Father Figure Read online

  “You’ll be fine,” I told him.

  He glanced around, his eyes wild as they surveyed the darkness around us. There was a small flurry of snow coming down, white dots illuminated by the headlights in the stand of bare trees ahead of us.

  I reached up and pulled down his scarf, pulling the knot loose on the strip of cloth I’d tied on him and his gag loosened. He spat out the wad of damp linen onto the floorboard.

  “Where are you taking me?!” he shouted, although his voice was rough and dry.

  “Somewhere no one will bother us,” I said. “Where we can catch up.”

  “Catch up with what?” he asked. He was angry and I was turned on by it...ut then, I think I was so powerfully attracted to him that I would’ve been aroused by him giving me a morning greeting.

  “In due time,” I said. “Our important moment shouldn’t be in a car.”

  “You’re a cop,” he said after a while, his voice level. He was calmer and he’d taken a few minutes to collect himself. I was amused.

  “You can’t be doing this...”

  “You,” I said as I glanced at him, “are more important than my career.” He grimaced. He hadn’t expected that reply.

  “I am doing this because I love you,” I said, looking back to the darkened road that continued to rattle the car as we drove over the uneven surface.

  He quieted and looked down at his lap, which is how he remained until we pulled up to a small cabin that I had bought and spent weeks furnishing. I got out first, leaving him strapped in the seat. I wasn’t concerned with locking the car — even if he got out, there’d be nowhere for him to go. We had driven six miles off-road.

  I turned on the generator that kicked on the light and electricity in the cabin. It was cold, but the heater would work quickly in the small space. I unloaded the car, with Father staring at me as I did so. When I came for him, I had a collar in my hand. He saw it and started to squirm in his seat.

  I opened the car door and leaned on it, dangling the leather and metal band with a lock.

  “This is for your own good,” I said and slipped it around his neck. He was pulling at his handcuffs, I could hear the jingle of the small chain’s links striking the cuffs. It was a minor struggle locking the collar in place, but it was easier while he was seat-belted than it would have been later.

  “Why are you doing this?!”

  His question echoed in the darkness, as I undid his seat belt and dragged him along into the cabin. He stumbled up the steps, as I was walking fast and pulling him hard by his arms, and he resisted, refusing to come along.

  “What did I say earlier about disobeying me?”

  I twisted his arm by the elbow and he winced. I continued to apply pressure, almost to the point of dislocating his arm before he relented and let himself be taken into the cabin. I threw him on the floor as soon as we were inside. I was angry. I slammed the door closed, making sure he understood I was furious with him.

  The coat had slipped off his shoulder. He struggled to find footing but he paused when he saw the three feet of silver chain attached to a thick eyelet bolted to the floor.

  He looked around him then, panning around the small cabin. Every “room” was out in the open — the small corner where the bed was would be our bedroom; a small stove with only one burner would be our kitchen; a small round table with two stools would be our dining room table; a slight wall partition with its door removed would be the bathroom. A ceramic tub with clubbed feet fashioned from French curl shapes could be half-seen. There were cabinets and shelves and two hardwood chairs with padded cotton seats. Except for a few small rugs thrown atop each other in front of a fireplace, the floor was hardwood. The place was nothing special, but it had taken me considerable time over several weekends to furnish it.

  “Why...” he asked again. I watched him try unsuccessfully to get up before I went over and seized him by the hair, dragging him toward the eyelet in the floor. He was fighting again, trying to pull back while I lifted the end of the chain and latched it onto his collar.

  After he was secured, I walked to the two portable heaters and turned them on. I wanted to take off his clothes soon, but I didn’t want him to get sick from the cold.

  “Let me set something straight for you,” I said, pulling one of the chairs over and setting it a few feet from him. The length of the chain didn’t allow him to sit up, at most, he could come to his knees. He remained prone where I left him, looking up at me. “You can’t leave this place without me.”

  I paused for him to react. He didn’t.

  “The key to your collar is in the car. To get out,” I said, gesturing to the door, “you’ll need a string of numbers to open the cipher-lock I installed. If by some chance you manage to hurt me or kill me, I am kind of certain you’ll be long dead and in the company of my rather unpleasant decomposing body before someone comes. That is, if anyone would come here in the middle of winter and then could figure out how to get in. They might find our bodies in the spring, when the Rangers make their rounds, if that’s any consolation. The cabin’s powered and heated by a portable generator outside. There’s a timer on it that requires a manual reset every 48 hours. As you’ve probably guessed, we’re very North and you would not last more than two days even in here, in a December winter. The only other opening is a small two feet by two feet window in the bathroom. We do not have any neighbors. So, be good and this will be a very pleasant stay.”

  “Why are you doing this?” He was calm, almost resigned as he spoke.

  I got up and went to my bag. I pulled out a stack of papers I’d readied to show him. When I got back, I decided to uncuff him. As I did, I saw the silver wedding band he still wore. It made me angry.

  “I think it’s time you let this go,” I said, as I twisted the ring around his finger.

  “Leave that alone!” He curled his left hand into a fist, refusing to let me slip the ring off.

  “I don’t mind breaking your fingers to take it off,” I said. “The sight of the ring only pisses me off.” I unfurled his ring finger and bent it back until he was screaming. I could feel the delicate joints of his digit straining from pain. Pulling the ring off, however, wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it would be.

  He hadn’t taken it off in years and the shape of ring had taken form with the flesh. It made me even more irate, seeing how embedded this silver ring was. I apologized to him and ripped the ring off. He screamed – the sound of it loud in the small space. The first blood was spilled then, when the ring cut his finger open.

  “Sorry,” I said, but I didn’t mean it. I got up, taking the bloodied ring with me. I threw it in the sink where it sat on the rim of the drain, teetering. I washed my hands, watching the water splash at the ring before sending it down the pipes with a small clatter. I wet a small towel and picked up the plastic box with a Red Cross sticker on it that I had tucked into the shelves.

  He was staring at his bloodied finger with a small pool of blood gathering at its tip. His eyes were rimmed in red and wet, but he wasn’t crying. He looked stunned.

  “I would have cut it off instead,” I said, as I picked up his hand and wiped the blood from the finger that continued to bleed. “But I don’t have the tool to do it. Hind-sight, I should have anticipated that I needed to take off the ring.”

  He said nothing — his hand was limp in my hand as I cleaned it. Some of his blood had already stained the white cuff of his shirt.

  “The ring had to go,” I continued. I rummaged through the first-aid kit and picked up the roll of gauze. “It’s an attachment to your past that you don’t need.”

  I wrapped the gauze around the cut finger, even as the blood continued to surface. I wrapped until I didn’t see blood anymore.

  “I’ll change this later,” I said, as I cleaned up the spilled blood with the wet towel. “Need to stop it from bleeding first.”

  I discarded the bloodied towel in the sink, ran water over it and rung it out. It wasn’t clean but I didn’t wa
nt to care about that then. I wanted to go back to our conversation before I had been distracted by the ring.

  “Now,” I said as I took my seat again. I picked up the papers that were beneath my chair and selected the yellowed-copy of my birth certificate. I slid it in front of him. He looked at it and then at me. He didn’t look surprised. If anything, he looked confused.

  “Do you remember her?” I asked him.

  He looked at the paper again and said nothing for a while. “You ...are...”

  I canted my head to the side. “We’ll come to that later. Do you remember her?” “Yes,” he said. “We were together for two weeks.”

  “Long enough for a baby to be made,” I said.

  “I didn’t know,” he said in a soft voice. “I went back to my fiancée then and never saw or heard from her again.”

  “And less than a year later, married. Another year later, had a child...whom I might have called a half-brother if I cared. But I don’t.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said again.

  “What would you have done if you had?” I asked him. “Would you have left your other life to be with us?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to say it for me to know he wouldn’t have.

  “She died alone,” I continued. “Throat cancer. The last three years of her life, she didn’t speak one word. She spent her days sitting in bed, looking out of the window. She barely acknowledged me for most of my life and completely ignored me toward the end of hers. What do you think? Was she angry with me for being a mistake? A reminder of a man who never came?”

  He was quiet. His eyes still stared fixedly at the aged paper.

  “But that’s all right,” I said after a while. I pulled out the DNA test my friend had run for me and threw it on top of the certificate. “When I confirmed that you were my father, it was the happiest moment of my life. The loneliness I’d felt always felt was suddenly gone.”

  The chart with its circles and lines likely didn’t mean anything to him, but he understood the meaning of a paternity test.

  “That day...” he started.

  I nodded.

  “I do like you,” I said. “Even if you had turned out not to be my father. However, now that you are... love you.”

  His eyebrows furrowed, as if he was finally grasping the totality of the situation then.

  “You don’t know me,” he said. “And I sure as hell don’t know you. All I did was father you, if I can believe those papers.”

  I laced my arms across my chest and gave him a disapproving look.

  “You are not turning this into an endearing moment,” I said. “You could love a dead woman and a child you made with her, but you can’t love me.”

  “The fact that you are doing this to me right now makes me wonder if you are even capable of understanding love.”

  “I do,” I said and got up. “I love you more than you can even begin to fathom.”

  I stepped on the papers and stared down at him. I must have looked like a monster to him then, boiling with hate and love for him...nd I felt monstrous, wanting to hurt him for not meeting my expectations. He had not reacted the way I’d envisioned — he should have been enthralled at finding another son — his first child. Instead, he was angry that I had taken him out of his former life and put him into mine.

  “Is this your solution? Hurt me for not being in your life?” I crouched down and ran my fingers through his hair.

  “I will only hurt you if you reject me,” I said. “I don’t even care if you won’t love me, but you are not allowed to reject me.”

  He grimaced. “Undo this collar and let’s go back home,” he said, his voice softening. “We can talk about this. I do want to have you in my life, but not this way.”

  “What choice do you have?” I said. “Father.”

  He flinched as if he had been burnt, when I said “Father”.

  I hooked a finger in the knot of his tie and pulled it until it loosened. He froze, uncertain what he should do as I threw his tie over my shoulder and began to unbutton his shirt. He struggled, backing away from me as far as the chain allowed. I pulled his shirt loose from his pants.

  “Don’t do this!”

  With his injury and limited movement, he couldn’t do much to stop me. I took my time as I stripped him, admiring each bared part of him as another piece of clothing was pulled off and thrown into an unkempt pile. He was shaking — probably a mixture of fright and cold – when I crawled between his spread thighs.

  “Never had a man before?” I asked him. “No...” he stammered.

  “I am glad,” I said, running my hand along his inner thighs. “I’ve not experienced a man before either. But I think it doesn’t matter... still want to please you and make love to you.”

  “STOP!”

  His body tensed when I touched his cock.

  “And you will learn to love me the same way,” I told him, as I lowered myself to take him in my mouth. He was still struggling, his hands trying to push me away even as I sucked.

  He screamed, “No!” as he rolled his body to the right and left, trying to get away.

  He didn’t get hard until I started to lick his balls and the inside of his thighs. I ran my finger along the cleft of his ass without pushing in.

  “This can’t be that painful,” I said, pumping his half-hard cock in one fist as I licked his belly. He was crying then, tears spilling from the corners of his eyes as he still shouted for me to stop.

  I went back to sucking him, taking the length of his cock in until I could feel the tip touching the back of my throat. I thought about how wonderful it’d feel if he swallowed me the same way. Then I reminded myself that the first night had to be about him. He had to receive pleasure first, so he could understand how much I loved him.

  His screaming had calmed to whimpers. He was hard and when I looked up at him, his face flushed with shame.

  “You can close your eyes and pretend I’m a woman. A mouth can’t feel that different,” I said, laughing. “You can even pretend I’m your beloved dead wife.”

  The remark made him hurl a curse at me. I only gave him a smile and continued to work on his erection, but just with the flat of my tongue licking at the sensitive underside. I held the base of his cock with a ring that I made from my encircled thumb and forefinger.

  He started to scream incoherently. I could feel the tension in his balls — the welled-up cum there that strained to be released but that I did not allow. I pinched the base of his cock even harder. I took his cock back into my mouth, working the length of it until his resolution broke.

  “Let me cum!” he finally begged.

  The words were sweet and I nearly gave into it. This was the first crack in his steel-like determination to fight me in any way. My own erection strained painfully against my pants. I ignored it and continued to suck and lick.

  He started to curse, his chest rising off the floor as his body’s tension continued to mount. He was crying again; I could hear it in his broken voice as he pleaded with me.

  With my free hand I undid my zipper to let my cock out so it was no longer pressed down by my clothes. As soon as I did so, I wanted to shove that into him, have my cock wrapped in his wet warmth.

  “You’re going to learn how to do this for me?” I asked.

  He was sobbing as he nodded. He would agree to anything to have relief and I knew that.

  “I’m glad,” I said and loosened my fingers from around the base of his cock. In an instant, the first drips leaked from the tip. I pumped the shaft in my fist, urging the rest of it to come. And when it did, it came in thick ropes that splashed on his chest and belly. I continued to milk him until his cock started to grow soft again.

  “Open your mouth,” I said, crawling over him. He had a half-conscious look in his eyes and didn’t appear to understand me. I held him by the chin, one thumb pulling his lower jaw down to open it. He stared up at me like a doll with his glassy eyes and blank look, as I worked my own erectio
n. His expression didn’t change, even as I shot my cum into his mouth.

  “Very good,” I said as I closed his mouth. I rubbed the tip of my cock along his lower lip — leaving a warm glaze over it. “You’ve been very good...”

  I got up, tucking myself in as I did so. I needed to get us settled and unpack our bags. My thoughts were clearer, my second wind.

  “Get some rest,” I told him. I pulled a blanket from the bed and threw it over him.

  I don’t know if he heard me or if he had gone unconscious then, but he was quiet and lay unmoving under the blanket as I set myself to work.

  It was well into the day when I finished. Aside from the watch I wore, the only cue to the change of time was the light from the small rectangle of the frosted glass over the bathtub. I had gotten rid of the two windows that had been in the cabin and had bricked the hollowed-out spaces closed. The small cabin suddenly felt smaller, a tiny, dark square of a space shared by two men.