Austin's Diary - The Anniversary

This should be read before Milton's Letter 2. I forgot to post it.

The Anniversary:

For most people anniversaries are cool things. They look at wedding pictures and remember bubbly and dancing with their lucky girl. Of course for me the girl thing kind of wrecked it. Definitely two guys on the wedding cake.

Only this anniversary didn’t have balloons or rice or young women in identical aqua dresses. It had a police officer at the door with a narrow faced woman in a blouse buttoned all the way up her chicken thin neck. It was January. I hate January. It’s cold and dark with ice on the roads. People in trucks go way too fast. I read the police report. I don’t think anyone knew I read it. People aren’t equipped to deal with a suddenly stray kid at the time of tragedy. I was the hot potato that no one wanted--plenty of time to read and listen. The driver had slid down the top of the hill. He wasn’t speeding just going too fast for the road conditions--a thin layer of ice covered by a dusting of fresh snow. It hadn’t been quick; well, the crash was quick, but my parents didn’t go like someone snapping off the light switch. Mom didn’t die until over an hour was spent trying to cut her out of the car, and Dad died in the ambulance. There wasn’t much left of him; his legs had been crushed by a shifting engine block. A car was never designed to go end over end down an embankment.

“Talk to me, Austin.” 

Upside down with a very large hand on your ass was incentive to talk. I knew I’d already left the pretty pink stage. Red would mean I’d feel it for a few hours, and if we had to go beyond red, Milton would do some of the more awful things in his arsenal. He’d found out that the brutal cycle of five minutes of spanking, twenty-five minutes of standing in the corner with my hands behind my back, rinse and repeat made me sing like a bird. That horribly little leather thing he kept in the drawer was added incentive. The lashes of that itty-bitty flogger went unspeakable places. Sting wasn’t the word for it. Milton called me his tough customer when he brought that thing out. I didn’t feel too tough when my knees turned to jelly looking at those little leather strands. He never hit Sheldon with it. Why did I have to have the privilege of feeling it on my ass?

I actually asked him that one day. I must have had too much sugar or food additives or something. Talking back to Milton is usually a one way trip to hell. Only that time he was really decent about it, long winded but decent.

“Cub, you and Sheldon are different sorts of submissives. You want to be the tough guy. You need to prove yourself, prove that you aren’t afraid even when you should be. You talk to me when I do it. Stinging leather on skin makes Sheldon upset. Different boys--different tools. Not better, not worse, just different.” Milton ruffled my hair. “Don’t try to be Sheldon. We each have our own place in this relationship.”

“I don’t like it either. It hurts.” I’ve perfected a full blown whine, or at least Milton says I have, and I know I whined like crazy here.

“It’s a good hurt for you. It gets you where you need to be.”

“Snotty and soggy over your knee.”

“Not sulking.”

I’d sulked after that answer and had earned a lovely encounter with those thin leather straps. Shit and fuck! Compliant when that is moving in your direction is a white knuckle activity followed by full throated yelling. Yelling because Milton’s blistering my ass doesn’t get me in trouble. Yelling at him is a whole different ballgame. Sheldon does it occasionally, and it even ends badly for him. It’s flames for me.

“Austin, I see the calendar. Are we going to talk, or is more incentive needed?”

The royal we. I was the one who was supposed to do the talking. It wasn’t we talking, but me talking. I felt Milton bend over. He usually puts the thing at his feet.

“Don’t.” I reached back with my hand.

“Little boy, keep your fingers out of the firing line. Do you have the right to interfere? Who decides on punishment here?”

Milton’s voice drilled right through me, and I jerked my hand forward. “No, sir. Punishment is your choice, sir.” The sirs had become natural. They’d felt foreign in my mouth at first, but Milton insisted on them in this position, and I’d been drafted into weekend slave labor by Josh. He was sir all the time--scary man. The fries and the chocolate shakes helped, but conversation with Josh was mostly mumbled sirs and desperate silent pleas that he’d put his attention elsewhere. Sheldon called Josh solid, but walked carefully around him. 

“Josh will extract a price if you mess with him, but he’ll also stand at your back and protect you even when you’ve been a larger than life idiot. If you need brawn and can’t get Milton, you want Josh,” Sheldon had said when I was moaning about Saturdays carting lumber.

The leather tails tickled across my ass cheeks. Tickled is a terrible word for something that sets me into a panic of racing heart and clammy hands.

“Boy, what are we doing here?”

Well, you’re getting ready to beat my ass, and I’m desperately trying not to hyperventilate or puke on your shoes. Not the answer I gave to Milton. “Milton!” I screeched when the little stingers hit the inside of my thigh. “Sir, please.”

“Do I have to beat this out of you?” Milton dragged the leather tails across my back.

“No. No, sir,” I shouted in my best imitation of an overwrought marine recruit. I’m not going into the marines. That career is struck off my list.

“How can I help you through this?” Milton can do the most amazing things with his voice. One minute he’s all drill sergeant and demanding dominant, and I’m scared shitless, and the next minute he reminds me that he will hold me in his arms and tuck me into bed. He tells me the dominant has to do both, and that without both he’d just be being cruel.

“It’s not fair.”

“No it’s not,” Milton agreed. “I can’t make it fair or nice or sunny. All I can do is stand with you and try to soften the unfairness.”

“My dad never finished teaching me to drive. They won’t see me turn eighteen.” I was crying now, gulping and choking.

Milton swung me into his arms. His hug was too strong and too deep to resist. “Sheldon and I will see you though as many milestones as you need. You’re not alone here. We can’t give you what you lost, but we will make sure you have something.”

“Whips and chains.”

“That’s who you are. Don’t mix that up with grief. I won’t beat you to make you forget your loss and grief. Physical pain is not a good substitute for handling grief.”

God, I wasn’t feeling adult enough for this conversation. I know, I know, banner headline  kick me out of proper teen living. I’m supposed to be all adult or at least want that all the time. Submission, real submission has changed me, not that I would admit those words to Milton, or at least not now. Considering what he’s dragged out of me, those words probably aren’t too far behind.

Why me? I know, a stupid thought. It’s not like there’s some white-haired guy with a staff pushing levers. I want Austin to suffer. Three punches on a celestial keyboard, and his parents are dead. No, it was the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong weather.

“Have you been to the cemetery?” 

Where had that come from? Not since the funeral in grayness and spitting snow.

“I think we should go.”

“A final goodbye to my parents as a snot-nosed kid.”

“Austin, you’re not eighteen for another six weeks, but it’s not a magic gate. I don’t take children into my bed. Let yourself be and enjoy your youth. You’ll need aspirin to get out of bed soon enough.”

“We’d been fighting. I can’t remember. It wasn’t important. I should have been with them.”

“Austin.” Milton’s arms were suffocating. “You’re here, a beautiful and fantastic legacy of two people who made your existence possible. They wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. We’ll go this weekend.”

***
Read Milton's Letter 2 next.