slave's belly, toward his cock. Max would be shaking by then, making his cock bounce around in a way that made the crowd get louder.
Max would promise to do better, would swear he could do the juggling right, even though they both knew he couldn't.
It didn't matter. Max would have said anything.
So the man would say he was glad Max learned his lesson, and that they would go back to the juggling again.
Only, Max was completely useless by this point. He was cold, wet, exhausted, and his body hurt. The drugs raced though him, scrambling his mind and giving his cock practically its own heartbeat. He couldn't even climb up onto the rabbit.
So the man would curse him for his failure, and do a mock apology to the audience. "I am deeply sorry that we cannot show you all the other feats of magic and daring, gentlemen and ladies!" he would say, even though everyone probably knew there had never been any magic show planned. "It is unfortunately so hard to find a decent magician's assistant! This one appears to be good for nothing better than simple carnival games!"
He then wheeled over the game booth and hoisted Max up. If Max had anything left by now he usually started struggling again. "Please! I'll do better! I can do it!"
Later, when he was rational, Max could see how pointless this was.
The game booth was a counter with a token red and yellow awning over it. The man laid the slave over it, pointing his red bottom out toward the audience and locking his ankles to the base of the counter, spreading him wide. Then he did the same with his wrists, strapping them to the other side. Finally, he strapped Max's torso down as well, drawing the belt tight to keep the boy securely against the counter.
With the slave secured, he brought out the device: a shiny metal cone attached to a crank, almost like a set of eggbeaters. With a flourish, he pressed it into Max's spread bottom, sinking the cold metal cone in swiftly. The slave's shocked squeal always made the crowd laugh.
Then the man started turning the crank.
The awful stretch had Max weeping as the leaves of the cone opened inside him, pinching into the sensitive flesh, stretching him. Round and round went the crank, until Max lay hyperventilating on the table with his hole fully opened for the audience, wide enough for the man to stick his hand inside.
The man would proclaim that, "As you can see, there is nothing hidden up my sleeve, and nothing hidden in my assistant's sleeve either!" And then he would invite the audience to help make the throwing balls "disappear" again-- by tossing them at Max's gaping hole, as if it were a carnival game and Max was the target.
Like most carnival games, it was rigged. The balls normally bounced off the metal ring of the contraption at his entrance, jamming the edges of it into Max's flesh and making him cry out. But the game always got rowdy by now, with the crowd shouting as they tried to get the balls in, and the clang of metal as the balls bounced off. Nobody was listening to the humiliated cries of the boy on the counter.
Eventually, someone would get a ball in, the force of it jamming the contraption deeper, sharper. Max swallowed his pain, then opened his mouth to give the winner their prize. He didn't fight it, not any more. The sooner he got the winner to climax, the sooner the show was over. Then Max would be packed into his cage, and it was over, finally over--until the next night's show.
Some nights he dreamed of the forest, that one summer he'd spent out there with the hunter, skinning the kills and then carrying the massive bundle of furs. Each day had been exhausting, but at the end of summer he'd left with the memory of the sky on a clear night out in the wild country, in the deep dark mountains.
In his dreams, he was in the middle of that dark, endless forest, alone save for the stars and trees.
Most nights, he didn't have time to dream.