- BOYWTCHR.TXT [01/01]

[Dr. Fish]

The Boywatchers Inc.

Book One of Two

***

The Boywatchers Inc. , Introduction to Book One by Reverend Jim

Boywatchers contains man/boy love. If that offends you don't
read it, I don't care. Questions & comments go to an62433@anon.
penet. fi

This story is fiction. All characters, events and locations are
purely objects of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The short quote from Charles Darwin's "The Voyage of the
Beagle" [Copyright (C) 1909 P. F. Collier & Son, New York] was
taken from the Internet Wiretap online edition, released into the
public domain September 1993.

The Boywatchers Inc. , Copyright (C) 1994 by an62433@anon.
penet. fi. All Rights Reserved. Author hereby grants permission
for archiving and distribution by electronic means only, as long as
no fees are charged either for the story, for the media it is
distributed on, for membership dues, or for the connect time used to
obtain the story.

The Boywatchers should run approximately twenty chapters, or
somewhere around there. Book One may seem a little off-beat, but I
need to "set the stage" for such a huge, complex story. Also, there
is some sex in Book One - but most of it is in Book Two. This is my
first post to the net so please let me know what you think.

Boywatchers is dedicated to my mentor, editor and beta tester,
Hans The Terrorist. Without him this work would not have been
possible. Hans changed my life, and if he ever gets around to buying
a faster modem he'll probably change yours, too. I give him my
deepest gratitude.

Reverend Jim

***

Boywatchers Inc. , book one/part one by Reverend Jim

The sun begins to set on the buildings of Soho in New York.
Most of them are decent, unaffordable type buildings that only famous
artists seem to live in. Unfortunately the sun appears to be the
only witness to the passage of days here; the mere humans go about
their business as if it matters, the trucks continue to make loud
noises as if they mean something.

This is not to suggest that everything is meaningless, of
course, although most opponents of this idealogy have simply never
lived in New York City for very long. But enough dime-store theology
for now because there is trouble with The Boy. This is our prime
responsibility, above all else we must be sure he is safe.

As things first come into focus he looks like a normal ten year
old boy, coming out of a subway labeled in yellow: "Uptown N and R
Trains." The Boy steps up onto Prince street and looks around at the
artsy neighborhood, wondering why he'd chosen to get off here. He
scratches his head and moves on down the block to look into the
window of an occasional Korean grocer or an occasional Korean
pharmacy. These were the types of shops who had big thugs near the
doors inside (or casually standing in the street outside) to prevent
shoplifters or even keep certain types out completely, certain types
like our dear child, The Boy.

At the same moment in time but thirty or forty blocks south, a
seemingly unrelated event occurs. A man wearing an Armani suit and
reading a paper steps out onto Wall street, not looking where he is
going and barely avoids knocking down a bicycle messenger as he heads
toward the curb, thinking of things like interest rates and debenture
bonds and securities regulations. Before he even makes it to the
curb his car magically appears as if from thin air. Without thinking
he holds out a five dollar bill for the valet and collects his keys.

Upon closer inspection The Boy looks awfully scruffy, almost as
if there is simply a tiny greasy smear on the camera lens as we view
an otherwise beautiful neighborhood (for New York, that is). But no
this is no greasy smudge, this is in fact the living embodiment of
the least understood pleasure and the most undeniable beauty in this
and most other universes. This is The Boy, in fact a starving, dirty
specimen at that.

The Boy is kicking a small piece of trash down the street simply
to amuse himself, and as he passes one of the aforementioned grocers
he amuses himself further by lifting an orange with no one spotting
him. He walks on, beginning to peel the orange even before he gets
to the end of the grocer's fruitstand, almost as if to say "Fuck you,
world. You cannot touch me because I am free to do what I choose,
more free than than the birds in the sky." The Boy in our focus
would never say such a silly thing, of course, simply because he
knows deep down in his soul that there are no birds in the sky.
Everyone knows that pigeons only walk around like rats with wings -
pigeons never actually flew free in the sky like a real bird. And
real birds were only in books, a vague image in The Boy's mind, just
like his mother and then his father. As if to punctuate his
arrogance The Boy spins on his heels and turns to find the grocer's
thug amidst the passers-by. There he is, lax in his duties, not even
noticing The Boy who is now calmly eating an ill-begotten orange and
walking away with a swagger. This was only an exercise in fun
however, and The Boy moves on to seek real nourishment under the
light of dusk in New York City.

Aside from his outstanding ability to survive in this particular
jungle, The Boy has two unique traits of which to take notice. When
he found himself alone here two years ago he adapted quickly,
surviving by luck, skill, determination, fear, instinct and
intelligence. His extraordinary intelligence is the first trait of
importance, and the reason The Boy has made it this far on his own.
When his life suddenly changed at age eight, The Boy knew not how or
why, he knew only of fear and running and hunger and pain.
Practically overnight he converted himself from a frightened eight
year old boy into the lean machine we see here today wandering around
Soho.

Observe carefully the second trait as The Boy kicks his lump of
trash down the street, eating his orange: he is happy. Despite the
grunge on his face and long, greasy, formerly-blonde hair, despite
the filthy t-shirt, despite the holes in his only pair of sweat pants
and most of all the shameful smell that follows The Boy everywhere.
If you knew The Boy you would know why... In the two years of his
great adventure, he has not been tamed. His spirit is not broken by
simple things like hunger and pain and cold. He is happy only
because his innocence somehow remains intact as he plays his
dangerous game of hide-and-go-live.

The Boy moves down to Green street and heads further south in
search of either adventure or food, even he not knowing which will
turn up. On a sudden whim The Boy pulls his leg back and kicks the
piece of trash as hard as he can, laughing out loud as it careens off
a fancy-store window. Quickly afterwards a man comes out yelling and
The Boy bolts headlong down the street, still laughing. He certainly
looks as if he would turn a cartwheel if in fact he only knew how.

The Boy slows down and loops back around toward Broadway.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, The Boy was beginning to think
Soho was a mistake. He shouldn't have come out this far from home to
seek food, and now he would have to resort to begging for money to
buy another subway token. This wasn't really a problem, but begging
was much better during the day when people weren't afraid of you, and
the only time The Boy came out in the daylight was on the weekend.
This way the men wouldn't come and take him to school or to court or
to jail or to an evil home. Begging was his special weekend
activity, and most times he would collect enough for a week of food.
Not last weekend however, and he laments the sad fact as he drags his
feet through the cobblestone alley searching the garbage bins for
bits of food. Most of the Korean grocers poured bleach on their
rotted fruit when they threw it out so the street people wouldn't
raid their garbage, but every now and then The Boy could still find a
wad of something that smelled edible even if he couldn't identify
it.

+++

Not many people would notice it, but the man in the Armani suit
is beyond just 'rich'. If we look closely, you can see it in the way
he walks and carries himself, and by the way his suit coat somehow
remains obediently unwrinkled when he wears it. The man smells of
money and power. Occasionally he even smells of the fresh-cut grass
at the country club on Long Island, where he goes to play squash with
the men of lesser stations in life. It helps to keep his body in
such perfect physical shape.

Another thing you will only find through superior powers of
observation are his eyes. This man has dedicated his life to his
business, worshipping the almighty dollar as if it were something
more real than a piece of paper, more real somehow than the love he
had felt for his mother so many years ago. Very little else mattered
to the power man, and you could see the damage done in his sad eyes.
He dated ladies from the club, of course, but this exercise in social
behavior was simply for show and nothing ever developed because his
one true love always got in the way. And somewhere deeper in the
man's mind, he didn't really enjoy women anyway.

As if to illustrate his dedication, he glances at the clock
embedded in the dashboard of his new Mercedes Benz 500 SL. It's a
leather dashboard with a fine analog clock, not the cheap digital
garbage found in so many normal cars these days. Summer was
beginning to break in New York City, the days getting warmer and
longer, the sun was just moving down now at seven o'clock. Each
night around this time he would drive himself home to his condo
overlooking Central Park, enjoying the New York City traffic in his
own sick way. Easily he could arrange for the company limousine to
escort him home in the comfort and style befitting a man of his
position, but no... he insisted on driving himself home each night,
waiting until dusk when the traffic was dying down and then taking
back streets and nameless alleyways all the way home. Staying off
the main streets allowed him to move much faster, even though he got
home later than if he just waited in the line of honking, stinking,
obnoxious cars.

His eight-point-something million dollar condominium was only
about half an hour away, and getting restless the man turns into an
alley he had not yet driven, speeding away from the writhing mass of
cars and squealing his tires on the corner. For the highlight of his
day the man listens to Claude Debussey selections performed by the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, home to one of his favorite Violas, an
esoteric and undiscovered performer who could bring life to the dead
music wafting through his two-seater. The fine german machine speeds
through the tiny alleys between buildings, kicking up garbage and
dirt with its wide tires as it goes.

The man does not have his lights on yet, there is still enough
light to drive with. From our vantage point high above, we can
clearly see the headlights on the sleek black car as they appear, not
unlike the eyes of a predator in the jungle, to be angry yet subtle.
From the front they seem cobra-like, mean and menacing. It takes
alot of power and money indeed to purchase a car with tiny little
wipers built onto the lenses of your lights in order to clear them
when it rains. In only a few minutes the headlight on the right will
be shattered and the wiper torn out of its socket like the leg pulled
from a spider's body, but this is the furthest thing from the man's
mind as he rolls on towards the comfort and serenity of home high
above Central Park. Images of blood spattered across his windshield
would seem silly if they occurred to him at all in his limited,
secure, posh little universe.

Back on Broadway traffic is at a standstill, and every so often
the man drives through an intersection that allows him to see through
the cross-streets and glimpse the overheating, noisey cars while he
flies past, weaving in and out of scum-ridden alleys. The man is now
just starting to relax, the tension of his unyeilding day oozing from
his tired muscles as he sinks more comfortably into his soothing
leather seat.

+++

And now somewhere else entirely, somewhere peaceful and white
and far, far away from the events of New York City at dusk, we can
look back in time, watching events as if on a movie screen. However,
the events seem almost real in their depiction, more horrific than a
movie can present. Only the truth can be so disturbing.

The time is the mid-eighties. The place is an abandoned
building in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant area. As the scene comes
into focus we can see the filthy stained walls and ceiling of a room
without light or power or heat. It is sometime in the winter and the
holes in the walls that used to be windows are covered up with
tattered sheets of plastic that were stolen from a construction
site. It doesn't help keep the cold out, just the biting wind that
flows through the holes all day and all night, the howling drafts
making it nearly impossible to sleep, and the freezing temperature
making it impossible to stay awake. A crack appears in the dirty
wall, and as we follow it down towards the filthy floor we begin to
hear the screams of the girl-woman in the room. She is not being
injured or murdered, but blood spills forth from her frigid body as
she comes into view, cold tears ripping down her face and her lips
and mouth twisted in agony. The girl-woman is called Rhea and she
has peeled back her rags in the cold, disgusting room in order to
lean against a wall and give birth.

Our view widens and we see the boy-man called George, his rough,
calloused hands holding Rhea gently while she screams. The pair are
not even eighteen years old and yet they appear much older, nearly
thirty at least. The two are penniless, hopeless pseudo-youth in the
abandoned building, and yet they are both full of true pride. They
are Squatters, homesteading in the unused building and free from rent
and the hassles of the everyday world. Free as well from heat and
electricity, the pair shiver and do their best to deliver their first
child into their world. They have no need for welfare or foodstamps
or government assistance, for they can rely on themselves and each
other as they make their mark upon the world that does not care.

In another time and another place things would most certainly
have been different, as George's Great-great-great-great grandfather
was in fact a nobleman in Scotland before he was murdered by the
grieving family of a deceased viscious enemy. The enemy was
murdered, but not by George's distant relative. The chaos resulting
from the mistake caused a long feud between the two families,
eventually destroying the MacDonough family. As George McDonald
comforts the mother of his child, the only memory of such a time is
the broken, towering husk of MacDonough Castle on the rolling green
hills on the southern edge of Scotland. Were it not for the feud,
George's family may still be considered small-time royalty in the
region, but things are not different and he knows not of his ancient,
meaningless birthright - he knows only of Rhea's pain and screams in
the night as he tries pointlessly to calm the girl-woman in his
arms.

[And in another time completely the sleek black car is moving
closer, now only thirteen blocks from The Boy.]

And so the stage is set for The Boy's entrance into the cold,
heartless world. It is not a grand entrance, in fact the world
continues to spin as his head appears, then his wet, steaming, bloody
body. The Boy is screaming against the cold as his father holds him
up to his mother, the glimmer of pure love shining in both of their
faces. Neither the love nor the swaddling rags he is wrapped in stop
the fierce cold drafts, and The Boy cries long into the night.

Again our reality shifts, this time into the early nineties.
Once again we see The Boy as he works along side his father in the
tenement. This time things are nicer from having the two males work
hard to improve their conditions. The windows are boarded up neatly
and the drafts are much less severe in the winters. Now they have
stolen a live electrical line from the sewers to provide heat and
electricity, but it came one winter too late, as The Boy's mother is
already dead from sickness during the harsh season. Neither George
nor The Boy are thinking of her while they work, or thinking of her
burial in a dumpster only a few months ago. They had no money for a
real funeral, of course, and out of respect for Rhea, George did not
call the authorities to collect her body.

[Seven blocks south and five blocks east the car turns right,-
zig-zagging its way north into Soho...]

George was now alone in educating The Boy at home, away from the
schools and keeping him safely out of "The System" that he hates so
much. The Boy is in fact well-educated in many ways, knowing how to
steal food and also the finer nuances of Shakespeare, as learned from
stolen books whenever possible. Despite the poor conditions and the
constant hunger, The Boy is happy and loves his father dearly, the
only one in the entire world he can trust.

When it came, the pair did not celebrate The Boy's eighth
birthday, if in fact either of them knew it was his birthday. That
morning George awakened The Boy early, before the sun was up. It was
time to tell The Boy he was on his own, to tell him never to let The
System get him. The Boy could not truly grasp those words until
several days later when his father had still not returned.

Early in the morning on The Boy's eighth birthday, the body of
an unidentified homeless man was scraped from the curb along Throop
street in the shadow of a tall building.

+++

And now we return to the lonely dark alley in Soho where The
Boy's feet are dangling several inches off the ground as his body is
hunched over into a foul smelling dumpster. Foul to us perhaps, but
The Boy knows the scent of restaraunt garbage and triumphantly plucks
a chunk of half-eaten chicken from the waste, a smile on his face as
he eats the soggy meat. Three blocks south and two blocks east a
menacing black Mercedes speeds closer, neither The Boy nor the driver
knowing what is about to happen. For now, of course, we can only
wait patiently and be happy for The Boy as he picks tonight's supper
from the bones of his new-found treasure.

It is now almost completely dark, and a few blocks away the man
in the Mercedes stops to wait for a passing car at an intersection,
finally turning on his headlights at the same time. As soon as the
car is out of the way the Mercedes' tires squeal as it lurches
forward on its way uptown. The man inside the car is now completely
at ease in his haven of leather and soft violins, looking forward to
a warm bath and a stiff martini when he arrives at his destination.
Despite his current activity, operating an automobile is practically
the last thing on his mind.

As the car whizzes past garbage bins in the back alley it is now
only one block south and one block east of The Boy, and reality
begins to shift once again, slightly different this time. We are
looking upon the same players on our same stage, but time is slowing
down, things are becoming even more in-focus than they were. Each
detail is painfully clear and we are, as we observe the scene, in a
state of hightened awareness. It is like this every single time it
happens and you never quite get used to it - the hundredth time still
scares the shit out of you as much as the first. It has nothing to
do with the blood and the screams, of course, you can adjust to that
and become somewhat numb. What truly gets you is that knot in your
stomach at the moment of impact, when every nerve ending is
tinglingly aware of the bone-snapping, skin-tearing collision of
flesh and steel. Just one of the hazards of the job, I guess, but
someone has to do it. Besides, the fringe benefits are out of this
world.

The man in the unwrinkled Armani suit steps on the gas, whipping
the car around the corner into a new alley, the tires shrieking the
whole way as he guns the car into life. In only forty or fifty yards
the tires will shriek again as he slams his brakes a moment too late,
but not yet. For now the tires are like those of an Indy racer,
nimbly gripping the cobblestones and bobbing left and right between
dumpsters, the mean headlights throwing moving shadows throughout the
alley.

The Boy has finished his chicken and is dipping once again into
the grab-bag of rotting food when he senses something is wrong.
Inside the dumpster, The Boy's ears perk up at the sound of squealing
tires. They are the finely tuned ears of a street kid, 'feeling'
trouble rather than hearing it. At first he thinks of the police,
the nasty blue men roaming the streets of New York but no, there are
no lights or sirens. He relaxes slightly, but he needs to
investigate the sounds - it could still be trouble. Abandoning his
jackpot, he swings his upper body backward and out of the bin to see
what lurks beyond. He is holding onto the lip of the bin with his
elbows, his feet still not touching firm ground, and when his eyes
are high enough to see the bright lights coming towards him, he
slips, falling onto his backside on the dirty cobblestones below.
And directly in the path of those menacing headlights.

Living in New York, The Boy knows well how to avoid the rolling
beasts and jumps to his feet, staring straight into the bright lights
coming his way. At this point he could recognize that it was too
late.

Inside the Mercedes, the man in the Armani suit was smiling
right at that moment. Even he will not remember why in a few
seconds, as he spots movement in the dark alley. His headlights
shine upon The Boy as he falls out of the trash bin and lands in the
street, directly in the line of those wide tires. Unsure of what had
happened, the man does not react until The Boy stands up only feet
from those headlights, a look of sheer terror in his face, a look the
man will not soon forget. They seem to lock eyes for a split second
as gallons of adrenalin pulse into each of their veins.

The tires do screech, of course, but you really can't hear them
anyway so it doesn't matter. What you can hear, and quite clearly
so, is the incessant beating in your ears, the pulsing bass sound of
two hearts in stereo, each inflamed with adrenalin and pumping away,
the noise drilling into your head. The beating only gets louder as
we see The Boy throw his arms forward out of reflex, as if he can
somehow stop the oncoming headlights from shattering his frail, tiny
body.

There is some relief, however, as at least one of those
heartbeats will stop completely in a moment, just be patient.

The marriage of flesh and car is complete in the same moment
that The Boy truly understands what is about to happen. His mind is
fully aware of the sounds and sights around him, all the way down to
the cool, silky feel of the gloss black paint. The first contact
comes from the passenger's side headlight against his knee. The Boy
is trying to turn out of the way as they collide, shattering both the
headlamp and the knee. The expensive, tiny wiper blade embeds itself
into The Boy's thigh like an arrow, sticking out on both sides of the
torn muscle. The movements to follow rip the blade out of its little
socket below the glass but not out of the thigh.

The impact on the knee whips his body into a spin towards the
hood and windshield of the black Mercedes. The Boy's head touches
the glass at exactly the same moment that his ribcage is crushed
against the hood. Interestingly enough, the glass does not crack
under the pressure, and neither does the head that bounces off of it,
leaving a tiny clump of bloody hair. It matters naught, however,
because you can already hear only one heartbeat pulsing in your
head. The Boy's short, painful life is now snuffed like a candle in
the wind, a thin whisp of smoke the only sign that it was ever lit.

The Boy who might have been called Lord Sean MacDonough in
another life is now dead, his heart peaceful within his twisted,
bleeding body. Ah, we can breathe a sigh of relief that the worst is
over, it is almost time for us to go to work - a bit of mending and
the boy will be as good as new, but not yet. The scene continues to
unfold.

When the Mercedes finally comes to a complete hault the lifeless
body is thrown clear, landing just in front of the bumper. The tiny
head hits the street with an odd sound, not unlike horses hooves clop
clopping on the cobblestones. The man inside the car is shaking and
gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. He sees the bloody
knot of hair stuck on the glass only eighteen inches from his face,
then he opens the door and vomits in the alley. His door open, his
face turned down to the street, the man sits thinking for what seems
like an eternity.

RUN. That was his first thought, and perfectly natural. But
this man knows nothing of police tactics, and things like blood
typing and paint-matching and hair folicles like those on his window
always catch the bad guy in the movies. Still, thoughts of dumping
the young body into a bin and driving homeward held a certain
attraction given his situation. Who would care about a garbage
digger boy?

It was only thirty seconds after the impact that he decided to
take the honest route, his hands shaking so badly that he couldn't
unbuckle his seatbelt. The man takes a deep breath and manages to
get out of the car to see if The Boy is alive. As he fearfully walks
to the front of his car, time stops all together. The man is frozen
in mid-step, all sounds and movements paused for a dramatic moment.

And now we can finally move into action. The scene is so
peaceful without the agony of passing time, like the panorama inside
a little glass globe before you shake it, making it snow. Everything
is silent as we mend the broken body on the street, giving him
another chance. First his knee, his ribs, his head. Only the
important items are tended to... after all, he was just hit by a car
and it would look awfully strange if he came up perfect. Then his
heart begins beating again along with the passage of time.

Such is the job of The Boywatchers, Incorporated. We tend to
those whose time hasn't yet come. You'll hear more about it later,
but for now bear with me, friend: I think you'll enjoy hearing the
rest of little Lord Sean's story. By restoring his life we gave him
another chance, and the tale begins as the man in the unwrinkled
Armani suit is cradling the unconscious but now-breathing body of
Sean McDonald in his arms.

***

Boywatchers Inc. , book one/part two by Reverend Jim

We were the only witnesses to the events, of course. The man
now stands in the alley illuminated by a single headlight, gently
holding The Boy in his arms. Immediately he could tell that The Boy
was alive and that most of the damage was caused by the tiny-
headlight-wiper blade embedded in The Boy's thigh. There was a
bleeding, disgusting looking gash on the young forehead, but this was
a small price to pay for the mishap. The man is thinking that surely
this boy must have a guardian angel looking after him.

The man pauses, considering the cars outside the alley. He
could call an ambulance, but it wouldn't be here for hours amidst the-
rush-hour traffic. Knowing that it is the wrong thing to do, the man
places the unconscious body in his passenger seat and gets back in
the car. His last resort was to drive The Boy to the hospital
himself. A little grime and blood on his leather was truly a small
price to pay for The Boy's safety, even such a filthy boy as this.

Again the car squeals away, weaving down side streets towards
the nearest hospital. Calmly he talks to himself, trying to figure
out the steps he needs to take. No doubt he would need a lawyer in
the event criminal charges were filed, but the Honorable Judge
Lockheim (or "Himey," as his friends at the club called him) should
be able to take care of that. The insurance company and the police
should be notified when he gets to the hospital, and not sooner - if
he calls now he will be forced to explain his actions, but at the
hospital he can claim to have been stricken with panic, not realizing
that he was leaving the scene of an accident, particularly one
involving a personal injury. All of these things occur to the cool,
analytical mind of the broker.

At the same time but two feet to the right, The Boy's eyes
remain closed as he becomes aware of the sensations of his body.
There is a dull, overall ache that bothers his head somewhat but
mostly the pain is disconnected, as if someone else is experiencing
it and he is merely a witness. The Boy's mind traverses the extent
of his limbs, exploring the reaches of his body and experiencing each
contusion as if it were a fine wine, delicately sampling the feelings
and moving on to the next. Eventually he comes to the conclusion
that he is in fact alive and reasonably well but does not remember
the accident at all, probably a good thing. He also decides that he
is moving in a vehicle of some sort. The last idea sets off little
alarm bells deep in The Boy's mind, but still it takes several more
minutes for his eyes to open and survey the situation. When they do
open, the first vision is of a tiny black rod sticking through a
bloody patch in his sweat pants. Instantly the thought that comes to
mind is that now he is absolutely, unquestionably positive that
foraging for food in Soho was a bad idea.

And the black, menacing Mercedes rolls on in the night.

Now for the second time in his life The Boy is terrified,
feeling like a trapped animal and completely aware of his position.
His eyes are open but he cannot seem to move, it hurts too much -
clearly he was beaten up and now is being taken somewhere. He can
only see one person in the car and it should be no problem at all to
free himself, but only once he can move his hand up to the pocket of
his sweat pants.

Minutes later the man is still driving quickly through unused
alleys when he sees The Boy move in the corner of his eye. He jerks
his head to the right just as a small pistol is being pointed at
him. Obviously a . 38 caliber "Saturday night special" handgun,
probably stolen from a pawn shop. His mind did not allow him to
think about grabbing it, clearly this boy was much faster than he.

And now The Boy speaks his first words since last Sunday when he
was begging at Grand Central Station. He practically gurgles the
words, choking them out one at a time. "Where ... going?" he asks
the man wearing the Armani suit.

The man thinks of saying alot of things, all of them rushing
through his mind in an instant, almost all of them aimed at getting
the gun away from The Boy. In the end he says simply, "We had an
accident, we're going to the hospital." His voice sounds calm and
belies the screams from his brain.

"NOOOOooooo!" screams The Boy, his face turning white as he
reels in pain from the stress of the man's words, and also from the
pain of his wounds when his body becomes tense.

+++

And now we can take a look at one of The Boy's better days if
you don't mind. This particular day he fell from a scaffolding and
broke his wrist. Keep in mind, I did not say a GOOD day, I said a
BETTER day.

It was three months after his father "left" and The Boy was
continuing to improve the tenement on his own. He had climbed to a
precarious perch atop the scaffolding to patch a hole in the ceiling
when he fell and, quite simply, broke his wrist. Frankly, the damage
was really normal, everyday boy type stuff.

Unfortunately The Boy didn't think so, and decided that the
course of action to take was to walk to a hospital - even old
Garfield thought he needed a doctor. The Boy knew that you were
supposed to go to a hospital if you got hurt, of course, but had
never been to one. To say the least, it was a new experience.

The Boy walked himself thirty-seven blocks to an emergency room
and waited in line between a gunshot wound and a spike-through-the
foot. Six hours later he had a contraption on his arm, but they
wouldn't let him leave. He heard whispers of police and of
'temporary shelters' and of courts. These were the buzzwords of The
System that his father had warned him about. These were the sure
signs of trouble, and it was the first time he felt the trapped
animal feeling in his stomach. The Boy waited until no one was
looking and slipped out past the white-coats into the street, then
walked thirty-seven blocks home.

A few weeks later his hand started working again so he used a
razorblade to cut the contraption from his skin. His hand was
working again indeed, but it did nothing for his image of hospitals.

And eleven months before he pointed it at the man in the
Mercedes Benz, The Boy unearthed the gun from a trash bin near his
tenement. It was likely tossed into the dumpster after being used
for a murder, but this did not matter. It was a priceless jewel to
find, worth more than almost any other treasure he could have come
across. There were no bullets to go with it, but even then he knew
that sometimes a gun works just as well without them.

Unfortunately the gun still requires that the operator is
conscious, as the boy would learn within the hour as he tries to
climb steps with a tiny wiper blade stuck in his thigh. But not
yet.

+++

Now back in the present, the gun is working quite well without
bullets as the man slows the car to a stop in an alleyway. "You've
been hit by a car," the man says. "You need a doctor."

The Boy somehow knew that it was true and he did need a doctor.
But he also knew that he would rather die than go to a hospital.
Damn. If only his body were working properly he could jump out of
this car and run away, but for now he wouldn't make it to the end of
the block. "Drop me off in Bed-Stuy," he mumbles.

This car would certainly make an entrance there. If he didn't
stop for any lights the man might even make it out alive. Bedford
Stuyvesant was out of the question. "I promise I won't turn you in,
kid," he says, turning on his disarming sales-meeting charm. "I have
my own private doctor, he can take care of you. No one will know."

Despite his better judgements, The Boy remains silent. He knew
that his body was in bad shape. What was the alternative? The Boy
does not have the will to object as the car starts moving again and
the man picks up a cellular phone.

"Nathan? I've got an emergency - can you meet me at the
condo?" he speaks into the phone and looks down at The Boy. Then he
adds, "... and bring your kit."

As the car pulls into its garage The Boy is fighting to stay
awake and keep the gun pointed at his driver. The car stops and the
pair get out, a well-dressed man being followed by a tiny, hunched,
limping, bleeding, smelly street kid whose leg is impaled by a wiper
blade. A more surreal scene could only exist in the world of art.

The man moves quietly up the stairs. The Boy does his best to
follow but five steps later the pain overcomes him. Unconsciousness
is almost welcomed as The Boy collapses on the steps, utterly
exhausted. Had he been fully conscious, The Boy would surely have
lacked the energy to point a gun or make threats.

Somewhere else Dr. Nathan Abromowitz sits on a couch bouncing
his knee nervously as he waits. The good doctor had faithfully come
to his friend's aid, and there is no one here. He looks out through
a picture window to see nearly all of Central Park from this
location, absently wondering what the emergency was. Certainly it
didn't really matter, but if this was a joke he would be upset. To
pass the time Dr. Abromowitz unfolds his white laboratory coat and
puts it on, now looking much more like a doctor, complete with
dangling stethoscope.

Minutes later two things are happening simultaneously. The man
in the Armani suit is carrying both a gun and The Boy up the stairs
while, at the same time but in a different space entirely The Boy is
flying. Images of oceans and of rolling green hills are flowing past
below him and he watches from his safe vantage point in the clouds.
Everything is peaceful in this universe, there is no need to return
to the one from which he came, the one filled with pain and hunger
and fear.

And now the eyes of the good doctor are bulging. "What...?" he
is trying to say, but the words don't seem to come. A gun is dropped
onto a table and the bloody body of a young boy is placed on the
couch. The good doctor involunarily rises to his feet, getting out
of the way of his friend.

"No questions, Nathan," the man says. "Just fix him - I'll
explain later." As if to emphasize that he means business, the man
pulls off his suit coat, noticing for the first time that it is
becoming wrinkled.

The good doctor is making some futile gestures with his hands
and his mouth is opening and closing, but no words are coming out. A
full thirty seconds later he concludes that he needs to do
something. The doctor is supposed to report things like this, but he
implicitly trusts the man. There must be a good reason for all of
this - The Boy, the gun and the tiny wiper blade. He produces a pair
of sharp, gleaming surgical stainless steel scissors and gets to work
while the man collapses into a chair, rubbing his temples.

He kneels beside the couch and carefully strips away the grungy
clothing with a doctor's hands. He cleans and disinfects each wound
gently and The Boy does not return to consciousness. The Boy's
pupils are not dilated, thank the lord. The head wound is not
serious. One hour, thirteen stitches and two rolls of gauze later
his task is complete.

The two men get to their feet at the same time, each fighting to
speak first. The doctor wins.

"This is illegal, Rick," he begins with a cold look in his
eyes. "I don't even want to hear about it." Then he hands over a
couple of small packages. "When he wakes up give him these for pain,
and use the surgical soap to wash the rest of his body to prevent
infection. If he gets a fever you better get him to the hospital
quick." He pauses to look down at The Boy on the couch, wearing only
dirty underwear and gauze, then adds, "I wasn't even here," and picks
up his medical bag.

Richard Laverne Siegal grabs his friend's elbow. "Thanks," he
says, handing the doctor a business card with the name of a company
scribbled on the back. "Every penny you have, Nate," the man says,
trading one impropriety for another. He owed the doctor quite a bit,
and this should begin to repay it. If the doctor used the inside
information he would make a bundle.

The doctor silently lets himself out.

+++

A long, dark wooden conference table stretches the length of the
room, almost farther than you can see. At regular intervals there
are frosty glass pitchers of icewater, each resting on a clean white
doily. Towering windows line one side of the room, peering out into
the Milky Way. There is no bright sunshine or fancy manicured
landscape, only a black sky with tiny white stars clustered
throughout. It would appear that the room is simply floating in
space.

The voices fade in, echoing in the long hall. "... the third
time this week! What are you going to do about it, Dithers!" The
last comment was intended for the Executive Vice President. The
ancient, tottering Chairman sits at the head of the table, banging
his fist against the wood and screaming about the latest sales
figures. It seems that ever since that damn renaissance period on
Earth, the planet has been losing young boys at an alarming rate.

The one called Dithers speaks up nervously, "Marketing
absolutely insisted that we needed some culture for the planet to
sell, sir." He is rifling through papers as he moves on. "Our
research shows that Sociology stratified the planet, and that is the
root cause."

The man from the Sociology department pipes up from down the
table. "Yes, but on this budget we had to create an upper class in
order to fuel the demand for art."

The Chairman is steaming mad now, angry at the little men
passing the buck. "We've got over forty ALBA units tied up in this
planet! How are we going to sell it when the kids keep dying!" He
is leaning forward on his fingertips, glaring down the table at all
the nervous suits.

I suppose a mere human would mistake these men for Gods or
something, but no. This is simply a money-making corporation like
any other. It just so happens that their business is creating and
selling planets.

"We could get The Boywatchers, sir," comes a voice from far down
the table. Immediately a murmur arises from the room as everyone
tries to see who spoke the blasphemous words. The last person to say
such a thing ended up sweeping bathrooms on Valius-Seven.

The Chairman is still leaning foward over the table, a vein
bulging from his forehead. "Who said that," he asks in a hoarse
voice.

A hush falls over the Board of Directors as a nervous, handsome
young executive stands up at the other end of the table. "Johnson,
sir," his voice cracking as he speaks.

The Chairman is not unreasonable, however. He carefully thinks
of his options and it takes a long time for him to speak. The
Boywatchers are a guaranteed but expensive solution. You could hear
a pin drop in the silent room as everyone waits for the axe to fall.
Finally the Chairman says, "Do it. We are adjourned."

And that's our business - watching boys, mostly. Right now
Earth is in phase one, approximately two thousand Earth years. Some
of us handle the social changes while some of us (to keep the
customer happy) handle individual cases. Too bad actually, because
it would take much less time if we only worried about the social
problems.

But then we wouldn't have the best part: seeing how things turn
out. I could always just look into the future, but somehow it isn't
the same once you become involved with a boy. I know what the rules
are, but I guess I've gone and fallen in love with another one this
time. Who cares, I just want to see the end.

+++

Richard Laverne Siegal has moved The Boy to the guest room and
is now gently giving him a surgical-soap sponge bath. He started
with the face and, surprisingly enough, it glowed with beauty when he
got the scum off. The hair would have to wait for a conscious
patient. He rolls The Boy onto his stomach and bathes the backs of
his long, thin legs and his shoulders. His hands are still shaking
lightly against the clean, soft skin on the small of The Boy's back.
Ever so carefully he returns to The Boy's front, wiping away dirt
from every inch of skin as he goes. He lifts each arm and curves the
warm, soapy sponge through the armpits, down the ribs and over the
chest.

The job nearly complete, the man looks down at the worn cotton
underwear, wondering what he should do. The underwear used to be
white but is now grey with dirt and the elastic is useless, the leg
holes displaying young boy-testicles on one side. The man looks at
the tiny bulge in the center and becomes noticably excited. His
heartbeat quickens as he gently slides the underwear down and over
the gauze on the left thigh.

"Doctor's orders," the man thinks to himself as he admires the
body laying before him. Somehow everything had changed in the last
few minutes and the man knew why. Often he fantasized about young
boys but had never been this close to one before, and he liked the
feeling. This man was not daring enough to molest the child but
definately enjoyed the feelings he got from cleaning the young,
unconscious body.

Slowly he brushes the sponge across The Boy's pelvis, erasing an
obvious line of dirt where the underwear had hugged the body. Gently
the sponge moves across the tiny uncircumcised penis, soaping it up
fully and removing days worth of dirt. The man lifts the penis in
two fingers and slowly pulls the foreskin back to soap the tiny
purplish head completely. He moves on, using the same care on the
tiny sack below, lifting it to clean the crevices below.

Carefully the man spreads the lean legs and lifts the right one
so he can gently clean The Boy's bottom. He sponges the tiny pink
hole and the crack leading up the the scrotum, now hanging softly
below the penis like some sort of necklace.

The penis is already done but the man returns to it. Holding it
between his fingers he slides the foreskin down over the tip, then
lets it go, watching the skin slide back on its own. It is both
amusing and beautiful to watch. The man caresses the tiny, soapy
genitals with pure, unbridled joy and slowly the penis becomes erect
in his playful fingers.

THE SMELL IS WRONG, The Boy's nose twitches slightly. Entirely
too many things had been going wrong lately and his mind is getting
slower. Eventually the eyes are forced open to see exactly what was
wrong with the smell. Alot of things are wrong, actually - there is
bright light peeking through between the dark curtains and he can
examine everything in the room. To start with, it isn't home. But
that is the least of his problems ... he spots the man in the
wrinkled Armani suit sleeping on the floor next to the bed. At first
his body jerks, causing bolts of pain in his head, but he doesn't
make a sound.

Gradually everything comes back, at least the parts that
happened while he was conscious. Still he does not recall being hit
by a car, but he remembers being told that part. He is scared, but
he is used to that by now and his mind is as satisfied as it is going
to get. The Boy drifts back to sleep.

The man woke up and left the room at about seven that morning to
make a phone call. He had his secretary clear his schedule for a few
days without explanation. The Boy is awake again when he returns.

The man stops dead in the doorway when he sees The Boy's eyes
are open. Then he thinks better of it and moves aside, hoping The
Boy doesn't feel trapped.

"Where is this?" The Boy asks from the bed, now wearing one of
the man's clean white t-shirts. His dirty underwear are still lying
on the floor. For some reason he is relaxed and at ease with the
stranger.

"My home on Central Park," the man says. Thinking quickly he
adds, "You can have your gun back and you can leave whenever you want
to." He is giving the child a disarming smile and keeping his hands
in plain view. "I'm Rick," he says. "Who are you?"

In a little-boy voice he answers simply, "Sean." Then, matching
the man question-for-question, "What happened?"

"I hit you with my car in an alley," he starts. Normally he
wouldn't say such a self-incriminating thing, but he knows The Boy is
not in a position to sue him, and will probably appreciate the
bluntness. "You didn't want to go to the hospital so my doctor
patched you up here." The man moves closer and sits in a chair near
the bed. "Do you have parents?" He is wondering about the off
chance that someone might be worrying about the poor, scrawny kid.

The Boy shakes his head, thinking about how he helped bury his
mother. It was awfully cold, and he remembers complaining about
having to go outside to dispose of the body.

"As soon as you're strong enough you can have a bath if you
like," the man says, looking at the grimy hair mopped on The Boy's
head. He thinks for a moment and then asks if The Boy is hungry.
The Boy's eyes light up as he nods his head. "Well what do you like
to eat?"

"Meat," says The Boy, just beginning to remember how hungry he
is.

The man chuckles to himself as he walks out of the room. It's
not exactly breakfast-food, but there might be some Filet Mignon in
the fridge.

+++

And at some time in the past The Boy is begging on a street
corner in Greenwich Village when a passing faggot pinches his ass and
puts a dollar in his styrofoam cup. The Boy just glares at the queer
who is swaggering away down the block. He knows what they are
thinking, of course, he's seen it in the disgusting magazines. The
nice thing about the faggots is that they usually give him more
money, each of them eyeing him up and down and smiling. It feels
nice to be admired by the men, but his body is not for sale at any
price and he always turns down their lude offers. Most of them were
harmless, overly-friendly types, really. But not the junkies.

The problem with the junkies was you didn't know what to expect
from them, each was different but they were all crazy. Sometimes
they would give you money, sometimes they would take your money,
sometimes they just staggered around the street bumping into things.
But every so often you meet one in an alley that wants something else
entirely.

The Boy is rooting through a dumpster at night in Bed-Stuy now.
The dumpster is behind an auto-body shop so he doesn't expect to find
food, he is looking instead for scraps for the tenement. Things
aren't going well and he is just about to search for greener pastures
when it happens.

A tremendous black man has come up behind him, but The Boy's
perky ears have failed, he does not notice as the giant is leaning
over the bin to grab him. The man is very muscular, wearing only
jeans and a faded, tattered denim vest. He wears no shirt and the
open vest reveals a hairy, bulging chest. The man has whacked-out,
insane eyes, and the sinister grin on his face is clearly the result
of abusing some substance or other.

With one strong arm the man grabs ahold of the back of The Boy's
pants and lifts the small body from within. Quickly he sizes The Boy
up and hurls him headlong across the alley into a stack of boxes. In
pain The Boy struggles to his feet, backing slowly away from the
junkie in the alley. A few feet later he bumps into a brick wall,
however, and there is just no other place to go but forward.

The evil eyes look down upon the squirming boy with joy. Such a
cute little boy, after all. "Take off your pants!" he screams,
already reaching for his belt buckle. He wasn't going to take any
shit from the little white street kid.

The Boy's terrified eyes lock onto the wild eyes of his
tormentor. He holds the gaze defiantly, not making any move to do
what he is told. But then the man takes a menacing step towards The
Boy. He is growling visciously, still pulling at his belt.

"NOW!" the man barks, finally freeing his belt and dangling it
in front of him. For emphasis he raises his hand high above his head
and whips the belt down onto a wooden crate, causing a loud,
disturbing crack.

The Boy jumps into action. Still he holds the gaze of the man
in the alley, their eyes locked steady as The Boy hooks his thumbs in
the waistband of his sweatpants. He pauses for a split second, the
fearful eyes searching those of his captor... they mean business.
Slowly The Boy lowers his clothing to his ankles, his face turned up
towards the man the whole time.

The man takes two gigantic strides towards The Boy, saying "This
here's MY place, you got it?" grabbing the child by the arm and
swinging him off his feet. "I'm gonna teach you good."

Sean's screams fill the alley. They continue for the next
several minutes, actually, but this is Bed-Stuy. If anyone hears the
noise it does not matter. No one will come to his rescue.

The man sits down on a knocked over fifty-five gallon drum,
laying The Boy upside down on his lap. The man stares down at the
smooth white bottom on his lap and grins. He has an erection in his
jeans, but it isn't meant to fuck The Boy with. His left hand holds
the squirming boy's arms behind his back and his right hand holds a
wide black leather belt.

The screams only get slightly louder as he brings the belt down
with full force upon the struggling white bottom, leaving a bright
red strip of skin and a line of fine little droplets of blood. The
man himself can only stand a few strokes like this before he drops
the belt and beats The Boy with his hand.

The evil eyes are red, bloodshot globes of hate as the man stops
the beating. He shudders as his orgasm explodes in his jeans. Then
he picks the whimpering boy up and sets him on his feet so his tiny
white penis is in plain view. The man's crazy eyes are locked onto
their target, the innocently dangling penis. He drops to his knees
and instantly takes it into his mouth, slurping all over it and
biting into the foreskin with his teeth.

The Boy with the stinging bottom is now standing in the alley
thinking only of how to get away. This was his chance, the man was
on his knees. There didn't appear to be any simple solution,
however. The man would grab him when he tried to run. Other options
exhausted The Boy needs to hurt the man, and he begins searching for
the right tool for the job.

He is cornered between the dumpster and a brick wall. Standing
in that same corner is a dirty old lead pipe, about the size of a
baseball bat, propped up neatly with one end in easy reach.

Surely he would thank me if he knew how.

Silently The Boy raises the pipe in front of his chest, just
above the crazy man's head. He grips it with both hands like a
toilet plunger as he calmly slams it down, then brings it up and
slams it down again. The huge body falls out of his way.

The Boy takes his time getting dressed, collecting his thoughts
as well as his clothes. His bottom hurt, but that was nothing
compared to the fear in his stomach even now that the man lay
unmoving in the alley. As if to compensate for his humiliation, The
Boy urinates on the man's clothing, pulls up his sweats, and then
limps from the alley.

***

Back into the present we go, this time a much happier scene as
Sean lays in a soft bed, using his fingers to eat a filet mignon that
is almost larger than his head. It is probably around eight o'clock
in the morning and everything is calm. A single early-morning
sunbeam shines through the drapes, casting a bright streak across an
antique oriental carpet at the foot of the bed.

The Boy is certainly feeling better now, better than an hour ago
and much better than last night. The nervous street kid seems at
ease in the comfortable bed but his thoughts are quickly turning to
escape. For some reason he trusts the man - his way of life demanded
a good judge of character - but still he is unsure if the man might
call the police. His young blue eyes scan the room, checking for
valuables. There are various pieces of expensive art and tasteful
decorations but no easy-to-sell consumer electronics or jewelry
boxes. He is still trying to decide about whether to sneak out or
not when the man enters the room again, this time carrying a bottle
of Coke in one hand. Tucked neatly in the other arm is a tiny,-
bronze-colored puppy.

The man strides towards the bed, placing the bottle on the table
beside The Boy and taking away the now-empty dinner tray. The tray
holds a slender Waterford crystal vase that contains a single long
stemmed rose... the china plate is sparklingly clean, completely
devoid of vegetables, the steak and its juices. The silverware is
untouched, still wrapped tightly in the fine linen napkin.

Carefully the man places the softly whimpering puppy on The
Boy's lap and then sits down. "Sean, this is my new puppy," the man
says, as if making a formal introduction. "It's a Rhodesian
Ridgeback."

This is certainly an interesting event as The Boy softly strokes
the animal's head and smiles. "What do you call it?" asks Sean,
barely glancing at the man. He has changed from yesterday's suit and
is now looking quite comfortable in khaki pants and a maroon polo
shirt.

The man leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He
clasps his hands together loosely and looks at The Boy and the
puppy. "I haven't named him yet," he says. "Would you like to?" he
asks hopefully.

But it is already too late, The Boy has drifted away. His eyes
remain open and he continues to stroke the soft animal but his mind
is somewhere else, in another time - perhaps even a different life.
The Boy is thinking of the exotic spiders, rare plants and strange
customs of another part of the world. He is drifting as if on a
cloud, dreaming of the high seas and exploring wild terrain that lies
far away in both distance and time.

Full minutes tick past on the clock as the man waits for an
answer, his soft, patient eyes studying The Boy's face.

The Boy returns suddenly, speaking as if he hadn't missed a
single moment. "Fitzroy," he says, looking into the dog's face.

GOOD GOD. The man's jaw drops open and if he weren't supported
by the chair he would most certainly have hit the floor. A sound is
gurgling in his throat but the shocked man's words will not come
out. It was not simply the obscure literary reference that caused
this reaction, it was the 'correctness' of the association. The man
does his best to pull himself together - after all the chances are a-
million-to-one that The Boy truly knows what he just said.

"W-w-what?" the man whispers.

"Fitzroy," repeats The Boy, glancing over at the man for the
first time. He looks as if he's seen a ghost. "After the captain."

The barely-coherent man falls back into the chair, his arms
flopped over the sides. The one and only time he read Charles
Darwin's "The Voyage of the Beagle" was in college - the man is-
thirty-two now so it must have been more than ten years ago. He
still remembers the captain from the story, Fitz Roy, as the ship
sails around the world on an anthropological mission. Fitz Roy was
captain of ... Her Majesty's Ship Beagle. Even in college the well
learned man had trouble finishing the several-hundred page book.

Silently the man shifts his mental gears, preparing himself for
a different level of conversation. He is used to thinking on his
feet but... this? "You've read the book?" he asks, eager for an
explanation.

Sean nods his head - it is one of his favorite books, even if
his tattered copy is missing a few pages. "I memorized alot of it.
Want to hear?" he asks. He is not trying to show off, it is more
like he is offering a gift to Rick, one of forgiveness or possibly
one of friendship.

The man nods, his eyes wide.

Sean begins to drift away again, his eyes looking at something-
not-in-this-room as his soft voice whispers a wonderful, ultra
Darwinian monologue:

"Police and justice are quite inefficient. If a man who is poor
commits murder and is taken, he will be imprisoned, and perhaps even
shot; but if he is rich and has friends, he may rely on it no very
severe consequence will ensue. It is curious that the most
respectable inhabitants of the country invariably assist a murderer
to escape: they seem to think that the individual sins against the
government, and not against the people."

For the last part, Sean turns to the man and looks him in the
eye:

"A traveller has no protection besides his fire-arms; and the
constant habit of carrying them is the main check to more frequent
robberies."

And then Richard Laverne Siegal was speechless.

+++

Right this minute great wheels are turning, grinding steel
against steel. I refer not only to the mental muscles of one Richard
L. Siegal but also to the Great Work happening all around us each
second. In the United States the courts are banning art while the
Secret Police huddle in dark conferences, conspiring to burn books.
Meanwhile in parts of Asia there are naked, sickly childen wandering
through the streets who would eat a book if they ever had the good
fortune to find one.

I speak of the social changes. Our methods seem like utter
lunacy at first glance but I assure you these are proven, time-tested
strategies that never fail. As for Earth, we were called in a little
too late to reverse the damage - our only recourse was to accelerate
it.

Heresy? Madness? Perhaps, but it works. In this particular
case, the social scientists found that most of the governments around
the planet were suppressing the true voices of the people. Natural,
acceptable social changes were occurring, balancing the scales on
their own, but the ruling classes preferred stability over change.
Literally trillions were spent on prisons to contain the phenomenon,
but it will not help. Burning books, banning speech and expression,
detaining and murdering the components of change only increase the
effect exponentially.

In desperation, fringe groups are forming and mustering their
tiny voices. Soon it will become unstoppable as the governments are
torn from their entrenched positions. The healing process begins
when everyone is equal and no one may force their will upon another.
We fuel this process with technology.

By stimulating cheap technology we undermine the governments, we
undermine the laws and the rules and the snooping eyes of Big
Brother. And furthermore we give the quickly-swelling ranks of the
oppressed a tool for unsuppressable communication.

And some day, perhaps hundreds of years from now, the system
will collapse, giving birth to a new society where equality and peace
prevail. But not yet.

+++

Sean tries hard to play with the puppy on his lap but the
pressure on his bladder is getting quite uncomfortable. "I need to
go to the bathroom," he says, setting Fitzroy to one side.

The man shakes his head, pulling himself together. In a moment
he realizes what The Boy said and tries to come up with something
reasonable to say. "Can you sit up?" he asks, thinking of Sean's
condition.

In answer to the question Sean sits up on his elbows and pulls
his body higher on the bed so he can lean against the headboard. He
nods at the man.

Siegal rises to approach the bed. Very slowly he peels the
covers back, inch by inch revealing the damage to The Boy for the
first time. The large white t-shirt that Sean is wearing has bunched
itself up around his waist, presenting a gauze-wrapped thigh and a
badly bruised knee. The man is treated to a momentary flash of
boyhood but quickly it disappears beneath the cotton shirt.

Sean is looking intently at his swollen knee and its various
shades of purple. It doesn't actually seem to hurt but he cringes
anyway at the sight. In a moment he forces himself to bend it. His
face scrunches up and it takes all of his might to lift the leg, but
it seems to be working.

Rick kneels beside the bed and gently grips Sean's slender
calves, gingerly helping to swing his legs over the edge of the bed.
There are no screams, no tears. Everything is going well and The Boy
is smiling.

Sean hops down from the bed and lands on his right foot, his
left knee raised slightly. Slowly, tentatively he puts weight onto
the foot. At some point he stops, suddenly aware of the pain -
intense, lightning jolts of electricty are pulsing from either the
wounded knee or the formerly-impaled thigh, a delayed reaction from
his damaged body. He jerks his weight off the leg, sending more
shock waves coursing through his tiny body. His lips are puckered as
if he is trying to kiss something invisible before him.

Rick moves closer and almost involuntarily Sean reaches out to
grab ahold of his waist for support. This room, like all the others
in the fine condominium has an attached private bathroom and Sean
hobbles towards the closed door with a little help. Rick opens the
door to reveal a sparkling white commode and Sean immediately spins
around and sits on it, not to use but instead to rest on after the
seemingly long walk.

Sean lets out a long, hard breath. In a moment the room stops
spinning and he remembers why he came here. Supporting himself with
the sink he rises and reaches behind himself to raise the upper part
of the toilet lid. Then he looks down and realizes that he is still
wearing the white cotton t-shirt that is so huge on him that it
completely covers his knees. Without so much as a glance at Rick he
lifts it up and, completely without shame or modesty, pulls it over
his head and drops it onto the floor.

This out of the way The Boy sits down to urinate.

Rick is actually quite surprised but he does not let it show.
He doesn't want to give the child the impression that he SHOULD be
embarrassed or something. Come to think of it, this should be a
perfectly natural attitude for The Boy. Afterall, who would have
taught him the concept of shame? Still he can't help but admire the
slim, naked, urinating body before him - there was something quite
feminine about The Boy. In fact, were it not for the obvious male
genitalia, he could easily pass for a girl. Sean's long blonde hair
frames a perfectly soft, sweet face and his body is completely
undeveloped, leaving him not male or female, but something in
between. "The doctor says you need a bath, Sean," he says, already
thinking of a wet, sparkling boy. "Would you like to give it a
try?"

Sean looks as nervous as a person is capable of looking while
using a toilet. "Uh, I think it might ... " he starts out but
midway through the sentence he looks up, surveying the bathroom for
the first time. He had neglected to notice everything else in the
room, probably from pain and exhaustion. Now he sees the lush green
tile walls and floors, the matching fluffy green towels, and an-
emerald-green tub, surrounded on three sides by what can only be
described as a small rain forest. Potted plants and small trees rest
upon a myriad of green-tiled shelves built right into the wall,
sloping out from several feet above the tub in a tiered fashion. The
steps of the tier appear to be at completely random heights, giving a
fuller look to the lush flora. And right in the middle of this
jungle is the biggest tub Sean has ever seen, if in fact it can be
called a tub at all. Big enough for at least two or three adults,
the great green vessel has a molded ridge around inside, apparently
(as best Sean can calculate) for small people to sit on. Immediately
above the center of the tub is a clear glass skylight, facing up
towards the stars. Of course, there are no stars in New York City
although the sky's lavendar glow above is quite pretty. The entire
scene is beautiful, and the bath seems to call him forth. He changes
his tune, finishing the sentence, "... well, um, okay I guess, I
mean if the doctor said."

As if he expected this answer, Rick is already fiddling with
knobs, causing a foot-wide waterfall to flow forth from a brass
fixture in the wall - no simple faucets here. He kneels before the-
potted-boy and with soft, gentle tones whispers, "We're going to have
to take off your bandages, Sean." His eyes are filled with
understanding and compassion for The Boy and his wounds.

The Boy regards his bandages - his left hand strokes his thigh
gently and then, as if just realizing its existence, he reaches up
and tenderly dabs his fingers on his forehead. The bandage on his
head is held on by two parallel strips of white medical tape, it
shouldn't be difficult to remove. The thigh might be more of a
problem. He gives Rick a look of unspoken approval, but also one of
slight fear and hesitation and ... trust.

Rick reaches up and without incident removes the gauze from
Sean's forehead, revealing both a nasty looking, stitched-up gash and
a red stain on the bandage. "Would you like to see it?" he asks
softly. Sean nods and he takes a hand mirror from the basin. While
the child is curiously examining the wound in the mirror, Rick takes
advantage of the distraction and removes the knee bandage,
unravelling it around and around the tiny thigh. However, his eyes
are fixed elsewhere and with each pass around the leg he is getting
more and more excited, panting lightly as he admires the tiny penis
dangling only twelve inches from his face. Naturally it isn't very
big although the extended foreskin makes it appear larger. The
entire penis is about two inches long with another half an inch of
foreskin forming a tiny nipple-like pucker at the end. Despite the
shround, the head can easily be discerned under scrutiny as the tiny
crown forms a delicate ridge, rippling slightly the otherwise
perfectly smooth skin. All too soon Rick runs out of bandage to
unravel and the last strip clings lightly to the wounds as he peels
it off.

Sean's eyes view the punctures in his thigh with wonder... No,
make that awe, or perhaps even pride. Tiny black stitches mark the
entry and exit points of the foreign object, and despite the ugliness
it doesn't seem to hurt very much, at least not right this minute.

The tub full, Rick returns to business. He moves around to the
side of the toilet, putting one hand beneath Sean's knees and one on
his back. Reflexively, anticipating what is about to happen, The Boy
drapes a hand behind Rick's neck to hang on. "Ready?" the man asks,
trying to sound as comforting as possible. Every ounce of his energy
is directed simply at setting the child at ease. Sean nods and Rick
lifts.

At first Sean lets out a tiny yelp, but it seems to have been
caused by the lifting motion. He holds on tighter around Rick's
neck, with both hands now, as they lurch towards the warm water.
With what can only be described as a father's love, Rick places the
frail boy into the tub, resting him gently onto the platform. He
then lifts the damaged leg, setting it down on another ledge across
the tub to make it more comfortable. "Enjoy the water, Sean," he
says, "I'll be right back." With that he leaves the room, returning
a moment later with the small bottle of surgical soap. He sets it on
the edge of the tub, then with a glance at Sean, untucks his shirt
and pulls it over his head. He drops the maroon polo to the floor
and kneels ontop of it, preparing (for the first time in his life) to
bathe a boy.

For his part, Sean doesn't mind being treated like a baby. He
could even get used to it given a little time, but he hasn't decided
yet whether to give it time. Somewhere in the back of his mind he
still thinks of the dark, lonely squalor of the squat in Bed-Stuy and
also for the long-gone parents who, despite their lack of money,
always treated him like the center of the universe. This does not
change the fact that he appreciates the attention from Rick and even
with a somewhat broken body he slowly begins to smile and giggle and
enjoy the first bath he remembers having in his entire life.

+++

On the streets it isn't very easy to bathe. In fact it is all
but impossible because it requires finding water that is cleaner than
yourself. In the summer there is always a kind benefactor to the
neighborhood who opens up a fireplug to allow the kids to play or the
homeless to wash. The rest of the year is more difficult, although
you can sometimes find a public restroom to use. Bathing your entire
body from a sink is hard, especially if other people are using the
room at the same time.

Alot of the homeless people could bathe at shelters, but not
Sean. First of all, he was not homeless and he was proud of his
tenement in Bed-Stuy. The lack of running water did nothing to
tarnish his image of the home that he could truly call his own.
Aside from that he knew that he could never go to a shelter for
anything - a boy his age showing up without family would certainly
arouse suspicion if not actual police.

His fate predetermined, Sean would do his best in public
restrooms and sometimes go uncleaned for many weeks at a time. At
one point while bathing in a fast food restaraunt (as fast as he
could before being thrown out) he met a Crazy. Crazies were neither
junkies nor faggots, they were just plain crazy for no apparent
reason. This particular old Crazy said a few words that Sean still
had not forgotten: "Ten two letter words, boy!" he ranted, not
making any sense at all to The Boy. "Ten, count them. Count the
letters," he wailed on with a missing eye and a strange grin that
showed matching teeth. "IF IT IS TO BE IT IS UP TO ME! See kid? I
told you," the Crazy went on, babbling to himself as he danced out of
the restroom.

Sean dismissed the Crazy and finished scrubbing. It wasn't
until later that night that the whole thing made sense to him. "If
it is to be, it is up to me," he said to himself, just then
understanding what the words meant. At this point he hadn't done any
work to the squat since his father left, but suddenly he knew what he
had to do. The home was his now, and he would begin working on it
again the next day.

Within twenty-four hours Sean had visited a construction site
for parts and built a really lousy bookshelf. But it was his
bookshelf and it held Sean's books with pride, including the tattered
copy of "The Voyage of the Beagle" he found in a dumpster and fell in
love with. By now his collection of books had swelled to twenty,
maybe thirty and most were classics by authors like Melville or
Joyce. And yet the most well-loved book on the shelf was by Charles
Darwin.

Each night Sean would lie in bed and read something. It really
didn't matter what it was but he would stay up later if it was either
something new or something he cherished. Over the years since his
childhood it had become a routine, an unbreakable habit and he could
not sleep without reading something first. His parents had fueled
the fire by reading massive chunks of the Communist Manifesto or
Greek mythology to him and eventually even they tired of his thirst
for knowledge, resorting to an encyclopedia or even the damned Holy
Bible to get him to sleep.

+++

"Thats a boy," says Rick, gently carressing Sean's body with a
wash cloth and surgical soap. Sean has closed his eyes and stretched
out in the warm water, the monstrous vessel providing more than
enough room for his tiny frame. The man's large hands gently stroke
The Boy's tiny chest, his slim stomach and his arms. Despite his
practically sexless appearance, Sean is an incredible sensuous boy
and completely at ease in the tub. The washing quickly becomes more
of a massage than a bath and the man's hands roam the skinny body
with care, tenderly kneading and carressing the baby-soft skin from
head to toe.

Before long Sean begins to make soft noises beneath the gentle
ministrations. "Oohhh," he moans softly, parting his legs as the man
approaches his groin. As the washcloth slips between his legs he
arches his hips slightly, pressuring against the man's hand. It
feels so good and his mind is elsewhere - just like reading books, he
thinks, but much more intense. The escape from reality is an end
unto itself and he is lost in ecstasy under the tender caresses.

Rick's caresses become steady, repetitive strokes around the
tiny genitals in his hand, tracing tiny circles on the inner thighs
and slow, gentle strokes along the crack below Sean's testicles.
Minutes of soft moaning passes and the man is completely unsurprised
to discover a firm, erect little penis in his hands. He gently
strokes it up and down with the washcloth and the moans become louder
and more focused as Sean's body twitches involuntarily from the
pleasure.

Sean is gone completely now, awash in hot, pulsing waves of
bliss in the warm water. His mind and body are one, united in
passion. The man's touch is so gentle, so loving... Sean believed
that this was not dirty like the passing faggots or the junkie in the
alley; this was beautiful, like James Joyce. The fact remained that
he did not know what was happening, only that it felt wonderful to be
with the stranger above, the man who had (only fourteen hours ago)
killed the body in the tub. Of course neither of them knew what had
really happened and both were content to believe otherwise as the
ecstasy between them billowed forth from each loving touch. Sean's
soft, sweet voice filled the room continuously now, a steady stream
of moaning indicating that he his nearing the point of no return.

And then it stopped. "Let's do your hair, Sean," says the man,
forcing his hand away from the erect, pulsing penis. Even fully
erect the foreskin covered the head completely, Rick noticed. He
also recognized the impending climax and stopped, afraid of what an
orgasm would do to the fragile, wounded body.

Sean shudders. It takes several minutes for him to swim back to
reality, a look of mixed pleasure, shock and disappointment on his
face. Longingly, he places his hand onto his penis and feels its
firmness between his fingers. He didn't understand the feelings,
only that he enjoyed them. Silently his young, pale blue eyes stare
up at the shirtless man.

***

Boywatchers Inc. , book one/part four by Reverend Jim

An hour later Rick enters the bedroom, toting an office chair
with tiny wheels. "Ready for the grand tour?" he asks the now
sparklingly clean boy on the bed. His soft, golden locks were clean
and fluffy from a blow-drying. Unladen from the weight of grime they
became wavy and beautiful, flowing all the way down to the slender
shoulders below.

Sean looks up from playing with his new puppy-dog friend and
winces, remembering the somewhat painful trip to the bathroom. After
turning his head, he wiggles it some more, enjoying the feel of the
clean hair against his neck. "Uhm ..." he starts out, looking
pensively at the man.

"Hop aboard, captain," Rick says with a smile. "You don't have
to walk, I'll push you."

Eager to see the apartment Sean grins and, grabbing the puppy,
swings onto the chair. He spreads his legs beneath the white cotton-
t-shirt and sets Fitzroy in between them.

The first part, of course, is the living room which Sean had not
seen the last time he passed through. High, vaulted ceilings with
great big skylights indicated some sort of a penthouse apartment but
not how many stories up they were. The furnishings were not
particularly lavish and mainly consisted of earth-tones. Everything
seemed to indicate a minimalist style with the exception of a baby
grand piano on one side of the room, and expensive art on the walls.
Sean was not particularly well-educated in matters of oil paintings
but he could easily recognize a Picasso and a Klee amongst the
works. His education in art came mostly from trips to the Museum of
Modern Art, on days when he was clean enough for them to let him in.
Which wasn't often.

On the side of the living room away from the piano was the
dining room and beyond that was a wall of sheer glass and a
tremendous view of Central Park. The rolling tour continued and
mostly consisted of bedrooms after that, until they returned to the
beginning. One last door remained unopened, right next to Sean's
bedroom.

"And this," the man said, starting to turn the knob, "is my
favorite part." After a dramatic pause, he opened the door and
rolled Sean inside. "This is my study." Rick pretended not to hear
The Boy's gasp of awe and went on.

"There must be a few thousand books here by now," Rick said
proudly. "Over the years I've collected quite a few, you see..."

There was more but Sean didn't hear it as the man pushed him
slowly past the shelves and shelves of books, mostly pristine,-
leather-bound originals. From floor to ceiling they lined every wall
with the exception of a sliding-glass door that revealed a telescope
on a patio. In the center of the room was a modest oak table.

"... some of them signed originals," the man continued.

Sean began to return from his overwhelmed state, cutting Rick
off in mid-sentence. "Did you actually read all these?" he asked,
his eyes full of wonder.

"... from the original Latin texts, of course..." Rick trailed
off. "Hm? Oh, a lot of them I guess," he dismissed with a wave of
his hand. "I have my own filing system, so I'll teach you if you
want to find something specific," he added with a grin, happy that
The Boy was impressed. "And this one here," he pulled a book from a
shelf, "... is one you like." He took down a tremendous, dusty copy
of "The Voyage of the Beagle" and set it onto the oak table.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon Sean remained in the
library, silently pouring over book after book. He had no need to
learn the filing system as he simply picked out each book in order,
almost as if he intended to read every single book in the library.
Some of them he skimmed quickly, some he tried to read from cover to
cover.

Several minutes passed before Sean realized that Rick had come
into the library and then left, taking the dog with him. He had said
something but, in his distraction, Sean could not remember what it
was. He wheeled himself down the table, pushing himself over to the
glass doors with his arms. Slowly he stood up and opened the door,
limping onto the patio.

And there was New York City. On this side of the building the
park was not visible, replaced instead by a distant view of the
Manhattan skyline. Sean could now see that the building was on a
grassy hill, allowing a fabulous view of almost everything. This was
in fact the penthouse apartment but clearly he was only about five
stories from the ground below. The telescope sat upon a tripod that
was way too high so Sean lowered it to his height and glimpsed the-
far-away buildings with a strange sense of detachment.

Sean scanned the horizon in a slow arc, ending with the
buildings only a few blocks away. Then he looked down to the street,
reading the license plates off of cars as he followed the clean, tree
lined avenue back towards his current position. He spotted Rick
about a block away, walking Fitzroy on a leash. Spying on Rick from
above was both comforting and disconcerting at the same time: he was
such a kind man and it felt good to see him but Sean didn't want to
be caught observing him like this, so he went back inside.

He already knew what he had to do.

On his own two feet he limped to his bedroom and dropped the
oversized t-shirt on the floor. Too bad, he thought, because he
liked the way it smelled. In exchange he picked up his grimy
underwear and put them on. There were no other clothes to be found.

When Siegal returned Sean was waiting, sitting in a chair by the
door. He rises, a little boy in his underwear. "I want my gun
back," he says and then pauses to look down at his bare body. "I'll
be needing some clothes, too," he adds. He stares blankly at the
rich man, but he will miss his new friend. "I'm leaving. Now."

Rick puts Fitzroy down and kneels on the carpet infront of the
child, reaching to gently hold Sean's arms while they spoke.

His expression never changing, Sean steps back out of the man's
reach.

Rick understands completely, the time is at hand. He had
expected it, but not so soon. He really had come to like the little
boy but he knew that Sean was his own person. "Okay come on," he
says, rising and heading to his own bedroom. With Rick leading the
way, Sean could not see the man wiping a tear from his eye.

"Try these," he said, handing Sean an old pair of grey
sweatpants. They were much too large but it was the best he had.
Ditto a dark blue pocket t-shirt. The Boy tucked in his shirt and
tied the waistband on the sweats as tight as he could, then he bent
down to roll up the long pants. When he stood up, Rick was handing
him the small, empty handgun and the pair of sneakers he was wearing
at the time of the accident.

Sean moves over to the bed, sitting down to rest while he puts
on his shoes. The room is entirely too silent as the man watches,
both of them feeling sad about the departure but both knowing it was
inevitable. The Boy stands up slowly, picking up the gun from the
bed and looking for a place to tuck it. There were no pockets in
these sweatpants and he curses to himself, unable to find a place to
conceal it. His underwear are too stretched and his sneakers are too
tight to hold the piece.

In the end, Sean slowly walks back to Rick and hands him the
gun. "You keep it," he says, "for the clothes and the food."

Touched, Rick graciously accepts the offer, saying "Thanks,
Sean. You can come back for it anytime you want."

The pair slowly move to the door and Rick hands Sean a business
card identical to the one he gave Dr. Abromowitz, except on the back
there is no company name, instead there is a phone number. "That's
my home number, Sean," he whispers, looking seriously into the
child's blue eyes. "If you need anything at all, call me any time of
day." That out of the way, he digs into his pocket and gives The Boy
all the cash he has - two ten dollar bills.

The Boy starts to object but Rick jumps in, "Take it. You need
money for the subway and some food."

It's true, the penniless boy would need subway fare and food
after that. He tucks the money and the card into the pocket on the t
shirt and opens the door. When he is halfway out he looks back and
says "Thank you, Rick." Then he is gone.

Sean manages to limp down the stairs and out into the street.
"That wasn't so bad," he thinks to himself as he hobbles towards the
Lexington avenue subway, trying to ignore the sudden grip of
lonliness in the pit of his stomach. It was a horrible feeling that
he hadn't experienced since his father left. Absently he wonders if
Rick felt the same lonliness.

It didn't matter, of course. The Boy still had to leave because
somehow he knew that the man was one of the rich people that were
evil, at least according to his parents. His mother and father had
clearly told him that the people with money had ruined the world.
Getting onto the '4' train, he wasn't sure whether he believed that
the man was bad, especially after he was so kind and gentle. But
Sean also knew that his home was calling to him, begging him to
return to his normal life.

Even beyond that, deeper in his mind The Boy believed that he
was beginning to care for the man. This was, of course, completely
unacceptable - he did not want to care for him because then he would
disappear ... they always did.

+++

Richard Laverne Siegal was certainly depressed. The wonderful
little boy whom he thought he could help was gone and the condominium
was again empty save the dog, Fitzroy.

He moped about for hours, unable to do anything. The empty
feeling he had inside was amplified by the empty apartment and his
empty life.

Rick was sitting on the couch, playing with Fitzroy and Sean's
gun when the phone call came. It was nearly eight o'clock and the
ring made him jerk from within his self-pitying funk. He picked it
up.

"Yeah," he says into the phone.

"Richard Siegal, please," says a deep voice. There are alot of
noises in the background, as if it is coming from a payphone on a
busy street. But there are no car-sounds, Rick realizes.

"Speaking. Who is this?" he demands, still concentrating on
identifying the elusive sounds in the background.

"Detective Curran, NYPD," comes the voice. "I'm sorry to bother
you, but we didn't know who else to call..." the voice trails off,
replaced with near-by sirens. When they fade away the voice comes
back, saying "Excuse me, sir. I'm at a hospital, you see, and we
have a John Doe, I mean," the man pauses and then continues "umm, an
unidentified youth who was carrying your business card with him, I
was hoping you could tell me who he is."

"Uhh, can you describe him?" Rick asks. He already knows who
the youth is, he just wants to buy some time to think about what to
say. But even as he gets the words out he realizes what the
policeman said: "WAS carrying your card..." What did that mean?
Before he could stop himself he blurted into the phone, "Is he
alive?"

"Oh, yes sir. He's alive but unconcious," says Detective
Curran. There is a long pause before he goes on. "Long blonde hair,
blue shirt, grey sweatpants. Maybe nine or ten years. You know
him?"

"Of course I know him he's my..." he stops himself as he was
about to say 'son,' but that might require legal proof. "... my
nephew, Sean. I'm taking care of him while his parents are out of
the country," he improvised. "Where is he, I'll be right there."

"New York Downtown Hospital on Williams Street," said Curran.

+++

Rick didn't drive the Mercedes, a cab would be much faster. The
traffic was still pretty heavy and the ride still took more than half
an hour. When he arrived it took him another fifteen minutes to
locate Detective Curran, a plain-clothesman who looked nothing like
the Irish policeman he expected, he was too dark for that. Perhaps
he has some Italian or Greek in him, Rick wondered as he approached
the man.

After the introduction Curran begins the police routine. "He's
conscious now, we can go up and see him if you want," he began on a
casual note, trying to get his suspect off-guard. As they began to
walk towards the elevators he stuck the barb in. "What did you say
his name was...?" he asked, all too casually.

Rick knew what was going on. "Sean," he said, completely aware
of the fact that he did not know The Boy's last name. The pair
stepped onto the elevator.

So was Curran. "Sean ... ?"

"My brother and his wife are on their honeymoon in Rome," he
started off. "When they return and the adoption is finalized, his
last name will be Siegal," he finished as casually as he could. The
cop seemed to buy it, and Rick silently congratulated himself on the
lie. He half-suspected the policeman's probing probably meant the
conscious Sean was refusing to tell the police anything. "Would you
mind telling me what happened?"

The doors opened and they stepped out into the children's
floor. "Transit police brought him in," said Curran as they walked
down the hall. "The kid collapsed and fell down some stairs at
Fulton street," he went on. "The doctors say it was probably caused
by the pain from an earlier injury." The two men stopped outside a
closed door. "If you were watching him, what was he doing on a
downtown train, Mr. Siegal?" This was the sixty-four thousand
dollar question.

"It must have been the pain killers, Detective," he said, trying
to sound like he felt guilty about it, which he did. "He was hit by
a car recently. He said he was going downstairs to play with a
neighbor's boy but..." he gave a dramatic pause. "After you called
I checked and they said he was never there. I know he used to live
in Bed-Stuy, maybe he got confused and thought home was there." Then
he stopped, waiting to see if the cop would buy this load of crap.

Curran opened the door.

Inside was the beautiful little boy, naked except for his
underwear and sitting on the edge of the bed. His oversized clothing
was neatly folded on a chair and it was plain to see that his
bandages were freshly re-wrapped. He was looking down at the floor,
visibly crying when they entered the room.

He looked up, wiping his eyes when he heard the people. When he
saw the man who entered his response was immediate. "RICK!" he
squealed, so loud that the detective didn't have any choice but to
believe the whole story.

Sean stood up slowly, but even in his obvious pain he gave the
man a great hug. "Are you here to take me home?" he asked, already
knowing the answer.

"Of course, kiddo. As soon as the policeman says we can go," he
says, looking at the cop.

Curran just waved his arms, looking irresponsible. "You're free
to go, as far as I'm concerned. I'll need some personal info but I
can get that from the desk. And you need to talk to the doctors, of
course..." and with that he walked out, probably to do paperwork.

The doctors gave Sean a mostly-clean bill of health but insisted
that he get lots of bed rest. Actually they wanted to keep him for
observation but the obvious signs of previous medical attention
allowed Rick to assure them that The Boy would be brought immediately
to his own, private doctor. Rick made payment arrangements and then
the pair left via taxi, headed uptown in silence.

And something had changed: the two lonely strangers were
suddenly aware of an odd connectedness between them.

+++

Everyone called him 'Garfield' but no one knew exactly why.
Maybe it was even his real name.

The abandoned Bedford-Stuyvesant tenement was in fact a fourteen
story building and housed more than just Sean's family, including
Garfield, the building Shaman, or wise-man, or whatever he was. If
this was an average, functional family in a white, middle-class
neighborhood, Garfield might have even been Sean's 'adopted uncle.'
But he wasn't, he was Garfield: the man to see if you had a problem.

Garfield was blind, his eyes looked like bright white orbs stuck
inside his worn, black face. Still, the old man had a way of seeing
more than anyone else could, and knowing more than anyone else did.

The building was made up of about thirteen squatter families
which mostly kept to the upper seven or eight floors while an endless
stream of junkies prowled the lower floors like cockroaches. The
balance was precarious to say the least but the squatters and the
junkies mostly got along together - often Sean had to step over a
junkie or his vomit to get out of the building but they didn't
usually bother him or any of the other squatters.

And then there was Garfield. He kept the entire fourteenth
floor to himself and everyone, junkies and squatters alike, seemed to
respect him and his space. Everyone knew that they could go to him
with a problem and he could fix it. Even the junkies occasionally
went to him and he would treat them with the same dignity and respect
as he would a squatter.

Sean had only been to his floor a few of times but it was simply
beautiful. It was the first time he had seen a real telescope, an
old, brass, sliding model like you see in paintings of pirate ships.
It was tarnished and scratched but it worked; Garfield had rescued it
from a dumpster many years ago and fixed it up - even though he could
never see through it.

Garfield had removed all the walls and painted everything that
remained a bright, hospital white. Throughout the floor were support
beams, themselves painted white as well, and no furniture save a huge-
beanbag-type thing that the old man used as a mattress. There were
white shelves on one wall which held clothes, a first-aid kit and
some trinkets like the telescope and an old tarnished flute. Over
many years the man had painstakingly replaced or repaired each window
until practically the entire floor was encircled by real glass,
affording a rare view of the surrounding city and (with the help of
the telescope) even the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center
and further away, the Statue of Liberty. It was unfortunate that the
man could not see through his windows but for some reason he would
sit and appear to 'stare' out of them for hours at a time.

Each morning the old black man would walk down the fourteen
flights of wretched iron steps, stopping at each floor to greet 'his'
families on the way to purchase food, or whatever the old man did
each day. Garfield was bald on the top of his head with curly white
hair only around the sides, and a curly white beard surrounding a-
never-ending smile. The old man must have been sixty or seventy
years old but he never ceased to defy gravity, walking up and down
those damn stairs.

Two days after his father left, Sean went to the fourteenth
floor alone for the first time. He found the old man sitting in his
beanbag thing, playing the old flute and staring out a window at the
dismal city below, somehow removed from the filth in his clean white
palace high above. The music was Bach, 'Sheep May Safely Graze' and
it was awe-inspiring.

When his parents were with Sean, Garfield would play similar
tunes to him when he was sick and it always made him feel better,
often putting him to sleep. Sometimes Sean would sit on the old
man's lap for hours listening to the beautiful notes. Garfield would
pause every so often to tell him about the music or even show him how
to play a few notes.

Sean stood at the top of the stairs (there was no door on
Garfield's floor) and silently listened in a trance, the soft music
wafting and echoing throughout the floor and moving the already-sad
Sean practically to tears. And then the music stopped cold.

"Sean?" the old man asked in his deep, gravelly voice. "Come
over here, son," the kind old man offered. "I want you to see this
yourself."

Wiping away wetness from his eyes, the surprised eight year-old
Sean went to the man and curled up on his lap, looking up to the old
man's burned-out eyes and wondering how he had known he was there.

"Be still, child," whispered Garfield, pointing out the window
to a ledge five or six feet away.

Sean looked up and saw a pidgeon's roost on the ledge, a mother
pidgeon setting beside a nest which contained a solitary new-born
chick. The chick looked quite sickly, not like a pidgeon should look
at all.

"See, boy?" Garfield asked. "We've got a new family here," he
smiled, motioning to the ledge.

The young Sean stared silently at the pair for a long time
before Garfield went on.

"Some day that chick will grow up, Sean," he began with wisdom.
"And his momma's gonna leave him."

Already knowing the answer, the teary-eyed Sean asked "B-but...
Who's gonna take care of him?" He set his head down on the old man's
chest.

Garfield stroked the little boy's hair lightly, whispering to
him, "He'll be fine, Sean, he'll learn to take care of himself." And
then he gave the tiny body a gentle squeeze. "Just like you, boy."

And then for a long time the eight year-old Sean cried, his tiny
frame shaking in the old man's arms. After a while Garfield picked
up his flute, playing a beautiful song that Sean could not identify.
He put the young boy to sleep on his lap, playing 'Hard Times' by Ray
Charles.

***

Boywatchers Inc. , book one/part five by Reverend Jim

And now reality shifts again as the old, blind Garfield looks
down, his unseeing white orbs glaring eerily at The Boy. "What's
your problem, boy!" he shouts angrily. "You don't belong here! Get
home now!" he screams, jumping to his feet and dumping the young
Sean onto the floor. The old man's tortured, gravelly voice pierces
the night: "NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo!!!!"

Sean is covered with cold, clammy sweat and he sits upright in
bed with a gasp, breathing heavily and looking around the dark,
silent room. Beside him Fitzroy the puppy comes to life and licks
his trembling arm.

Seconds tick by slowly as Sean remembers where he is. His eyes
adjust to the dark room and he can see Fitzroy, the bed, and the
green bathroom beyond. He is at the home of Richard Laverne Siegal,
the rich man.

He knows it was just a dream. The old, blind man called
Garfield has been dead for nearly a year, beaten to death by a
junkie.

Moments later Rick stumbles through the door and turns on the
light, both of them squinting at the glare. "Sean? You all right?"
he asks, sounding and looking scared to death. The Boy's scream had
woken him from his sleep. He moves slowly toward the bed, seeing
tears on the ten year-old's face.

"I'm, uhh..." the frightened Sean mumbles. "Uh, sorry, Rick."
He reaches up to wipe off his eyes. "It was a dream."

In his underwear, Rick sits down on the bed and puts his arm
around the shaken-up child. "It's ok, pal," he says, "I'm here." In
a few moments Sean is feeling much better, still hanging onto the
man. "Do you want me to stay with you?" he asks.

Sean looks up and nods simply.

Rick gets up and shuts off the light, returning to the bed and
The Boy. He slides between the covers and instantly Sean cuddles up
to him, putting one arm around his chest.

"Rick?" the young boy asks.

"What is it?"

"Can you..." he pauses, rolling onto his back and tugging at
the man's arm. "I want you to touch me."

Rick lets out a deep breath and turns onto his right side,
looking down at the child below. Gently he places his left hand onto
the slim chest, slowly stroking big circles over the ribs and stomach
under the covers. Every so often he pauses, using a fingertip to
lightly rub a nipple or explore a hairless armpit.

Sean feels his whole body tingling under the caresses and again
he is floating, but something is missing... After a few minutes Sean
pushes the covers away, then climbs ontop of them in the warm room.
He lays back down wearing only his grey underwear and takes Rick's
big hand in his own, placing it on his stomach.

Rick resumes petting the young, soft body beside him. He
becomes more daring, allowing his fingertips to slip beneath the
failing elastic band at Sean's waist, gently brushing the soft skin
lower and lower but never reaching the penis below. Both of them are
breathing heavily at the teasing motions but still the man is not
bold enough go further.

"Uhhhh..." Sean's heavy breathing slowly turns into soft moans
in rythym with the stroking on his slim, hairless body. His penis
has become erect, appearing as only a tent-pole beneath his
underwear. Somewhere along the way the strokes have become a
frustrating method of pure torture; his body is reeling beneath the
tender caresses and he is only aware of a building pressure in his
gut, one that he is powerless against. In the balance between angst
and ecstacy, Sean tugs at his underwear, pushing them down and
kicking them off the bed. He flops back down and moans, pushing
Rick's hand further down. "Pllleeeaaassse...." he whispers
coarsely.

With little resistance Rick allows his hand to travel further
down, his fingertips just lightly brushing the erect, uncircumcised
penis below. He moves on to trace a single finger beneath the tight
scrotum, The Boy spreading his legs to allow him access to the tender
area between testicles and anus. The hand explores Sean's inner
thighs, moving slowly back up to his penis, drawing a line from his
tiny balls all the way up to the fleshy tip.

Sean begins whining, his body is trembling all the time and the
pressure building to an even greater level. He hadn't thought that
the feeling was possible at all, but now he was completely amiss
within a bubbling, overflowing fountain of rapture. Somehow he is
aware that he is further out than ever before, that even books could
not take him this far from his inhospitable reality.

And the beauty of it is not lost on Rick. His own hands
shaking, he slowly pulls back the foreskin of the tiny penis, a
slightly more difficult task now that it is erect. Getting the skin
over the ridge at the bottom of his glans took a little force, which
caused a spasm in Sean's fragile body, but he continued moaning as if
it were pleasurable. Then Rick began masturbating the young boy,
wetting his fingers with saliva and massaging the tender glans
continuously, causing Sean to arch his hips and tremble as if he were
having a seizure. Or an orgasm.

Minutes of tension build slowly, Sean sweating and writhing on
the bed. His moans become shrill, high-pitched gasps and his left
hand forms a death-grip around Rick's upper arm. "Nooo...
NoooOOooo... NOOOOOO!" he screams as the orgasm finally hits and he
bucks his hips wildly. Rick continues the massage, waiting until the
tiny body is completely tapped out and lies still. Then he carefully
eases the foreskin back up on the still-erect penis and begins
lightly stroking Sean's heaving chest.

It takes a long time for Sean's head to come swimming back to
reality, still trembling and completely dumbfounded. "What... I...
uh," the confused, tired boy whispers, shaking his head lightly to
pull himself together.

"Are you okay, Sean?" Rick asks in a soft, gentle voice.

Sean scared himself pretty well. "What ... happened?" The Boy
asks.

"You just had your first orgasm," the man says with a smile in
his voice. "And a pretty good one, at that!" he adds.

Sean is still confused, and rightfully so. "What's an orgasm?"
he whispers between breaths.

"Well, you just had one," says Rick. "The nicest thing a person
can give another, Sean. A natural part of sex."

There is a long pause. "I'd like to give you one, Rick," Sean
finally blurts out.

Rick muses at the idea but comes to the conclusion that they've
shared enough for one night. "There's plenty of time, pal," he
says. "Go to sleep now," he whispers, softly stroking Sean's chest.

The exhausted boy falls back to sleep within minutes but Rick
cannot; he lies awake for hours thinking about the luscious boy in
his arms and what had just happened. He tries to think of a way to
keep the child forever but every scenario he creates fails because of
one thing: Sean. He is a loner, a free spirit that could not be
forced to stay under any circumstances. Nor would Rick want to force
him. Sean's fierce independence was his most attractive feature,
even finer than his pretty face and sleek, ten year-old body.

No, he could not break The Boy's spirit, it would have to be
voluntary. But why would he possibly want to stay? Rick couldn't
come up with an answer.

And if he did want to stay, how would the man arrange it?
Certainly some authorities somewhere would want to ask questions,
check records or whatever they do. Rick could not keep Sean holed up
in the condo forever, either.

Rick tried to force it out of his mind but it kept creeping back
in, keeping him wide awake all night, gently caressing Sean's lightly
breathing chest.

+++

It was last spring when Sean heard about Garfield. There was a
sick three year-old girl in the building who needed medicine and the
squatting parents could not afford it. Garfield went to buy it
himself and was waiting on line when the pharmacy was robbed by a gun
toting, half-crazed junkie on a rampage. The junkie started pushing
a lady with a baby around.

True to his form, the old, blind Garfield spoke up for the
woman, trying to talk the junkie out of his rage, trying to talk him
out of the store.

The junkie pistol-whipped him to death. Just like that, no care
at all for who the man was or what he was doing. Just bashed his
skull in with a pistol.

That night Sean climbed to the fourteenth floor, sat in the
beanbag and played the flute for his dead friend. With tears in his
eyes he performed the only blues music Garfield had ever taught him:
'Hard Times' by Ray Charles. Sean kept the old man's flute, setting
it on his bookshelf next to his favorite books.

Even with his extremely high intelligence, Sean was only nine
years old and couldn't know any better: he came to the conclusion
that he was dangerous to be around, bad luck. All of the people he
cared for just plain died or disappeared, and he knew it was his
fault. That was when he stopped caring for people.

In fact it took several weeks before he could even talk to other
people. For nearly a month he could only stutter gibberish, his
young voice not able to form any coherent words at all. For those
weeks he didn't go out to beg on weekends, resorting instead to the
dumpsters for food and losing a lot of weight from his already-thin
frame.

Eventually he pulled out of it but he was a different person
from then on. It was probably just another step in the development
of a young boy, but it was still difficult to watch. The shocking
events of the previous fourteen months forced the trusting lad to
become an adult, practically overnight. After that he was always
quiet and suspicious, his personality changing drastically and
turning Sean into a recluse. Of course that changed two nights ago
when he was hit by a car, but only briefly before he realized what
was happening and attempted to withdraw again.

When he woke up at the hospital it was as if his life was
completely over, so he just clammed up. He wouldn't say a word to
the nurses, the doctors or the police, all of them asking questions.
He knew that he was going to a boy's home and there was nothing he
could do about it. Nothing at all mattered anymore.

He found a scalpel and had finally made the decision to kill
himself when Rick walked in and he realized that it was too late - he
cared for the man and there was nothing he could do about that,
either.

+++

"Ouch!" Sean yelped. "Yeah, I guess it is kinda sore," he
said, looking down at the inflamed, red glans in the tub. Rick had
pulled the foreskin back, causing him to wince. "But... I liked
it," the soft, feminine boy whispered. "We can.." he paused, looking
away from the man. "You can do it again if you want," he blurted
out.

For his part Rick felt terrible about hurting The Boy, but it
was really only a minor part of what had transpired. He would not
take it back if he could. Nonetheless he knew that the penis needed
a little rest. "We better let it take a break for a while, Sean," he
said, pushing the ideas out of his mind and hurrying on with The
Boy's bath.

The limp, sensitive penis had become erect while it was washed.
Sean laments the fact, yearning for more attention. "Yours is hard,
too," he says and then quickly looks away again.

He was right. It was sort of obvious beneath the man's loose
khaki pants. "Good guess, genius," he giggled at the wet little
boy. This lightened the mood a little for the rest of the bath and
the subject did not return to sex.

While he was drying Sean's hair, Rick asked a moderately dumb
question. "Have you ever ridden in a limousine?"

Of course not, what a silly thing to ask. Sean shakes his
head.

"If you feel up to it, I thought we might go shopping
today," said the man. Certainly the child needed some real clothes;
he couldn't go on wearing the huge sweatpants forever. "I can get my
company limo to pick us up," he added.

The idea of riding in a limousine did not particularly impress
Sean. Nor did money in general, given his upbringing. What did
impress Sean was the idea of spending time with Rick, doing things
with him. He nods his head silently. His leg was feeling much
better today, as was his head. They had removed the head bandage to
give the healing wound some air - it was beginning to look like more
of a scratch than a gash, soon they would have the stitches removed.

In an hour Rick carried The Boy, now dressed in the sweatpants
and a green t-shirt, down the many steps and then let him walk by
himself to the limo. His limp was beginning to fade away. The
uniformed driver opened the door and offered his hand to Sean, who
refused it and managed to climb into the limo himself.

The car began moving while inside Sean fiddles with the
television and the stereo, deciding he liked the stereo better. He
had seen televisions before and this time of day there was nothing
but soap operas and talk shows. For the rest of the trip the radio
was locked to a classical station.

Time flew past quickly as the pair went from store to store,
buying several nice outfits and a suitcase to put them in. Sean
insisted on picking out 'sensible' clothes like jeans and plain t
shirts but Rick somehow got him to stand still long enough to be
measured for a suit and several custom silk shirts. "You can keep
these at my house," he explained with a wink, "in case you ever come
to visit me again."

Sean rounded off the day by picking out a pair of nice leather
tennis sneakers while Rick grabbed a twelve pack each of white socks
and underwear. Everything seemed to be going well. At least until
they got back into the homeward-bound limousine.

Sean flipped on the radio and instantly classical music swept
the cabin. "Mmm," he sighed. "I like this one."

"Me too," said Rick. He looked thoughtful for a moment and then
added, "This is the first movement from Beethoven's ninth, Sean."

"I know," snapped a cranky, irrational ten year-old. Something
had suddenly come over Sean and he felt as if the man's comment was
condescending. His intelligence insulted, The Boy flashed Rick an
evil look and said the words under his breath: "Allegro ma non
troppo, un poco maestoso."

The words were not his, of course. The name of the first
movement was a bunch of meaningless, foreign words taught to him by
the old, blind Garfield.

The rest of the trip was in silence. Rick was shocked by The
Boy's hateful tone as much as by his musical knowledge. There was
nothing to say as the car rolled through the city.

Rick set the quiet boy down at the top of the stairs and went
back down for the suitcase. When he returned he could hear the sobs
coming from the guest room and he opened the door, moving to the bed
where Sean's face was buried in a pillow. He sat down and rubbed his
heaving, sobbing back.

Sean screamed a muffled "I hate you!" into the pillow, beating
the bed with his fist at the same time. "I hate you! I hate you!"
he screamed the powerful mantra over and over.

Rick picked up the screaming boy, trying to bring Sean to his
shoulder but The Boy immediately began pounding on his chest.
"Hey!" he shook The Boy. "What's the matter?"

Sean stopped pounding but not crying; tears were streaming down
his face and his lower lip was still curled outwards, trembling with
his sobs. "I really have to go now," he sobbed, trying to struggle
away from Rick's embrace. "You don't understand, I really have to
go," he let out between short bursts of tears.

"Sean, wait!" Rick said, holding the struggling boy more
tightly. "I.. I-I love you, Sean. I want you to stay here with
me," he blurted out, trying to look into The Boy in the eyes.

Sean refused to make eye contact, and when he heard the words he
started screaming and kicking even more wildly, going into a fit of
tears that frightened Rick pretty badly. During the outburst he
screamed "You don't get it!" and then "I'll kill you!"

Rick just held the child more tightly, clutching Sean against
his chest firmly and whispering in his ear, "It's ok, Sean...
Everything's gonna be fine, pal." He had heard the child's words but
had mistaken them for an impotent, juvenile threat.

Sean continued the struggle and began to calm down only from
exhaustion. Eventually he settled down to just a whining, drooling,
sobbing puddle of mush in the man's arms. "I have to leave,
Rick," he whispered on the man's shoulder. "I don't want to kill you
like the rest of them," he sobbed.

A strange look comes over Rick's face as he holds The Boy. Very
slowly it begins to turn into a look of understanding as he pushes
Sean away, his hands in the child's armpits. "What?" he asks,
looking into the tiny blue eyes not-unkindly.

"Mom, Dad, Garfield," Sean cries, trying unsuccessfully to wipe
his eyes dry. "I killed them all," he says, the words coming out in
short bursts. "Everybody I care about..." he trails off, beginning
to cry more heavily again. In a few moments he blurted out "Anyone I
love just dies!" and then instantly went back into his sobbing and
screaming.

"Oh, God," Rick whispered, more to himself than to The Boy.
After holding him for a long time he tries to explain, "No, Sean...
That wasn't your fault! They didn't die because you loved them, they
died because it was their time!" He rushed on, trying to convince
the lad. "That's impossible, Sean... and I promise I'm not going to
die anytime soon!" he grinned.

Sean heard the words but it took a while for them to sink in
before his whimpering slowly subsided. "Y-you m-mean... ?" he
asked.

"Yes!" Rick said firmly. "It wasn't your fault, Sean."

And then Sean collapsed back into the man's arms. Still he was
unsure if all of it was true but he was sure of one thing - he did
love the man. It was definately too late to do anything about it
anyway, so it really didn't matter whether he stayed or left. The
confused, sniffling Sean whispered onto Rick's shoulder, "I love you
too. Please don't die."

***

Boywatchers Inc. , book one/part six by Reverend Jim

"Mutherfucker!" the word rang hollow through the cold, empty,
antiseptic room three stories below ground. The kid hurls a walkman
into a stainless steel tray and runs to the sink to disinfect.
Peeling off the sliced rubber glove as quickly as possible, he grabs
a bottle of pure rubbing alcohol and dumps it on his wounded hand.

His screams continue long after he runs out of rubbing alcohol.

"What the fuck, dude? You raping one of these bodies again?"
Philipe the night guard wanders into the room as Chris is rinsing his
hand in cold water to stop the stinging.

Christopher Castillo swings a pale, twisted face up from the
sink. "No man, I cut myself inside this old nigger," he says,
pointing at the table. "Right through my gloves, dammit."

Philipe looks over at the body in-progress. An old guy, maybe
sixty or seventy with his guts all laid out in orderly fashion in
tiny containers. Seeing this crap stopped bothering him years ago
but the smell always gets him, and this one smelled worse than most.
Next to the body was a tray with a still-blaring walkman. "Your own
fault," he says. "I told you to leave the music at home."

"Fuck you," replied Chris, not feeling particularly witty right
that moment. He had been disecting a kidney when he cut himself and
got some of the old stiff's blood on him. He just knew he was gonna
get AIDS or something. It would be just his luck, especially after
landing the job here. "Who the fuck ever heard of an internship
doing autopsies with the Medical Examiner?" he whispered outloud.
Served him right he thought, he should have gone Ivy-league.

"Why's this one stink so bad?" asks Philipe.

"This is his second visit," mumbles Chris. "The D. A. wanted
us to find more evidence for a conviction, he's got a weak case I
guess."

"I'm outta here man," the guard wrinkled his nose. "Besides, it
looks like you got your work cut-out for you," he laughed at his own
joke, heading for the door.

"Wait a sec," says Chris, putting on another pair of gloves over
a gauze-wrapped finger. "Come look at this." He reaches over and
peels back the man's forehead, revealing a spiderweb of cracks and
indentations in the man's skull. "Can you guess how this guy died?"

"Well, I'm no expert but I'd say he took a baseball bat to the
head," grinned Philipe.

"No man, look at the pattern," the med-student picks up a
scalpel and circles a pattern in the cracks. "See it?"

"Holy shit man, that's cool!" grinned the guard. "Looks just
like a handgun!"

"Just like connect-the-dots. From the measurements I'm pretty
sure it was a small caliber revolver, maybe a . 38," smiles Chris.
"I can't tell for sure 'cause the cops didn't bring it in."

"So what happens now," asks Philipe.

"I dunno," Chris says, going back to the walkman. "This stiff
is homeless, so it probably gets shipped to City Burial in a couple
of weeks."

In Bedford-Stuyvesant witnesses have a way of forgetting
things. The flustered, overworked, underpaid Assistant District
Attourney rifles through his papers, examining the file of Alfred
Saffo. But his mind is on the private-practice offer in Texas, and
he wonders if the office is within driving distance of a good school
district. "We'll go down to Robbery-one and Involuntary
Manslaughter," he says into the phone.

"No way Bill," replies the public defender. "You've got no
reliable witnesses and no murder weapon. It's only his fifth
offense, anyway."

"Just give me your offer, Syd."

"Robbery-third and simple assault with no time," comes the
voice.

Riker's Island jail is already overflowing, and the City had no
case, of course. "Hooo-boy... Make it Robbery-one and simple
assault with six months and five years probation," he says. "He'll
only serve ninety days."

"Draw up the plea bargain, I'll be there this afternoon," says
Syd. "Wanna take off early and hit the golf course?"

Had he known, Sean certainly wouldn't have cared that the gun he
found in the dumpster belonged to Alfred Saffo. He also wouldn't
have cared that by taking the gun, the City wouldn't have enough
evidence for a real conviction - he knew that the police and the
prisons were simply elements of an evil, horrifying system - one that
Sean believed actually created monsters like Saffo.

Or at least that is what his parents taught him. In either
case, eleven months later the weapon that was used to murder the old,
blind Garfield lays quite peacefully in Richard Laverne Siegal's sock
drawer.

+++

"I really don't know, Sean," says Rick, who is just finishing
wiping The Boy's tears away. He tosses a few wadded-up tissues onto
the bedside table, right next to an unopened bottle of Coca-Cola.
"Honestly, I've never tried that one before," he adds with a
conspiratorial grin.

"I saw it in a magazine once," explains Sean, still clinging to
the man as they rest on the bed. "I've always wondered about it," he
goes on unashamedly, "I bet it would hurt, though."

Rick stretched out on the bed and cuddles Sean to his chest.
"Well, that's one thing I will never do, pal." He looks down and
gives The Boy a wink.

"Y-you mean you don't want to..." he trails off, glancing down
at the tiny bulge in his pants. "You know, do it?" The look in his
face is either disappointment or rejection, or both.

Rick runs his fingers through The Boy's soft blonde hair, saying
"What I mean is that I would never hurt you. Of course I want to do
it."

Sean ponders this for a moment and then grins at the man.
"Right now?" he asks.

Rick laughs out loud at the precocious little boy. "Gee, I
don't know Sean - is your penis feeling better than it was this
morning?" he teases the child.

"It's hard now," whispers Sean. Playfully he slides his hand
from Rick's chest down to his crotch and gently grips a bulge beneath
the fabric. "Can you do it again?" he asks with a grin.

If there was one single thing that Rick liked more than anything
else about The Boy it was his pure, innocent playfulness. How did he
manage to hang onto this last vestige of childhood after such a
miserable life on the streets? Rick was completely amazed with
Sean's curiosity and wonder with each new experience.

The last woman Rick slept with was Penny Morgan, an investment
banker he met at the club. The couple were the brunt of quite a few
money jokes - "Penny and Rich the money team," they called them to
their faces; much worse behind their backs, of course. During sex
Penny was practically a refrigerator, and most times she would have
something sexy and mood-inspiring to say like, "Aren't you done
yet?"

For his part, Rick was happy when she botched the Stahlman-Shure
merger and got transferred to Wisconsin or some damn place. It
didn't help his sex life much but it was awfully funny: he could
picture the stuck-up prude in Wisconsin saying "What do you mean you
don't have twenty-four hour Szechuan?"

Those days were over, thank god. It had been about a year and a
half since Penny left and he was beginning to get lonely with just
his work to keep him busy. Until he met this beautiful young enigma,
that is. Silently he thought to himself about how the past two days
had suddenly changed both of their lives, and how fortunate he was to
know such a beautiful, sensuous, interested, intelligent boy. Such a
short period of time had passed since they met: it was just now
approaching forty-eight hours since Rick had hit the child with his
car. And yet it felt like an eternity.

Before he knew it Sean had stripped away his shirt and sneakers,
and was now tenderly easing his sweatpants and underwear down over
the bandaged thigh. Sean's tiny penis was fully erect and Rick could
do nothing but admire the child's youthful body. The penis was
merely a fraction of the whole; a centerpiece for the slim, hairless
perfection that made up what was quickly becoming the focus of all of
his thoughts and consuming him with passion. Certainly Rick had
never felt this way about Penny, or any other mere woman for that
matter. To him, Sean became like the forbidden fruit, a sinful
treasure that made his heart race with excitement.

Sean had managed a seemingly-impossible feat: three distinct
erections. His tiny nipples each stood at attention on his slim
chest while his boyish, erect penis pointed them out from below.
Speechless, Rick could only reach out a lightly shaking hand to touch
the beauty before him. He wanted to touch the nipples as much as
they wanted to be touched, and he felt as if he could somehow manage
to capture just a tiny piece of perfection before him.

But Sean grabbed his hand. "Rick," he whispered, drawing the
man back to reality, "I want you to feel good too," he said
seductively.

Rick understood what the child meant, but he could only mumble
for a moment as he processed the information. Slowly he pulled his
hands up to undo his shirt and for the first time noticed how badly
his hands were shaking as he fidgeted clumsily with the buttons.

"Let me," said Sean, the pleasantly nude child pulling himself
up onto Rick's chest. Carefully he began unfastening each button,
starting at the top.

If Rick was speechless before, he was dumbfounded now. It was
all he could do to keep himself from stuttering like a fool. As if
he were simply giving up, he let his hands fall away from the awkward
buttons and slip down onto the smooth, soft skin of Sean's lower
back. Gently he caressed The Boy's spine, feeling the tiny notches
under the silky skin as they guided his hand lower, towards the round
curves of the bottom below. Sean's long, lean thighs were already
parted as Rick's friendly hand began to explore the most sensual
areas of his boyhood.

Sean ran out of buttons. He had gotten down as far as Rick's
belt and instead of tugging at the shirt he moved on to the buckle
and then the zipper. During the entire process he was tinglingly
aware of the man's erect penis only inches from his hands and
mischievously he stretched and pulled the fabric more than neccesary,
causing little twitches in the body below him. He completely
understood the effect his playful tugs were having on the man, but
this was not simply love-making to Sean. It was a curious new
experience, almost a game without rules, and he was eager to share
each pleasure with Rick.

Sean peeled back the unzipped pants, revealing three remaining
buttons on the shirt and also a tiny white patch of cotton briefs.
With one hand he plucked each of the remaining three buttons while
his other hand drifted gently between the trousers and the underwear,
exploring the length of the full-grown man's erect penis for the
first time. It was pointed off towards the right and Sean had to
switch to his left hand in order to reach far enough to touch the
tip. He rolled his fingers over the strained cotton fabric, feeling
the bulbous glans beneath while Rick's mind began reeling.

In a moment Sean collected himself and moved further up on the
man's chest, pushing the shirt back over his shoulders. He left the
rest of that job to Rick, and moved down to pull off the shoes and
socks. These out of the way he grabs ahold of the waistband of
Rick's pants and begins tugging while the man lifts his hips to allow
them travel. Slowly the pants make their way over the man's
erection, causing it to bounce outward slightly, still constrained by
his briefs. In the span of a few minutes Rick is wearing only his
underwear and a wide smile.

Sean feels a gentle twitch when he returns to the penis, and
grins at his own accomplishment. Teasingly he strokes the backs of
his fingertips over the bulge in the underwear, causing Rick's body
to tense and shiver in excitement.

Rick watches in ecstacy as Sean gently hooks his fingertips in
the elastic band of his underwear and begins to peel them down
slightly. The Boy pauses and looks up, almost as if to ask
permission. In response Rick just raises his hips off the bed to
allow Sean to free the restraining fabric. With eyes of wonder The
Boy lowers the shorts, revealing a grown man's erect penis to himself
for the first time. First the circumcised head pops out, quickly
followed by the seemingly tremendous shaft.

The Boy lets out a gasp at the sight and quickly reaches to
touch its firmness. Sean had seen all sorts of things like this in
those disgusting magazines but never up close and real, and never a
penis that was erect because of his own handiwork. It was awe
inspiring to say the least. Playfully Sean ran his fingers around
the glans; it seemed like most of the pictures he had seen were just
like Rick's circumcised penis. Sean sort of wished his own penis
looked the same.

But wait a minute. Although Sean was having a wonderful time
playing with and teasing the penis, he didn't actually know how to
give Rick the pleasures they shared last night. In fact Sean
couldn't even remember what the man had done to him or why it felt so
good, only that he enjoyed it. What was it Rick had done?

Sean remembers the gentle caresses on his chest and stomach, and
how the man had rubbed his erect penis... But beyond that it was
merely a blur, a moment of exploded pleasure without reason or
rhyme. What was he supposed to do? It felt strange and
uncomfortable not knowing what to do but... he was certainly eager
to figure it out.

In a few minutes Rick answers his unspoken question. The man
reaches for Sean's legs which are curled up near his body and
stretches them out so his tiny feet are resting lightly on the pillow
beside the man's face, and his hips are lined up with the man's
chest. Rick then rolls onto his side, turning his attention to the
tiny penis and letting his own erection dangle within inches of
Sean's face.

And so begins the learning process. The comparison to a teacher
and student would be perfect except it is nearly impossible to tell
which is which - although Rick is the older and more experienced, he
learns to handle Sean's young body as he goes along. With each
gentle touch the child responds in different levels of intensity and
Rick eagerly picks up all the signs, doing his best to pleasure The
Boy beyond both of their expectations. In this state of pure
fascination and responsiveness he quickly becomes all but one with
the quivering child whose body heat is slowly and predictably driving
him insane.

Strangely, Rick doesn't feel the need to experience his own
orgasm nearly as much as he wishes to experience The Boy's climax.
He can clearly feel each of Sean's tremors deep within his own soul,
as if the pair were of only one mind, feeling the pleasures for both
of them in perfect unison. The sheer beauty of the union of man and
boy could almost be considered pure narcissism as Rick gratifies
himself solely by moving Sean to the brink of ecstacy.

The man began by lightly dragging his fingertips over the creamy
thighs before him, causing shivers throughout the fragile, sensitive
body. Rick let his hand travel higher on the slim boy, teasingly
stroking his chest and stomach, even getting within an inch of the
tiny, erect penis but never touching it. He continues the stroking
as he begins kissing the closest thigh, working his way around to the
inside and getting higher and higher all the time.

Sean's high, soprano voice begins whining at this, and he parts
his legs to allow the man unlimited reign over his quaking body.
Slowly he draws his knees up, resting his left on the bed while he
lets his right knee fall to the side, propped neatly up against
Rick's chest. Casually his hand drifts over to the man's erect
penis, feeling its length hot against his palm and running his
fingers over it continously. This time Sean has no reservations, no
fear. It is different from his first orgasm because now he lets the
feelings run their course without interference, totally giving in to
his body's demands. Sean becomes completely removed from the reality
of the sex; his mind usurped instead by overpowering waves of hot,
steamy bliss and his body acting merely as a channel through which he
receives the electrifying pulses of unrestrained, animal pleasure.

Urged on by the trembling boy and his cries, Rick kisses his way
down the smooth flesh and finally touches the small genitals for the
first time. The uncircumcised erection was laying on his belly
pointing north towards Sean's rapture-filled face. Rick reached
around The Boy's leg to stroke the penis at the same moment his lips
began caressing his tight, round testicles. At this Sean gasped
quite loudly and opened is eyes but once the feeling hit him he
moaned, throwing his head back and returning to his state of blessed
escape. Carefully the man sucked one, then both tiny jewels into his
mouth and swirled his tounge around the scrotum while his left hand
massaged a youthful penis an inch away, each tender stroke lowering
the foreskin another notch until finally and painlessly the beautiful
purplish head is fully exposed to the world.

Sean's trembling and moaning has become more intense, but Rick
is unsure of whether it is because of his mouth or his fingers, or
both. As a compromise he switches them, rolling the testicles in his
fingers while his mouth moves on to bigger things. As he runs his
tongue up the barely three inch erection to its sensitive, exposed
glans he feels The Boy shudder again, a moan coming from somewhere
deep in the tiny body. He glides his lips over the tip, engulfing
the whole thing in one big gulp, and then swirls his tongue around
the head in quick, tiny circles. This erupts a fit of spasms in the
frail body, all of Sean's muscles tensing and releasing in rythym
with the tickling tongue. Before long Rick plunges his mouth down
the length of the small shaft, raising back up very slowly, gradually
easing into a repetitive motion on the tender penis.

As soon as Rick is underway Sean remembers his purpose and tries
to pull himself from the fog of pleasure, almost as if he is waking
up from a dream. Even completely overtaken by ecstacy he pulls his
head up to look at what Rick is doing, watching the man's head
bobbing up and down on his tiny boyhood and feeling the results
through his entire body. Then he looks over to the man's erect
penis, still in his playful hand. Without thinking further Sean
parts his tiny lips and moves towards the seemingly tremendous
erection.

"Mmmmph," Rick moans, stiffled by the penis in his mouth. He
realizes what Sean is doing and continues sucking, aware that both of
them are already nearing orgasm. The Boy beats him to the punch.

Sean's mouth stops for a moment as the rush of climax overcomes
him. His lips part to let out a squeal and his body trembles
continuously as Rick moves harder and faster on his penis to release
the tension. In moments Sean is awash in his feelings and the orgasm
runs its course, spending all his strength and leaving him quaking.

It takes a while for Sean to realize that it is over. Still
trembling in the wake of his orgasm, he slowly begins moving his
mouth up and down Rick's penis again, mimicking the way the man had
done it to him.

Lost in his own pleasure, Rick's orgasm shook him before he was
ready and he exploded into The Boy's mouth. He pulled out as fast as
he could but it was too late, he had already squirted quite a bit of
sperm onto Sean's tongue and it dripped down his chin. What remained
spurted onto Sean's face, covering him in little white gobs. It
still took Rick's shaking body several minutes to recover and finally
he opened his eyes and looked down at the child.

When he did Sean was actually grinning, proud of his most
profound accomplishment. He was just about as cute as a kid can be
while their face is covered with sperm. "I'm sorry, Sean," Rick
mumbled, but The Boy just giggled and crawled up to meet the man's
eyes.

"Is this 'cum'?" the curious, elated little boy asked.

Rick couldn't help laughing out loud at the sight as he reached
for tissues to clean the goop off the beautiful face. "Sometimes
it's called 'cum' yes, but the correct words are either 'sperm' or
'semen,'" he says, wiping all three from Sean's face as both of them
grin. "I think you need a bath, kiddo," he says.

Sean crawls onto Rick's chest and presses a still-erect penis
into his ribs. Longingly he looks down into the man's eyes and with
a smile he says, "Can we do it again first?"

+++

And somewhere far, far from this place Sean is sleeping
peacefully in a small, dark cabin below deck. It must be some time
in the future, for there is no longer a mark on The Boy's beautiful
young forehead from the accident. The soft rocking of the boat has
put him into a deep sleep which seems to help pass the endless hours
and days. He had traveled only three or four days but it felt like
an eternity without people to talk to, or Rick to cuddle with. He
missed the man deeply and sleeping allowed him to forget about it, if
only for a few hours here and there.

It came as a complete surprise when the door was kicked in, and
Sean immediately jerked his head up to see a dirty, dark man walking
into the room pointing a machine gun at him. The man had curly black
hair everywhere that Sean could see his skin, from his knuckles all
the way up to his face, and he was wearing a beige military uniform
of some sort but Sean could not identify it.

"LEVANTESE TONGA LOS MANOS DONDE LA PUEDOVER!" barked the man,
waving the nasty-looking gun around.
Sean jumps at the man's angry shouts but has no idea what the
words mean. In desperation, the frightened child curls up in a ball
and begins crying.

Then there is another voice, coming from the hallway out of
Sean's vision. "El es solo un nino senor, de jelo en paz," says the-
familiar-sounding voice. "Estoy seguro que enconcara nuestros
papales en orden."

"Criminales," the man with the machine gun spits out. Slowly he
turns and leaves Sean to cry in his cabin, completely unsure of what
is going on.

***

Boywatchers Inc. , book one/part seven by Reverend Jim

The pair woke up in each other's arms on Saturday morning, both
of them still glowing from the previous nights' excitement. After
the bath they went to bed, leaving Sean's bandages off completely and
the wounds looked much better this morning.

Neither of them saying a word, Rick watches Sean crawl down off
the bed and walk out of the room. A moment later the naked boy
returns, dragging along his new suitcase from the hallway. They had
neglected to unpack it and all the new clothes were still inside.

Sean opens the suitcase and selects an outift, immediately
putting on a new pair of underwear, jeans and a t-shirt. The Boy was
so beautiful; Rick was sorry he was getting dressed at all. Getting
dressed? He began to think something was wrong. "Are you going
somewhere Sean?"

Sean sits down on the chair by the bed to put on a new pair of
socks and his new tennis shoes. "I have something I need to
do," says The Boy. "I'll be back tonight though." He was feeling
better today, but even more importantly it was a weekend and he would
be more comfortable going back to Bed-Stuy during the day, especially
if he had to dress like this. He wished that he still had his grungy
old clothes to wear; nobody would bother him if he were dressed less
like a rich-kid with fancy clothes.

"What do you have to do? Where?" Rick asked with an almost
demanding tone.

The Boy looked up at the man and repeated, "I'll be back tonight
Rick." His voice was final and his eyes were firm.

Rick instantly regretted the way he spoke to Sean, but there
must be something he could do. Last time The Boy left (was that
really only two days ago?) he ended up in the hospital and Rick was
forced to lie to the police about the situation... he didn't want to
lose Sean again. "Let me get you the limo? Or a cab?" he asked,
thinking that the whole thing was moving too fast for him. He swung
his feet out and sat on the edge of the bed.

Sean just shook his head 'no.' He finished tying his shoes and
stood before the naked man. "Goodbye Rick." He moved towards the
door, his limp barely noticable at all now.

"Wait!" cried Rick. "Let me give you some money or
something?" he pleaded with The Boy, trying to buy some time at
least.

Sean had eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents left from the
twenty Rick had already given him. "No, Rick. I'll be back tonight
or tomorrow morning." And then he walked out.

Rick hopped up and followed him to the door, knowing there was
nothing he could do about it. Sean seemed quite certain that he had
to leave, but for what? "Be careful, Sean," he said as The Boy
closed the door and was gone.

Several minutes pass while Rick stands naked at the door.
Suddenly panic grips him when he realizes that he had still forgotten
to ask Sean what his last name was.

+++

Calvert, the man from Marketing, lights a long black cigarette
and sits back in his chair. He is beginning to lose his patience
with this new twerp Johnson. "You don't get it. The problem has
nothing to do with Boywatchers," he says to the young-looking
executive. "The entire matter boils down to who is going to buy the
planet, and my job is to make sure it is what the customer wants."

"And of course it's too early to know who is going to be the
final purchaser at this stage," pipes in Barlow, the man from
Sociology, "... so at this juncture we need to make sure it has all
the possibilities."

Calvert nods in agreement. The men pulled Johnson aside to
straighten him out before he actually ended up saying something
really dangerous, and the three now sit in Calvert's office
overlooking the beautiful Ankus-five. "Look, this is just between
us, okay Johnson?" he asks.

Johnson just nods and swallows nervously.

"The real issue is that only five or ten Zaedes ago we used to
have a hundred bidders on each planet. These days we're lucky to
have four or five," Calvert pauses a moment to let this information
sink in. "For planet Earth we have only two."

"Two plus the S. S. C. ," Barlow interjects.

"Who is the S. S. C.?" ask Johnson.

"The Stellar Studies Coalition," Calvert explains. "They buy up
our unsold planets at a discount for terrestrial research. But if we
lose another planet to them I can guarantee heads will roll," he
moves on. "As I was saying, we only have two clients interested in
planet Earth, and the old man is getting nervous."

"So what's the problem," Johnson asks naively. "If there are
two, one of them is bound to buy it, right?"

"Wrong," says Barlow firmly. "Here's where we come into the
picture. The first client is the Edetate conglomerate, who want to
farm warriors and resell them across the border to the Harlan
Crusades. Clearly they can only use young, healthy stock and the
rest of the planet goes to waste in a few Zaedes."

"And the other client," Calvert jumps in, "is a group called the
Elders of Naminoor." He spins his chair around to look out at the
beautiful constellations as he talks. "Which is why we requested an
additional element of culture be added."

Johnson is thoroughly confused now, and watching the two men was
like watching a game of tennis. Still he tries to pretend like
everything is status-quo.

"You see, the Naminoor are very cultured. They also have no
eyes, no vision whatsoever. That makes Earthlings imminently
qualified to be farmed as house-servants," Calvert continues. "But
the problem is that their religion requires they only have direct
contact with their own sex. And there are no female Naminoorians,
only males."

Johnson is finally beginning to understand what the problem is
when Calvert spins his chair back around and looks him dead in the
eyes.

"If either one of these clients finds out we're using
Boywatchers, we're all out of jobs!" he shouts, pounding on the
desk. "And it will be all your fault for suggesting it!"

"Calvert!" snaps Barlow, and instantly the angry man recomposes
himself.

Barlow turns back to Johnson. "What he really means to say is
that while the Boywatchers are good at what they do," he trails off
for a moment as he phrases it properly. "... they may be uhhh, a
Cosmetic solution at best. Good to get the numbers up temporarily
but not good news for either of our clients in the long-term."

"They wouldn't be interested in buying damaged goods, now would
they?" asks Calvert rhetorically. "I don't want you to feel guilty
about it son," he smiles, apologizing for his outburst. "It's really
a fluke that our two bidders are both looking for the same thing and
the planet is lacking in that one department."

Barlow nods and gets up, walking over to Johnson's side. "What
we're really trying to get across is that maybe next time you should
try and think a little more before you go and suggest these things.
Sometimes the old man is a little umm, hasty."

+++

Sean rides the Lexington avenue express to Fulton street and
then walks the tunnels below ground to the Broadway-Nassau platform.
Vaguely he remembers the steps on which he collapsed so recently, but
this trip is much less stressful and he manages to get onto a
Downtown 'A' without incident.

The weather is a balmy, sunny sixty-five degrees and the filth
of the neighborhood is beginning to wreak like a steaming garbage
dump. Ahh, the smells of home. It beckons Sean's young nose along
Throop street, northward towards the tenement.

Sean was beginning to get nervous when he reached his building;
all along the homeward path people were staring at him. Not merely
looking at him, but actually staring - Sean now had the look of a
rich kid, at least for this neighborhood. His beautiful, fluffy
blonde hair, his clean white skin, his brand-new jeans and tennis
sneakers all stuck out like a sore thumb in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Suddenly Sean was a preppy white-boy, there was no question
about it. Where he used to be an anonymous, greasy shadow fleeting
through the streets, he was now rather uncouth in his new clothes, an
obvious reprobate amongst his former peer group. Sean could do
nothing but hurry along his way, trying hard to ignore the fear that
was building up inside him.

It was with no small amount of relief that The Boy slipped
through the broken door to his tenement, his knee beginning to ache.
Once inside he leaned up against a wall and let out a deep breath,
realizing that he hadn't breathed in a long time. Slowly his eyes
adjust to the gloomy interior and he can see the broken walls and
filthy floor. He can make out the disgusting brown tub along one
wall which the junkies use as a toilet. And he can see the junkies
lying around, some of them unconscious, some of them stoned out of
their minds, and a bunch of them looking right at him.

Somewhere along the way, all of the familiar sights and sounds
had become foreign, all of the things that used to comfort Sean had
become alien to him. And now the rich-looking kid has seemingly
stepped directly into the lions den, one that belongs to a bunch of
very hungry lions.

The Boy knew what they were thinking. Sean looked like an easy
target, and with such pretty clothes he must have some money on him.
And he didn't have his gun. But still, he had expected the junkies;
they had not expected him. He decided he needed to act quickly and
make use of his only advantage.

Some of the junkies were actually pretty fast, and a few had
even started moving when Sean bolted for the stairs. The young boy
silently cursed the wounded knee that was sending sharp jolts of
excruciating pain up his frail body, but he kept running, leaping as
many stairs at a time as he could with a broken body.

One of the more rambunctious junkies followed him as high as the
second floor, but then gave up. That was the only good thing about
junkies, Sean mused, they have no ambition whatsoever. The Boy was
not yet out of the woods however, and kept moving until he reached
the seventh floor where he collapsed on the stairs, breathing
heavily.

After a few minutes Sean begins his journey upward again, pushed
on by thoughts of why he had come this far. At the ninth floor he
enters his own squat and looks around.

It was the same as he left it. No one had violated it's
sanctity while he was away. Nor should anyone, as there was nothing
here other than a few books and a mattress. The grey, stained walls
were cracked and in some places had holes that displayed old, rotted
wooden slats. The floor was grimy and the windows were boarded up.
The only light came from the hallway, until Sean turned on his only
lamp. But nonetheless it was his only true home and he loved it
dearly.

The Boy kicked garbage out of his way as he crossed the room to
go to the bookshelf. There he took some of the great books away to
reveal the object of his desire: Garfield's flute. While he loved
his books, the flute was the only possession that he could not live
without. He took the flute and shut off the lamp. Onward to the
fourteenth floor.

Sean stepped into the bright white palace in awe. Silently The
Boy paced over to the beanbag and sat down to rest for the first time
since he was chased up the steps. It felt good to relax in the old
man's chair as he looked around the place.

No one had moved onto this floor when Garfield died, despite the-
real-glass windows and the sparklingly clean walls and floors.
Everyone seemed to agree that the floor should remain just as their
friend had left it. With the exception of Sean keeping the flute,
nothing was touched. Not even the telescope. Sean suddenly felt
guilty about taking the flute, but Garfield had taught him to play
beautiful music with it - the old man would probably want him to have
it.

There is fabulous sunshine coming from each window and the
marvelous view of the city all around. Reverently, Sean raises the
flute to his lips and the most joyous notes fill the room as he
begins playing the famous "Ode to Joy" chorus from the final movement
of Beethoven's ninth symphony.

As he plays the lofty notes, The Boy thinks of the words that
Garfield had taught him. Beethoven had taken the words of Schiller,
a famous poet, and incorporated them into the beautiful music. The
poem was "Ode to Joy," but Garfield told him that in 1824 it was an
open secret that Schiller was using "Joy" as a code-word for
"Freedom". The old man had said that if Schiller spoke openly about
freedom, the oppressive government would have taken the poet's
"freedom" away completely.

The tragedy of that government was somehow lost amidst the
exquisite music, and Sean could feel only pleasure and joy. The
feelings were so overpowering that he closed his eyes, a single tear
running down The Boy's cheek as he played. It felt so good to relax
here, surrounded by his music and the clean white room, overlooking
the seemingly peaceful city below.

"Sean?"

The Boy stopped playing and jerked his head towards the stairs
immediately. He had been so completely absorbed by himself that he
forgot about the junkies, and everyone else for that matter.

But it was only Juanita, the little girl who needed the medicine
that Garfield had gone to buy when he... Sean put the thought out of
his mind and gave the four year-old girl a smile.

Juanita stepped closer, looking at the flute. "Can I listen?"
she asked sweetly. It was certainly the four year-old's version of a
compliment.

Sean nods and motions her over to sit in his lap. The girl
plops right down on his bad knee, but Sean does his best to hide his
pain and shift the little girl to the side. Once she stopped
squirming, Sean picked up the flute and began the Moonlight Sonata.

Juanita's eyes were fixed intently on Sean while he played. The
little girl only had fleeting memories of the old man called
Garfield, but she could remember clearly how he would play his music
to her. It was one of the few bright spots in her otherwise
depressing, gloomy life.

After two or three sonatas, Sean realized that the little girl
was asleep. Not wanting to wake her up, he set the flute down on the
floor and closed his eyes. The Boy's knee still hurt, and it felt
good to just sit and let his tension ooze away with his troubles as
he sat in the warm sunlight. Still, he could only rest a few minutes
before he had to head back for Rick's house. If he waited too long
it might get dark, and then he would be forced to stay overnight.

Someone was shaking him. Sean opened his eyes to see Juanita's
father. He was cradling his sleeping daughter in his arms. Outside,
the sun was just beginning to set, it must be somewhere around six or-
six-thirty Saturday evening. "Sean, are you staying up here
tonight?" the man asks.

"Oh my god," Sean mumbles. He had fallen asleep with the little
girl, and it was getting dark. He could still make it if he
hurried. The Boy jumped up and grabbed his flute. "No, I'm
leaving. Thanks for waking me," he told the man, who was already
starting down the stairs.

As soon as he was alone Sean pulled down his pants and tucked
the flute into his sock. When he pulled the pants back up, it was
impossible to tell what was concealed below. Perfect.

And then he moved quickly down the stairs, hoping the junkies
had already forgotten about him.

+++

Richard Laverne Siegal didn't really start worrying until Sunday
night, when Sean still had not returned. The Boy told him Saturday
night or Sunday morning, and yet he was still absent.

Monday morning came and Rick absolutely needed to go to the
office for at least a couple of hours to clean up the most urgent
things. Short of calling the police, what could he do about Sean?
In desperation he forwarded his home telephone to his pocket cellular
phone (in case Sean called) and then taped an envelope to the door,
labelled "SEAN" in big letters. Inside the envelope was three crisp
new twenty dollar bills. Rick figured that Sean may need to pay for
a cab-ride back here.

Around noon on Monday, Rick is disappointed to find the envelope
and it's contents untouched on the door. There were no calls all
day.

Tuesday the frustrated man did not go out at all. He waited
patiently by the phone, half-expecting another call from the police,
or the hospital, or something. But nothing came, nothing happened.
Endless hours ticked past as the nervous man just waited, sitting on
the couch and biting his fingernails.

For some reason dogs have a way of sensing when something is
wrong. And Fitzroy (being a pure-bred Rhodesian Ridgeback) was
imminently qualified to the task of wandering over and licking the
sad man's face every so often, in between eating and sleeping.

Somewhere around five or six Tuesday evening, Rick suddenly gets
the idea that The Boy was not coming back. The feeling was creeping
up on him for some time, in fact, but he was able to push it away
until now. It had gotten too powerful, too nagging. Maybe Sean was
dead or in a hospital somewhere, or maybe he didn't want to come
back. Maybe he was just being nice until his body was healed enough
for him to disappear again? But then why did he leave his gun? Why
wouldn't he take the money he was offerred?

And why was the little boy so willing to fool around in bed?
Surely Sean must know how much he was loved. As a matter of fact,
Sean had specifically said "I love you too."

No. The Boy had not simply run away. Something was wrong, and
there wasn't a damn thing Rick could do about it. He didn't know
Sean's last name, and even if he did he couldn't call the police,
there would be too many questions.

He could hire a private investigator, but only if he could find
one that would work in Bedford-Stuyvesant. That would be a rare
find, and then what would he tell them? To look for a ten year-old
boy somewhere in Bed-Stuy? No, that wouldn't work either.

"Helpless" is a really lousy feeling. Rick had never really
felt it before this; he was always able to buy his way out of any
situation that he got himself into. Almost anything in life could be
fixed if you threw enough money at it. He could even fix the drunk
driving charges he got when he was in college.

But now the money-man was jerked into reality by a penniless,
ten year-old street kid. Money could not help this situation.
Nothing could help this situation. He could only wait and bite his
fingernails mercilessly.

It wasn't until around ten o'clock that the crying hit him. He
was pushing it off, trying to convince himself that Sean would limp
through the door any minute. But finally it caught up with him,
climbing slowly in his throat and spilling forth in great sobs and
shook his entire body.

The comfortable, secure, rich man sat sobbing on the couch for
hours, scaring even the faithful Fitzroy away. Late in the night
Richard Laverne Siegal cried himself out and fell asleep on the
couch, alone.

***

Boywatchers Inc. , book one/part eight by Reverend Jim

Sean was aware. Unto itself, this statement is entirely too
simplistic; like "I pulled the trigger and it went off." No mere
human could be as aware as The Boy was at that moment, and still yet
so far from reality. In fact, it was his state of semi-consciousness
that permitted Sean to see beyond the boundaries of his physical
universe; beyond the boundaries of the reality that he thought he
knew.

His eyes half open, Sean lays comfortably in the bean-bag chair
and peers down at what can only be Garfield using his first-aid kit
to tend The Boy's wounds. The child lay stripped of his clothing as
the old, blind man checks the bandages.

Sean has fleeting memories of similar scenes happening
recently. Occasionally The Boy had drank from a cup that Garfield
put to his lips. And sometimes the windows around him were bright
while other times things were dark. The Boy knew that it wouldn't
make a difference to a blind man whether it were day or night. Poor
old Garfield was blind as a bat, couldn't see a thing regardless of
how much sunlight there was.

Sean closes his eyes and lets out a soft "Mmmmmhhh" as he
remembers how good it felt when the old man picked him up and carried
him up the stairs. He recalls looking up and seeing the bright white
orbs peering sightlessly at him, and then he knew everything would be
okay. His friend was there to take care of him. Everything was
peaceful and comfortable.

But Garfield was dead. Sean was most certain of this, the whole
thing had not been a dream. He was laying in the blind man's bean
bag, and it was now sunny out. The Boy could see the bright glow
behind his eyelids. And an old, blind, dead man was taking care of
him?

As he bolted upright in the chair, Sean's high-pitched scream
damn near shattered the real-glass windows nearby. And the two
people in the room stopped dead in their tracks to look at The Boy,
their jaws dropping open in shock.

Sean sat there looking at something entirely not-in-this-room,
his eyes unfocused, until someone went to him. At the touch of a
hand on The Boy's shoulder he jumped and screamed again, a sound
nearly as terror-filled as the first.

"Sean?" asked Juanita's father, holding The Boy's frightened
face in his palms. "Everything's okay Sean, everything will be fine
now Sean," he said in a rush, trying to comfort the child as fast as
possible.

The Boy's gaze darted quickly back and forth between the adults
eyes. His whole body was shaking and tears were rising in his
throat. "Where is he!" Sean shouted, "Where is Garfield!" But the
words were not questions; he already knew the answer and it scared
the hell out of him. Garfield had been dead a long time and he was
not here.

Nervously the two adults in the room looked at each other.
Calmly and quietly Juanita's father puts his arm around Sean's
shoulders and simply holds him while he cries. There was nothing he
could say to The Boy.

After a few minutes the man speaks softly to his wife, stark
fear showing in his expression. "Lita, I think his fever is coming
back."

+++

"We can accomodate you," says Calvert. The marketing man was
beginning to feel his nerves acting up; much rode on this meeting.
Including millions of units of Paragranus. And somewhere in the back
of his mind he knew that his job was also at stake. He had to make
the sale. "I've spoken with my people and we agree that your last
offer is fair. All you need to do is sign the papers." He grinned,
putting on his best sales-meeting face, but then realized that the
Naminoorian representatives couldn't see him anyway. He paused just
the correct length of time and added, "Let me get you a pen." His-
high-pressure techniques almost always worked.

"No. We need to study the specifications further before we can
sign," said the Naminoorian on the left. "You'll be happy to hear
our preliminary reports are positive. And I must admit it would be
nice to have servants who can see."

"Except one thing," the Naminoorian on the right jumped in,
"These Earthlings seem to have a somewhat violent disposition."

Even without eyes, the damn creatures could see right through
the man from Marketing. Calvert quickly moved to avert disaster.
"Well, the planet is in the final stages you see," he said and then
instantly regretted his choice of words. "And things will smooth out
as we tailor the planet to your needs," he said in a reassuring
voice. "We'll get to work on it as soon as you sign the papers."

"We'll wait," replied the Naminoorian on the right. His tone
was flat, as if he were having reservations.

Calvert's hands began to sweat as he looked back and forth
between the Naminoorians. They were a weird-looking race for sure;
the pair were bald on top of their heads but whispy white hair grew
around the sides, and they had very dark skin. Calvert was beginning
to wonder if they were capable of reading his thoughts. He hadn't
heard that the Naminoorians were Psionic at all, but they seemed to
know more than they should. He could feel it in their attitude. And
he could feel the money slipping out of his hands.

In a moment the pair stood up at exactly the same time. They
hadn't said a word to each other. But Calvert knew the meeting was
over, and stood up to shake their hands.

"Send the contracts to our legal department, we'll get back to
you," said the one on the left. With that the Elders from Naminoor
picked up their flutes and turned towards the door.

"Sirs," Calvert calls to them. "Why do you carry those flutes
with you?" he asks.

The Naminoorians answer in perfect unison. "In case someone
dies." Then they turned and walked out, leaving a confused salesman
behind.

+++

Sean was nine years old when Garfield died. No one at the
tenement could afford to pay for a funeral, so no one claimed the
body from the Medical Examiner. Which also meant that their friend
would be moved to City Burial, and the people there aren't allowed to
give out information about where someone is buried.

After the legally-mandated fourteen day waiting period,
Garfield's unclaimed body was shipped from the Medical Examiner to
City Burial. >From there it was moved to the City graveyard in
Pottersville. A chaplain and a licensed Funeral Director were the
only people present during the short ceremony.

"Morgue," Philipe says into the phone. Strange that a call
would be coming in at this hour, especially to the security desk.
The on-duty Medical Examiner usually gets his calls directly. The
night guard was sort of annoyed at being interrupted while flipping
through the pages of his new Hustler magazine.

"Philipe? This is Esteban," said the person on the other end of
the phone. The night guard did not recognize the hoarse voice, or
the name. After a long pause, the person went on. "Lucinda's cousin
from Bed-Stuy, remember?"

Ahhh yes. Philipe's wife's cousin. They had met once a few
years ago at a family gathering, maybe a wedding or something.
Calling out of the blue like this, Esteban must want something.
"What can I do for you," asked Philipe.

"I'm looking for a body, Philipe. It would have been a John
Doe, maybe two or three weeks ago, and I was hoping you could tell me
where he is?"

"That information is confidential, Esteban. I could lose my
job," said Philipe. He didn't like being put on the spot like this.
"Besides, there are hundreds of John Does, what makes you think I can
find the one you need?"

"It's really important, man. Can I at least give you a
description, maybe you could just look around?" Esteban was
beginning to sound kind of desperate.

After an awkward pause, Philipe breathed heavily into the
phone. "Go ahead," he mumbled.

"Black guy in his sixties, bald on top and blind. He was killed
during a robbery, some kid hit him with a gun," said Esteban.

Philipe knew exactly who it was, there was no doubt about it.
"What's your number, I'll call you back when I have the
information," he said.

"Uh, I'm at a payphone. Can I call you back in an hour maybe?"

"Yeah, I'll have it by then - I know who you're looking
for," Philipe said and hung up the phone.

And a short while later, Juanita's father had the information he
was looking for. Garfield was buried in Pottersville section
Overlook B, grave number 2422 in a below-ground concrete vault.

About a year ago (on the twenty-third day after Garfield's
death) the squatters made a pilgrimage to his grave to pay final
respects. Esteban arranged the whole thing because of the guilt he
felt; Garfield would not have died if only he went to buy the
medicine himself. It was his fault that their friend was dead.

But by then Sean knew that it was his fault for loving the man.
This was the third person he had killed by loving them. The Boy
stood weeping while at least six squatter families and a couple of
junkies stood at the grave, singing songs of joy and love in
rememberance of the dead one. Sean had brought the flute along, but
could not bring himself to play it. His tears and his guilt were too
heavy.

Hours passed as the sad bunch sang and cried for Garfield. Over
thirty people had come, and together they made a powerful statement
for their friend. As the sun began to set, Esteban moved behind
Sean, put his arm over his shoulder and said "It's time now Sean."
With that he gave the little boy a gentle nudge forward.

Sean knew what he had to do, but still looked around nervously
at all the mourners as they quieted down and watched him. Wiping
tears from his eyes, The Boy stepped up next to the grave and put the
flute to his lips. Everyone was silent, waiting intently to hear
Garfield's only disciple play the old man's instrument.

At first the notes came softly, barely audible. The sounds were
shaky and awkward because Sean was trying to hold back his weeping,
at least for the performance. After a few bars he started to become
comfortable and the music got louder and smoother. And in a few
minutes he was playing almost triumphantly. Slowly the hushed crowd
joined hands and swayed back and forth in rythym with The Boy's
music.

It was 'Hard Times' of course. Garfield had played it for
Sean's father, and now Sean was able to return the gift to the old
man. As The Boy played, the evening sunset exploded in colors of red
and orange and purple all around them. A more beautiful funeral
could not have been bought by all the money in the world.

+++

And in the present, the young boy is fighting to pull himself
together.

"What happened?" Sean whispered once his shaking had subsided.
He did not look up at Esteban, instead he looked around the room
trying to collect his thoughts. His new jeans lay next to the bean
bag, one of the back pockets torn completely off.

"We found you at the bottom of the stairs, Sean," said Esteban.
"The junkies told us you just fell down the stairs. That was
Saturday, and you've been sleeping since then."

The whole statement didn't seem to register with Sean. "What
day is this?" he asked.

"Wednesday."

Slowly Sean put the pieces together. What was he doing on
Saturday? He had come for the ... "Where's the flute?" he jumped
suddenly.

"Here it is Sean," said Lita, now crossing the room holding the
tarnished old instrument out for The Boy. "We found it when we took
off your pants," she added.

Gently he took it and then clutched it against his chest.
Wednesday? Sean just sat there trying to clear his head. It
wouldn't be so bad if the ringing in his ears would go away.

Sean picked up his pants to look in the pockets. There was
almost nothing, only a business card and seventy-five cents. And
then he remembered everything, all at once. He hadn't fallen down
the stairs, the junkies had beaten him and taken his eighteen
dollars. He was supposed to go to Rick's house in Manhattan, but
that was four days ago. "Oh god," he whispered to himself and tried
to get up.

Things were kind of shaky, and the floor seemed to make lurching
motions towards him as he stumbled around picking up clothes and
trying to get dressed. While putting on his pants he fell over a
couple of times, and finally Sean sat in the bean-bag chair to finish
the job, tucking the flute into his sock once again.

But when he was done he looked awful. His nice new clothes were
ripped, stained and wrinkled. Sean's hair hadn't been washed in days
and it was draped randomly over his head from sleeping on it. In
short, he should blend nicely into the neighborhood.

Esteban and Lita tried to get him to stay, but it was no use.
Sean was determined to make the trip, and he seemed like he had to do
it today. The Boy just asked them for fifty cents, which they gave
him. Sean thanked the pair for fixing him up and then he headed
slowly down the stairs.

Every step brought him closer to the junkies, and with each
passing floor The Boy began to feel the tension rising in his
stomach. He wanted badly to go back, just go upstairs and resume his
life in the squat. But his heart and mind were somewhere else. He
needed to leave this place that had somehow become uncomfortable and
frightening.

Slowly and silently Sean came to the final landing and turned to
view the first floor. There were junkies strewn about but most of
them looked unconscious or close to it. A few steps later The Boy
was standing on the landing when someone noticed him.

It started as a curious glance and quickly became a look of
recognition. Even as Sean saw the look, he was bolting for the door
in his wobbly sort of way.

But the junkies didn't try to stop him, they just laughed and
threw bits of garbage at him. Cold, shrill laughter followed Sean
right out onto the sunny sidewalk. He could still hear their cries
as he moved away from the building, crossing the street just to be
safe.

At Kingston avenue Sean went below ground and forked over one
dollar and twenty-five cents for a token. Once through the turnstile
he sat on one of the many broken plastic seats to wait for a train.

Sean took the time to examine his body and gather his thoughts.
His left pant-leg was ripped enough to snake a finger under his
bandage and examine the wound, which looked pretty bad. Some of the
stitches were torn and it had begun to get infected. While he was
unconscious, someone had put a fresh bandage on his forehead but he
couldn't feel any pain there so it was probably fine.

Beyond that, The Boy had a headache and some bruises but nothing
more serious than his leg, which was hurting pretty badly after his
long walk. Sean longed for his soft bed at Rick's house; it would
feel so good to be loved and taken care of. Rick would probably have
food for him too, and The Boy was feeling quite hungry.

Sean barely noticed as the train arrived and he stepped on. He
plopped down on a seat and continued his deep thought, fantasizing
about the wonderful green tub and the gentle man who could make
everything better. The slightly dazed little boy transferred at
Fulton street and headed uptown towards the safety and comfort of the
rich man's arms.

And then it occurred to him that he was heading home. Not
merely to someone's house, but to his own home. Perhaps his aching
mind was confused, perhaps not. In either case The Boy's feeling was
unmistakable: relief.

Everything was going to be okay, he just needed to walk a few
blocks west to the condo. His limp got worse as he moved, and only a
short distance later it was too painful to walk. Frequent rest stops
allowed Sean to keep going, sometimes even dragging his leg behind
him. So powerful was the need to get where he was going.

There was only a small amount of relief in reaching the condo,
for now he had to go up five flights of stairs. Fortunately the
nicely carpetted steps were comfortable to sit on as he dragged
himself further. All he could think about was Rick's piano: how had
he gotten it up these stairs? Nearly an hour passed before he
reached the top.

When Sean saw the oak door it made the whole painful journey
worth while. Behind it was only rest and peace and love. The Boy
picked himself up and tried to straighten out his ragged clothing
before reaching for the doorknob.

It was locked. Knocking on the door produced no result; there
was no sign of life. Not even a barking dog. He had come so far and
there was no one here. Sean sat down and leaned against the door.

A wave of depression washed over The Boy, but there were no more
tears, he was just too tired to cry. Too tired to care, for that
matter. Sean just closed his eyes and sat in the corridor.

At first Sean would jump up every time he heard a noise but was
disappointed when Rick didn't appear. Eventually The Boy gave up and
dozed off, leaning against a cold wooden door in the hallway. After
that, time moved pretty quickly.

Rick left early from work and moved up the stairs just before
five o'clock on Wednesday afternoon. Everything was going normally,
except people kept telling him he looked tired or depressed. Which
was probably true, but he didn't think it was very nice of them to
say. It didn't really matter though. He was still trying cope with
the disappearance of the young boy who had briefly changed his life
last week.

Grumbling to himself, the man hikes up the last few steps,
already digging into his pockets looking for his keys. But when he
sees Sean the keys don't seem to matter - nothing seems to matter.
He just stops and stares at the sleeping child on his doorstep.

He had been correct in his logic. The Boy was in bad shape;
there had been trouble of some sort. Richard Laverne Siegal made a
silent promise to himself that Sean would never be endagered again,
ever. The whole situation was made worse by the guilt Rick felt from
the car accident. If it wasn't for the accident, Sean wouldn't be
having all of these troubles. On the other hand, if it wasn't for
the accident, Rick never would have met the beautiful young boy. The
best that he could do would be to take care of Sean, and protect
him.

He decided not to wake Sean, opening the door and picking him up
instead. With a father's care he carried the wounded boy into the
guest bedroom and laid him out on the bed to rest. Sean only began
to stir when Rick layed down to hold him.

Seans eyes parted slightly. "Rick," was all he said. It was a
simple statement of recognition from the pained child. But
everything was going to be okay now that they were together again.
It didn't matter that Sean was banged up.

There is one simple question on Rick's mind and he has to ask it
now. He smiles gently at the barely-conscious boy and whispers,
"Sean, tell me your last name."

In return The Boy's eyes fall shut and he mumbles something
completely incoherent.

Rick gives up for now, reaching to brush hair out of Sean's face
and... That was when he touched the soft skin of his forehead. It
was too hot.

What was it the Dr. Abromowitz had said about a fever? Take
him to a hospital, quick. But that was impossible. He had promised
The Boy that he wouldn't. And even worse than that the hospital
would ask too many questions. Rick had no other choice but to ask
another favor of the good doctor.

Within an hour the doctor appeared and tended Sean's wounds,
including the infection that was beginning to appear on his leg.
Neither of them saying a word, Rick just sat helplessly nearby as
Nathan Abromowitz carefully re-stitched the leg and dispensed
medications. Before he left he removed the stitches from the
forehead, which was on it's way to a perfect healing.

When he was through, he gave Richard Siegal a nervous, sideways
glance and walked out. Rick followed him to the door but didn't say
a word as the doctor slipped into the hallway and was gone.

With Sean sleeping comfortably on the bed, Rick goes to the
other end of the condo and opens the door to the kitchen. Eagerly
Fitzroy comes bolting out to greet the man and go for a badly-needed
walk.

When they return Rick gently places Fitzroy on the bed beside
Sean, and then turns out the light. The man sits in the chair near
the bed, still wearing his suit.

Rick just looks at The Boy for a long time, with sad eyes. The
healing gash on Sean's forehead did little to reduce his beauty. His
feelings were clear: he wanted to possess Sean. The perfection
before him was too intense and he wanted to hold it, capture it, love
it. But it wasn't possible. He made a mental note to call Judge
Lockheim sometime soon, and then he fell asleep in the chair.

+++

And so the stage is set: the two are together once again. But
as I said earlier, I think you will enjoy the story - which is only
just beginning to unfold.

This ends Book One of The Boywatchers, Incorporated.

God is a magician,
Reality His trick,
and it's all done with mirrors.