Chapter 8: The Vote Results
The buzz was his phone, but the throb was the tattoo. They spoke to each other in a low, syncopated rhythm of dread. Sunlight cut through his thin curtains, dust motes dancing in the blades of light. It felt obscene.
Jon lay still, the sheets tangled at his feet. His body was a used-up vessel—ass sore from three relentless fingers, throat raw from begging an empty room, eyes gritty from tears he hadn’t fully shed. The memory of last night’s ‘preparation’ hung in the room like a sour smell. The chat’s words were etched behind his eyes: edge slut, cry for it, show us how empty you are.
He reached for the phone. The screen burned his retinas.
CURATION: POLL CLOSED. RESULTS CONFIRMED.
OPTION #4: DOUBLE PENETRATION (DEREK & KASON) - 67%
SCENE PARAMETERS: LIVE. FULL INTERACTIVITY. 48-HOUR PREP WINDOW. LOCATION: STUDIO 3.
CONFIRM ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Y/N
His thumb hovered. The ‘Y’ glowed, a pale yellow. He pressed it. A new message slid into view instantly, from Marcus.
> Marcus: Good morning. The confirmation triggers your prep fee. It’s in your account. Use it for whatever you need. Elena will be at your place at 7 PM for physical prep. Be ready. This is a cornerstone scene.
Jon dropped the phone on his chest. He counted the water stains on his ceiling. The ‘prep fee’ was more money than he’d made in three months at the cafe. It felt like blood money, already spent.
He showered, avoiding the mirror until the steam hid everything. The bandage on his thigh was damp at the edges. He peeled it off. The tattoo was a lurid masterpiece of inflammation—crimson, weeping slightly, the black lines bold and smug. He traced it. The pain was a clean, honest signal in the static of his nerves. A cornerstone.
The day bled away in a haze of cheap television and silent pacing. At 6:58 PM, a firm knock echoed.
Elena stood in his hallway, holding a large professional kit. She looked him up and down. “You look like hell.”
“Feel like it.”
She pushed past him, surveying the room. “Right. We need space.” She cleared a spot on the floor, spreading a disposable blue pad. “You’ve done the digital prep. Now we do the physical. This isn’t about making it good for you. It’s about making your body capable of taking it without tearing. Lie down. On your back, knees up.”
Her tone was all business, but her hands, when she snapped on gloves, were careful. She laid out tools: squeeze bottles of lube, different sizes of smooth, tapered dilators, antiseptic wipes. “They’re not small,” she said, not looking at him. “Derek’s above average. Kason… he’s known for it. This is about acclimation. Pain management. Breathing.”
Jon lay back on the pad, staring at his ceiling. The single bulb flickered.
“Remember the breathing from the first scene,” she said, her voice lower. “In through the nose, out through the mouth. You’re going to feel a stretch. Your job is to not fight it. Your body will want to clench. You have to tell it to open. It’s just muscle. It obeys instruction.”
The first touch was cold lube. He jumped.
“Breathe,” Elena commanded.
He breathed. She worked a single, slick finger inside him, slowly, circling. “You’re tight. Tighter than you should be after last night. You’re holding trauma in the tissue. We need to release it.”
“It’s just a physical thing,” Jon mumbled, parroting her.
“It’s never just a physical thing,” she corrected, her voice tight. She added a second finger, scissoring gently. “But we can trick the body. We can make it think it’s just mechanics.”
For an hour, she worked. She moved from fingers to the smallest dilator, then to a medium. She coached his breathing, her voice a calm, steady metronome against the rising tide of his panic. She massaged the tense muscles of his inner thighs, his lower abdomen. “This is where you hold it,” she said, pressing a knot below his navel. “Let it go.”
A tear escaped the corner of his eye, tracking into his hairline. He didn’t make a sound.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, not stopping her work. “The crying is just pressure release. It’s part of the prep.”
When she finally withdrew the last dilator, Jon felt hollowed out, loose in a way that was deeply unsettling. She helped him sit up. “You’ll need to do this again tomorrow, alone. Maintain the elasticity. And take these.” She handed him two white pills. “Prescription-grade anti-inflammatories. One now, one tomorrow an hour before call time. It will reduce swelling. It won’t kill the pain, but it’ll take the edge off the damage.”
He swallowed them dry.
She packed her kit, slower now. “Jon. Look at me.” He did. Her eyes were fierce, conflicted. “You have a contract. But clauses can be argued. If you say the word, I’ll go to Marcus. We can say you’re injured. The tattoo got infected.”
He looked at the brand on his thigh, pulsing with a warm, malicious life. “It didn’t.”
“I know,” she sighed. “But I’m offering you an out. A lie.”
He shook his head. The hollow feeling had a texture now. It felt like inevitability. “What’s Kason like?”
Elena’s mouth set into a thin line. “Quiet. Methodical. He doesn’t get off on cruelty like Derek does. He gets off on… efficiency. On complete physical domination. He’s worse, in a way. Derek wants you to feel him. Kason just wants to use the space you provide.” She stood, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Be at the studio tomorrow at 6 PM. Don’t eat a heavy meal. Hydrate.”
After she left, the silence collapsed back in. Jon sat on the blue pad, feeling opened, prepared, and utterly defiled. He logged into the private channel on his laptop. The chat was already active, speculating, sharing GIFs of Derek and Kason’s past scenes. He didn’t type. He just watched the usernames scroll by, a digital hydra hungering for his body.
Studio 3 was called the “Glass Box.” One wall was a vast, one-way mirror. The room itself was empty except for a single, heavy leather bench, bolted to the floor, and a bank of harsh lights suspended from the ceiling. It was a petri dish.
Jon arrived as Elena instructed. She met him in a side room, her face grim. “They’re already here. Warming up.” She handed him a white robe. “Wear this. Nothing underneath. The interactivity is tiered tonight. Top donors get voice command priority. Mid-tier votes on positions. The whole fucking zoo is feeding.”
He changed. The robe was coarse cotton, rough against his sensitive skin. Through the door, he heard low laughter—Derek’s familiar, grating boom, and a lower, quieter murmur that must have been Kason.
Marcus entered, glowing with a subdued energy. “The anticipation is at a record high. This is community-driven art, Jon. You’re the medium.” He placed a wireless earpiece in Jon’s hand. “This is for you. You’ll hear the aggregated voice commands. You obey them. The audience is your director tonight. We are merely… stagehands.”
Jon inserted the earpiece. It hissed with silence, for now.
“Let’s begin.”
He walked into the Glass Box. The lights were blinding, hot. He could feel the unseen gaze from behind the mirror. Derek leaned against the far wall, wearing only jeans, his torso a landscape of muscle and old scars. He grinned, a predator spotting familiar prey. “Miss me, Jade?”
The other man, Kason, stood near the bench. He was taller than Derek, leaner, with a shaved head and eyes the color of a winter sky. He assessed Jon with a single, sweeping glance, no more emotional than a carpenter measuring a board. He said nothing.
“Position one,” Marcus’s voice came over a hidden speaker. “Jade, on the bench. On your hands and knees.”
Jon moved. The leather was cold under his palms and knees. The robe fell open, exposing his back, his ass. The fresh tattoo was visible on his inner thigh, a dark badge.
A synthetic voice, a chorus of top donors, crackled in his earpiece. “Present. Spread your cheeks. Show them your hole.”
Face burning, Jon reached back with both hands, pulling his ass cheeks apart, offering himself. He heard Derek’s low whistle.
“Derek. Initial penetration. No lubrication from you. Use her spit.”
Derek chuckled, moving forward. “You heard the bosses. Make it wet.”
Jon, his arms trembling, bowed his head and spat awkwardly onto his own fingers. He reached back, smearing the scant moisture over his entrance.
“Pathetic,” Derek sneered, but he was unzipping his jeans. His cock, thick and already fully hard, sprang out. He rubbed the head through the wetness Jon had provided, then pressed it against the tight ring of muscle. “Remember how I fucked this cunt raw at the frat house? It’s gonna be like coming home.”
With one brutal thrust, he sheathed himself to the hilt.
Jon screamed. The stretch was catastrophic, a white-hot tear of violation. The anti-inflammatives did nothing for this. His body, despite Elena’s prep, seized violently around the invading girth.
“Breathe, Jade. Take it. You exist for this.” the voice commanded.
Jon sucked in air, sobbing. Derek didn’t move, letting him suffer the full, splitting pressure. “Fuck, she’s tight,” Derek grunted, a note of genuine strain in his voice. “Like a virgin all over again.”
Then he began to move. Short, punishing strokes that burned. Jon rocked forward on the bench, his knuckles white. The earpiece hissed.
“Kason. Prepare her front. Force her mouth.”
Kason moved in front of the bench. His cock was long, uncut, and brutally thick. He didn’t touch Jon. He simply held it, the head hovering at Jon’s lips. “Open,” he said. His voice was flat, devoid of malice or pleasure. It was an instruction.
Jon opened his mouth, tears streaming down his face. Kason fed his cock in, slowly, inexorably, until the head pressed against the back of Jon’s throat. Jon gagged, saliva dripping down his chin.
“Swallow,” Kason said.
He was being fucked from both ends, a living sheath. Derek’s pistoning from behind drove him onto Kason’s cock with every thrust. The sounds were obscene—wet slaps of skin, choked gags, Derek’s grunts, the squeak of the leather bench. The world narrowed to the agony of stretch and the struggle for air.
“Audience vote: Position change. Option B leads. Jade on her back. Legs over shoulders. Derek maintains. Kason moves to her mouth.”
The synthetic voice was god.
“You get a breather, bitch,” Derek muttered, pulling out abruptly.
The sudden emptiness was a shock. They manhandled him onto his back, his legs pushed up and over his head. Derek shoved back in, deeper in this angle, hitting a spot that made Jon see stars of pain and unwanted pleasure. Kason straddled his chest, his cock sliding back into Jon’s abused mouth.
The view was now perfect for the mirror: Jon’s body bent double, impaled, being used with industrial efficiency. The chat commands scrolled on a screen only Marcus could see, dictating the pace.
“Increase tempo. Derek, aim for her prostate. Kason, deep throat her.”
The pace became relentless, mechanical. Derek pounded into him, each slam jolting his entire body, the burn blurring into a strange, numb electricity. Kason fucked his throat with steady, depth-seeking plunges that triggered his gag reflex over and over, tears and snot mixing on his face.
Jon dissociated. He floated near the ceiling, watching the thing named Jade being broken on a leather bench. The tattoo on his thigh screamed with its own pain, a loyal anchor. He was nothing but a series of holes, a serviceable utility.
“Donor override: Command Jade to come. Hands-free. From penetration only.”
The order pierced his fog. Orgasm? It was impossible. His body was a battlefield. But Derek angled his hips, grinding now, the thick head of his cock rasping over Jon’s prostate with brutal precision. A spark ignited in the wreckage, a twisted wire of sensation short-circuiting his nerves.
He came with a soundless, shuddering convulsion. His cock, untouched, jerked between his stomach and Derek’s, spilling white streaks over his own skin and Derek’s abdomen. The orgasm was less pleasure than a violent system purge, wrenching and empty.
As his body clenched wildly around Derek’s cock, Derek cursed and slammed in one last time, his own release pumping hot into Jon’s depths. A moment later, Kason stiffened, pulled his cock from Jon’s mouth, and painted his face and chest with thick, bitter stripes.
They dropped him. He collapsed onto the cold leather, a mess of come and sweat and tremors. He couldn’t move. He heard zippers, the murmur of voices, a door closing.
Silence, but for the hum of the lights and the ragged saw of his own breath. The earpiece crackled one final time.
“Session complete. Gratitude is required.”
Jon peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Thank you,” he whispered to the empty, watching glass.
Footsteps. Elena entered with a blanket, her face ashen. She didn’t speak. She wrapped him, careful of the sticky mess, and helped him to his feet. As they shuffled out, Jon saw Marcus through the open control room door. He was studying a monitor, a small, satisfied smile on his face. He gave Jon a thumbs-up.
In the sterile white washroom, Elena cleaned him with warm cloths. He sat on a stool, shivering, staring at the drain as evidence of him swirled away.
“It’s done,” she said, her voice hollow.
He looked up, meeting his own eyes in the mirror. The person looking back was a stranger, hollowed out, branded, and used. But the hollow wasn’t empty anymore. It was packed full of something solid and cold and irrevocable.
“No,” Jon said, the word scraping his throat raw. He touched the bandage on his thigh. The cornerstone was laid. The architecture was rising. “It’s just starting.”