A REAL BOY
J L MERROW
© 2009 JL Merrow
Cover photograph by Dariusz Dembinski.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form.
All rights reserved. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. If you really must fold, spindle or mutilate, please do not inform the Author. This eBook is not recommended for use as toilet paper. The Author is not responsible for any loss, damage or personal injury that may occur from injudicious use of hacksaws, hammers and/or other woodworking tools. Very few crickets were harmed in the making of this eBook.
Stories by JL Merrow are available from Torquere Press, Dreamspinner Press, and Ravenous Romance. They are generally less daft than this one.
This ebook is dedicated to Penelope Friday, for being a Very Bad Example.
A Real Boy
There was once a woodcarver named Joseph, who lived in a secluded cottage on the edge of a vast forest, just off the A31 and handy for the shops in Ringwood. Now, Joseph was a very fine woodcarver indeed, and what he most loved to make were toys. Paddles, switches and whips. Butt-plugs and spreader bars. Anal beads of every diameter, from the size of grapes to something eye-wateringly close to oranges. And, his most popular line, beautifully crafted dildoes in a range of sizes from 'Sapling' to 'Giant Redwood', the latter being made from wood specially imported from America.
Masters from all over Hampshire brought their Boys to Joseph's workshop and showroom to pick out a toy or six. As Joseph's renown spread, they came from yet further afield: wandering in, travel-weary yet eager, from the dark domains of Dorset; or struggling across the Solent's treacherous waters from the rugged coasts of the Isle of Wight, where civilization had yet to find a foothold (and some said, never would).
Whilst Joseph loved his work and revelled in his success, he could sometimes be heard to utter a wistful sigh as another customer and his Boy left, satisfied in every sense of the word (Joseph having grudgingly given in to the demands of his customers to Try Before You Buy). For Joseph had no Boy of his own.
This was no wonder; for Nature, as if determined to be even-handed, had made up for gifting Joseph with his prodigious wood-carving talents by likewise presenting him with a monstrous, hooked nose, greasy, lank hair, and frankly nauseating teeth. And although beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder and personality is what really counts, sadly Nature, deeming consistency a virtue, had given Joseph a disposition that perfectly matched his hideous exterior.
And so the years went on, and demand for Joseph's carving skills grew ever stronger, whilst his features, if anything, grew uglier and his personality soured still further. Each night Joseph retired to his lonely bed with only one of his own Giant Redwoods for company, and dreamed of the day he might have a Boy of his own, a dream that seemed to grow more impossible with every year that passed.
Now, it might be supposed that Joseph was entirely friendless, but this was by no means the case. Some years previously, an American millionaire by the name of Ezra Poultice had come to the New Forest for a holiday, and had remained ever since, having discovered in himself a masochistic delight in warm beer and non-existent summers. He had soon found Joseph's workshop (via the latter's discreetly-worded cards which he placed in local phone boxes) and swiftly become one of the woodcarver's best customers. He not only delighted in Joseph's current stock, but also suggested new lines and placed custom orders; for instance, one year he commissioned a magnificent oak kennel, the mark-up on which contributed significantly to Joseph's retirement fund. As their acquaintance grew, it blossomed into a comfortable sort of friendship, and Ezra had almost entirely ceased to shudder at the sight of Joseph's dreadful physiognomy and poor grasp of personal hygiene.
One August evening, as a soft drizzle fell upon the patches of clover, stinging nettles and bindweed that bloomed with extraordinary fecundity in the back garden, Joseph and Poultice found themselves sharing a pint of Fursty Ferret under an umbrella, shivering slightly in the chill of a late summer's afternoon. Every so often, Ezra would throw a stick for his faithful Puppy Carlo, who would bound after it and bring it back clenched between his teeth, his little rump wagging ecstatically.
"You do realise," Joseph muttered after a while, "that he's not a real dog?"
"Sure, Joe!" Ezra returned with a hearty laugh. "Hey, last I looked, bestiality was illegal even in this backward corner of the world!" And perhaps Joseph only imagined the wistful look in his old friend's eye as he spoke. "I know he's human," Poultice continued.
Joseph raised an eyebrow. "Does he?"
They both watched as Carlo cocked his leg against a tree, and Ezra hurriedly changed the subject to the miracles of modern dentistry, and how you could even get cosmetic surgery on the NHS these days.
And so Joseph's life went on: his days spent contentedly whittling toys that he road-tested by night (insofar as it was possible to do so without a partner). But one fateful morning, Joseph opened his front door to find a forlorn and tearful Carlo standing in the porch. He was dressed all in black, even down to his collar and leash, which dangled pathetically with no hand to hold it. "He's gone, Joseph," Carlo wept. "My Master is dead!"
Whilst naturally sad at the death of his friend and, more particularly, at the loss of his custom, Joseph endeavoured to keep a brave face. After all, there was every chance that Carlo would need comforting for some time to come. And although Joseph had been taken aback to discover that Carlo could speak, he was optimistic that the boy would not do it intolerably often. Poultice had, after all, been assiduous in his training.
Alas, it was not to be; Carlo was snapped up by a Russian oligarch almost before Ezra's coffin had been fully lowered into the grave, containing not only the millionaire but also his favourite Giant Redwood. "It's what he would have wanted," Carlo had insisted, although indeed, the onset of rigor mortis had rendered its removal problematic in any case. However, that was not the only surprise: when the will was read, Ezra was found to have left a small fortune to his friend Joseph "on condition he gets his damn teeth fixed."
It was a sacrifice, but one that Joseph was not above making. Indeed, getting into the swing of things, he not only had porcelain veneers fitted to his teeth, but also endured plastic surgery on his nose and even went so far as to purchase a bottle of shampoo. As Ezra had also thoughtfully bequeathed Joseph his personal trainer, a fetching young man named Dan who had a nice line in motivational blow-jobs, Joseph was soon transformed from Ugly Duckling to—well, perhaps not Swan, but certainly Goose, if the light were not too bright and he remembered to suck his stomach in.
As Joseph no longer needed to work for a living, he began to wonder what he should do with his time. It was not long before a solution presented itself to his mind. However, after his third trip to the local STD clinic, Joseph reflected that one could not spend one's entire time making up for the lack of sexual partners in years gone by. "I have it," he said to himself one morning as he sat gingerly in an armchair, still sore from a trip to the bathroom (for the antibiotics had not yet started to work). "I'll make myself my own Boy. At least this way I can be reasonably certain where he's been."
Joseph set to with the sort of single-minded determination usually applied to schemes for world domination or celebrity stalkings and spent long, frustrating months drawing his plans. "He must be handsome," he muttered to himself, "but not too pretty. Not too tall, either." (By which he meant, of course, somewhat shorter than Joseph's own five foot ten, for it would not do to have one's Boy towering over one, even were he made of wood.) Next, he had to decide which wood to use. "Mahogany, that will give a wonderful finish, or oak… but no, too hard. Perhaps, then, balsa?" For a moment, Joseph thought the decision was made—but then he reflected upon the likelihood of things snapping off whilst in use and had, wincing slightly, to discard this choice also. In the end, Joseph decided upon pine—he had received a fine shipment from a dealer in Tuscany, and he fancied he heard it calling to him from the workshop.
Upon reflection he decided that was merely a hallucination brought on by the lack of food and sleep since falling under this obsession. And perhaps he still hallucinated as he carved, for it seemed to him that the wood shaped itself, seeming eager to set free his vision of a handsome Boy. Every night before he slept, Joseph found himself caressing the half-formed features of his creation. "Hair, Boy; you need hair," he found himself crooning softly to it one night. "But what to use?"
Fortunately, he was interrupted in his work the very next day by a knock upon the door. Joseph threw it open impatiently—and then had to adjust his glare downwards approximately three feet, for a small boy stood before him clutching a sack almost as large as he was.
"The shop is for adults only," Joseph snarled.
"I'm not buying, I'm selling!" a piping voice proclaimed. "Got a sack of finest black wool, here. Sell it to you for twenty quid."
"Twenty pounds? That's daylight robbery! Where did you get this in any case?"
"Fell of the back of a sheep, din't it? Look, you can have it for a tenner, and that's my final offer."
Joseph rubbed his chin. "Open it up." The quality of the wool, he found as he ran his fingers through the contents of the sack, was everything the strange child had promised. "Done." He handed over the negotiated price, and pulled the sack inside the house whilst the boy scarpered down the lane as if the sheepdogs of hell were after him.
"Oh, my Boy, this will do wonderfully," Joseph said to his hunk of wood, rubbing his hands together. And although fitting the wool to the Boy's scalp and, of course, other parts was a laborious business, once he had finished Joseph sat back upon his heels and admired the effect. "You are a beauty, Boy," he breathed, brushing aside the midnight curls to lay a kiss upon the warm, wooden forehead. As the wood seemed to quiver beneath his lips, Joseph made a mental note to be sure to take a break that day.
* * *
At last, the great day came: Joseph's Boy was ready. Joseph gazed lustfully at his creation: five foot eight of finest Tuscan pine, lasciviously sculpted and polished to perfection. But wait—there was a smear of dirt upon the Boy's lifelike penis. Joseph spat upon his handkerchief and bent to polish the knob.
To his astonishment, his Boy moaned! "Oh, don't stop!"
Joseph jerked his hand back in horror. It was one thing to carve oneself a lifesize sex toy; it was quite another to have said toy come to life. Not, of course, a necessarily unwelcome occurrence, but one that Joseph would rather have had some prior warning of. "Boy?" he barked, looking in amazement at the open want flickering in those brown eyes he had himself fashioned.
"Oh, Master, please touch me again!" the Boy begged, reaching his arms out towards Joseph.
Joseph hesitated.
"It felt so gooood!" his greenwood Golem groaned.
Had he known what would happen, Joseph would certainly not have sculpted a pout onto those deceptively soft-looking lips. "Master…" the Boy crooned, wiggling his hips suggestively. Joseph noted with a sense of detachment that the ball-and-socket joints were performing admirably. Throwing caution (and a creeping sense of unease) to the winds, Joseph lunged for the wanton wooden-top.
"Now stop right there!" a voice ear-curlingly like the scrape of fingernails upon a blackboard interrupted them. Joseph looked around to find a cricket standing upon a shelf beside him. It appeared to have its arms folded, and to be tapping one foot. If any further proof of its unnaturalness were sought, it might be found in its attire. Really, Joseph thought in disgust, a top hat and spats in this day and age? Pretentious, much?
"Don’t you lay another finger on that Boy!" the cricket admonished him sternly. "He's as innocent as a new-born lamb! Not to mention, you stand in loco parentis! Social Services would not be pleased to hear about any inappropriate touching!"
Joseph found, to his chagrin, that the rising of his temper was directly proportionate to the sinking of other parts. "And just who might you be, insect, to pass judgement upon how I treat my Boy?"
"I'm your conscience, buddy-boy. And I shall not leave you until I'm satisfied you've accepted your responsibilities with regard to that Boy! A decent start in life, that's what he needs, not some perverted old lecher exploiting him!"
Joseph's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure it's me you're supposed to be acting as conscience for?"
They both regarded the Boy, who was a picture of lusty innocence. Or possibly, simple brainlessness.
"Well, bud, I don't think he needs one, do you? Now, get that poor Boy some clothes, and then we can start to talk about his education!"
Joseph's temper was now, if possible, even worse than before. Having spent months crafting the ultimate sex toy, he was aghast to find himself not only in the position of reluctant father, but also with an incipient case of blue balls. Flinging some overalls at the Boy, he entertained fond thoughts about frogs, reptiles and anything else that might consider a cricket a tasty snack.
"Now, that's better!" the cricket exclaimed, as the Boy covered his magnificently crafted corpus with the stained and faded garment.
"Don't see why," the Boy muttered, his sullen tone music to Joseph's tortured ears.
"That, my Boy," the cricket pronounced, "is because you lack moral guidance. And I am here to make sure your Master gives it to you!"
"Really?" the Boy asked, looking a lot more hopeful.
Joseph sighed. "He doesn't mean that, wood-brain."
The Boy pouted once more. "Hey, I can't help being solid between the ears. If you wanted me to have a brain, you should have carved me one." He paused, as a thought struggled to spark his sap-filled synapses. "Hey, Master, what's my name?"
"Boy," Joseph snapped.
The grain across the Boy's brow deepened into furrows. "Boy's not a name. It's a—what's the word? A description. I want a proper name."
"I created you to be Boy and Boy you shall remain." Joseph felt one of the small muscles near his eye begin to twitch.
"Shan't. I can name myself if I want to. I name me… Pine Nuts."
Joseph snorted. "Well, if you really want people to laugh themselves silly every time you introduce yourself…"
"All right, how about Peanut?"
"Peanut? That isn't a name, Boy, it's a snack."
The Boy pouted, mischief dancing in his eyes. "Fancy a nibble, then? Plenty of salty goodness here!" He punctuated his speech with a thrust of his groin. Joseph found his fingers straying towards the tempting bulge in those loose-fitting overalls…
"Oh, no you don't!" a scratchy voice shrilled in Joseph's ear, giving rise to a fleeting desire to claw out his own eardrum with an awl. "Hands off, buster! And what's this about not giving him a name? That, buddy, is mental cruelty and neglect!"
Briefly Joseph wondered if he had any fly spray left over from last summer—but then he looked at his beautiful Boy, gazing trustingly at him, and sighed. "I refuse to call him Peanut," he muttered with a scowl.
"Right there with you on that one," the cricket sympathised, rubbing his chin with one hand. "Let me see… I know! How about Petey? He looks like a Petey to me."
"Hey, I like that!" the newly christened Petey exclaimed. "Petey the puppet. Yeah, that sounds good."
"You are not a puppet!" Joseph snapped. "You are a purpose-built sex toy!"
The cricket tapped its feet once more and wagged a finger at Joseph. "Just remember, bud, I've got Social Services on speed-dial. You, Petey," he added, turning to the Boy, and speaking somewhat less harshly, "can be anything you want to be."
"Oh. So, if I want to be a sex toy…?" Petey asked, his voice sounding hopeful (or perhaps that was just wishful thinking on Joseph's part).
"Anything except that!" the cricket snapped.
* * *
"I'm off to Tesco's," Master announced some time later, after the cricket had departed for parts unknown with the stern admonishment that he'd have his eye on them. "You can read this book while I'm gone; you're too old for school so this will have to substitute for an education. Don't leave the house, don't answer the door, don't touch the television, and don't even look at the computer."
Petey opened up the book: A Concise Modern History of the World. It was written in really tiny print on tissue-thin paper he was sure his clumsy wooden fingers would tear in an instant, and there weren't any pictures in it anywhere. "Yes, Master," he sulked. The door slammed in answer.
Petey tossed the book back on the coffee table in disgust. Now, what had Master been talking about? Oh, yes. The television and the computer. Petey felt a thrill of wickedness shiver through his timbers at the thought that he was about to defy his Master. Since it was nearest, Petey flipped open the lid of the laptop and clicked on a couple of pages his Master had bookmarked.
And stared, suddenly very thankful for his Master's expert craftsmanship, that forestalled any danger that Petey's eyes might fall out of their sockets. There were pictures everywhere! And a lot of them were, well… Petey found himself absent-mindedly looking around for a polishing cloth and a bottle of linseed oil.
Some time later, Petey had developed quite an ache in his clicking finger. Although he was loath to leave the wonders of the internet, it had occurred to him that Master would not be at Tesco's forever, and there were other forbidden fruits he had yet to sample. "Don't, don't, don't. That's all anyone ever says to me," he grumbled. "And not even in a good way. I," he proclaimed to the somewhat sawdusty air of the cottage, "am going out. There's a whole Forest out there to explore!"
So Petey grabbed his Master's waxed jacket from the peg by the door and set out upon a forest trail. It led him upon a winding path, away from the noise of traffic on the A31 and past trees of all descriptions: stately elms, great solid oaks with clumps of mistletoe hanging from their branches like unsightly growths of armpit hair, and towering pines. Petey marvelled to see such massive columns of wood, and wondered idly if they were related.
At length, he came to a scrubby clearing, where he found two strange-looking people leaning against a tree-trunk sharing a roll-up. As Petey approached, they both pushed themselves upright and examined him greedily.
"Hello, I'm Petey!" he called cheerfully.
The two exchanged a glance.
"I'm Fox," said the taller of the two, looking down his long, pointed nose at Petey.
"And I'm Cat," his companion offered, his sharp teeth gleaming in the sunlight.
Petey looked at them doubtfully. "You don't look like animals."
"Baby, you ought to see me in the sack! C'mon, take a look at this luscious tail." Fox turned and lifted up his coat to reveal a bushy, furry tail that appeared to be strapped around his slender hips. "Saw it on the Graham Norton show and found a knock-off on Ebay. You press this button, it wags—see?"
"Very nice," Petey said politely. He wondered if Master would like him better if he wore one of those. Actually, he thought he'd seen some back in the workshop, although instead of straps they'd had strange little stubby pegs of wood attached to them. Petey wondered how you were supposed to put them on. Perhaps he should ask Master?
"And check this out," Cat interrupted, lifting his shirt to display his chest. "Count 'em and weep."
Petey counted. It took him a couple of goes but in the end he was reasonably certain there were six rosy nipples on that sinuous torso. Almost unconsciously, he reached out a hand.
"Hey, no touching! I only just got the bandages off those!" Cat bared his teeth, then gave an insincere smile. "But if you're real sweet, I might just let you have the name of my plastic surgeon."
"Um, I don't think that would be a lot of use to me," Petey told them.
"Yeah, what is it with you? Is that some kind of skin condition?" Cat poked at the woodgrain visible on Petey's hands and face. "Wow, man, you are hard as a rock! You on Angel Dust or something?"
Petey was saved from having to reply when a hard-faced girl in a grimy red hoodie sidled up to them. Her hair was drawn up tight into a ponytail on top of her head, and her complexion was sallow and unhealthy. "Wanna buy some goodies?" she droned, brandishing a Lidl carrier bag of uncertain contents and punctuating her words with a repulsive litany of sniffs.
"What you got today, Red?" Fox asked, rubbing his hands together.
She curled her lip, nearly dislodging a cold sore. "Usual. Weed, E's, speed and smack. No coke though. Gran thought it was sugar and put it in her tea, the stupid old bag."
"What do you think, Cat?" Fox raised an eyebrow. "A little weed?"
Cat purred. "Oh, Fox, baby, you know how I love my catnip!"
All three turned to face Petey. "So, wood-boy, how much money have you got?"
Petey turned out his pockets. "Well, I've got this," he said doubtfully, having unearthed a rolled-up twenty pound note from the deepest recesses of the Barbour, "but I really shouldn't spend it. It belongs to my Master, you see."
Fox and Cat exchanged another look, and then as one started to approach Petey slowly, their arms outstretched and eyes gleaming. Petey wondered if they were going to give him a hug for being such a good Boy, and he smiled at them. Just as Fox's fingers brushed Petey's jacket, however, there was a cry of "Oy! What's going on here?"
Red snarled. "Bloody hell, it's the Pigs! Leg it!"
"Shit! Come on Cat, we got to make like a tree!"
As Petey pondered Fox's confusing statement (for surely Petey was the only one made like a tree?) and his companions melted away into the undergrowth, he saw three short and rather portly gentlemen in blue uniforms burst into the clearing. The first of them rested his hands against his legs, wheezing mightily, while his scarcely less unfit brothers huffed and puffed as they beat around the bushes with their truncheons.
"Are you all right?" Petey asked the first gentleman, whose face had turned that colour Master tended to go when he was really, really angry.
The policeman straightened. "Well, at least we've caught one of you. You, matey, are under arrest!" And he advanced upon Petey, swinging a pair of handcuffs.
Petey was torn, especially since the truncheons had also caught his eye, but he really felt only his Master should be using that kind of thing on him. "Um, sorry, got to go!" And he darted back along the trail, trusting (as it turned out, correctly) that the policemen would be unable to follow without some sort of cardiac incident.
Reaching the cottage, he flung himself back inside and buried his nose deep within A Concise Modern History of the World, vowing never to leave the cottage again. Well, not before tomorrow, at any rate.
* * *
It was late when his Master returned from Tesco's, laden with carrier bags that clinked strangely. Petey had fallen asleep half-way through the first sentence of A Concise Modern History of the World and started awake guiltily.
Master stomped into the kitchen and began putting away bottles. When he returned to the living room he had a glass in his hand. "Well?" he asked without preamble. "Did you read the book, Boy?"
Petey crossed his fingers behind his back. "Yes, Master."
"And did you keep yourself out of sight all day?"
Petey thought guiltily of his new friends, Fox and Cat. He hoped they'd managed to keep away from the pigs. "Of course, Master."
Joseph nodded. "Good. Now stay out of my way, I'm going to my workshop."
Petey watched his Master stomp off to the back room with a mixture of sadness at being once more abandoned and relief that he had not been discovered in his lies. However, not being a Boy given to deep thought upon any subject, he shrugged and lay down upon the sofa in front of the fire, where he was soon sleeping like a log once more.
* * *
The following morning Petey's Master seemed in no better temper. "Bloody milkman!" he stormed. "He's left us skimmed milk again! I'd rather eat cornflakes soaked in my own piss!"
"Can I help, Master?"
"Is that supposed to be funny?"
Petey shrank back from the volcanic glare that Joseph turned upon him. "No! No, I wasn't offering to, you know, piss on your cornflakes, or anything, I just thought maybe I could…"
"You, Boy, can stay here and read some more of that book! I'm off to the shops to get some proper milk."
"Of course, Master. I'll be good!" he lied cheerfully. As Joseph slammed the door and drove off in his Transit van, Petey tapped his fingers thoughtfully upon the kitchen table. What to do first? The internet had a million temptations, but he was also keen to try the delights of the television. And then maybe he'd go look for his new friends again…
All at once, there was a tinkling of a thousand tiny bells and a lithe and pretty young man appeared, clad in a peacock-blue leotard with a little net tutu that entirely failed to cover his rather impressive package. He carried a slender wand covered in blue sequins, and upon his back were two iridescent blue wings that shimmered as he twirled and pirouetted around the room.
"I'm the Blue Fairy, sweetie," the strange young man trilled, fluttering his wings coquettishly. "And I heard you have been a bad, bad Boy. Telling lies is not allowed, honey-bun!"
"So what are you going to do about it?" Petey folded his arms across his solid chest, none too pleased at getting a telling-off from Twinkerbell.
"Oh, my, sweetie! Are you threatening me? Oh, you are such a naughty Boy! You know, if you were one-tenth less cute you would not get away with this. Now, I am going to cast a spell on you, you great big hunk of wood, that'll make you think twice about telling lies again!"
As the fairy waved his wand in a shimmer of twinkles, Petey felt a sort of shiver run through his body. "What did you do?" he wailed.
"Oh, you'll see, baby cakes, you'll see. Now, I gotta fly!" And the fairy blew Petey a kiss and left in a cloud of sparkles that fluttered gently to the floor. Petey knew they'd be hoovering those out of the carpet for years.
"Bastard! And it's not like I told that many lies…" Petey trailed off as he felt something stir inside his trousers. It was very odd, because the fairy hadn't been his type at all. "If I ever see those stupid blue wings again I'll tear them off and make him eat them!" Again Petey's groin stirred. Apparently he had a previously undiscovered violence kink. "And he didn't scare me at all!" Again Petey's cock responded to his words. "I get off on the sound of my own voice?" he wondered.
But that time, nothing happened. Petey's overalls, however, were uncomfortably tight, so he quickly undid them—and then stared in amazement at his cock, which was fully three inches longer than it had been the last time he'd checked. "Bloody hell!"
With a speed not unlike the growth of forests, the first glimmerings of a theory started to percolate through Petey's mind. "Brains are more important than looks," he murmured experimentally. At once his cock grew another inch. With a sound like the clacking of castanets, Petey clapped his hands together in joy. "And this is supposed to stop me from lying?" A big grin spread across his face. "Size doesn't matter! Peace in our time! Princess Diana was murdered! You can't get pregnant the first time! You'll go blind if you keep doing that..!"
* * *
Joseph got home from the convenience store to find the cottage unaccountably quiet. He had become accustomed to hearing the clatter of wooden footsteps around the house, and the silence was most disturbing. "Boy?" he shouted. There was no answer. "Petey?"
There came a muffled sob from the direction of the workshop. Joseph threw open the door—and stared in amazement at his Boy, who was cowering in misery in one corner of the room whilst his immense penis tapped upon the window at the other end.
Joseph's eyes widened, but still failed to take in the extent of the enormous prick. "Boy, what have you done?"
"It wasn't my fault!"
The cock grew another inch, poking through the window and shattering the glass.
"Boy?"
"There was a fairy here! He put a spell on me, so that every time I tell a lie my cock will grow!"
"And that was supposed to discourage you?"
"That's what I said!"
"But how on earth… no, I see it all. Idiot Boy!" Joseph's face set. "This, Boy, is going to hurt me more than it hurts you," he said grimly. "And I mean that, by the way, entirely non-literally." He unbuckled his belt and drew the thick leather from the loops of his Levis. Petey trembled as his Master snapped the belt between his hands a couple of times. Was he about to get the thrashing of his admittedly short life? His cock twitched at the thought, and knocked a jigsaw and two lathes off the wall.
"Stand up," Joseph ordered. Petey did so, biceps straining as he supported the weight of his monstrously engorged package with his hands. Joseph nodded curtly—then thrust the folded up belt between Petey's teeth. "Bite on that."
As the woodworms of understanding bored their way into Petey's horrified brain, Joseph snatched up a hacksaw and swiftly restored Petey's Boyhood to its former eight inches, narrowly missing taking off a finger as he did so. Petey let out a muffled wail around the leather belt, which turned to a sob as Joseph took up his whittling knife and deftly reshaped the truncated end of Petey's penis.
Tears ran down Petey's cheeks as Joseph rubbed his penis down with sandpaper, starting with the very roughest grade. But as the grain of the sandpaper became finer and finer, gradually Petey found the pain turning to pleasure, and as Joseph grabbed the linseed oil and began to polish Petey's newly truncated knob, a delicious pressure started to build. Glad once more of the leather still wedged in his mouth, Petey fought not to make any sound that might induce Joseph to stop what he was doing. Flying up and up in spirals of sensation, Petey felt as though he were ascending the limbs of some vast mountain pine. As Joseph gave his prick one last polish, Petey reached the topmost branch and hung there for several dazzling moments.
When he opened his eyes once more, it was to see Joseph looking more annoyed with him than ever, and with a clear, sticky fluid dripping down his face. "Remind me, next time," Joseph muttered sourly, "not to bother drilling out a urethra." Wiping his face with the polishing cloth, he stomped out of the room.
Petey looked down. His cock—still, of course, hard—looked just as it ever had, except for the dribble of that same clear fluid down the side of it. Curious, Petey stuck a finger in it and brought it to his lips. It tasted sweet, with a strong pine flavour. "Tree sap?" He shrugged, woodenly. "Figures." Then he grinned. Surely Master couldn't object now if Petey were to return the favour? Pulling up his overalls, Petey hurried to the kitchen where he found Master unscrewing the top of a large bottle of amber-coloured liquid and taking a hefty swig.
"Master!" he cried, dropping to his knees with a clonk upon the tiled floor.
"What the hell do you think you're doing now?" Master snarled at him.
"Being your Boy?" Petey told him hopefully.
Master gave a hollow laugh. "If I even think about touching you that bloody cricket will have me placed on the Sex Offenders Register!"
A sly thought darted through Petey's wooden brain. "He didn't turn up a moment ago in the workshop when you were, um, polishing me off, did he?"
Master's eyes flashed. "Indeed he didn't." With a sudden rasping sound he unzipped his fly. "Carry on, Boy."
Delighted, Petey shuffled forward on his knees and reached out for his Master's cock.
Master let out a low groan as Petey wrapped wooden fingers around its length and bent his head. Petey couldn't believe he was finally getting to taste it…
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
Both Petey and his Master cringed involuntarily at the screech. The cricket had appeared on Master's shoulder, and was tugging at his hair whilst bouncing up and down, looking on the verge of apoplexy.
Which would definitely solve a few problems, Petey found himself thinking darkly. He watched as Master tucked his sadly deflated cock back into his Levis, all the while enduring the ear-splitting arthropod onslaught.
It was only much later, after the cricket had once more left them in uneasy peace, that Petey dared to approach his Master once more.
"Master?" he said anxiously. "I'm sorry about what happened. You know I only want to be your Boy."
But Master's temper had not yet grown sweeter; if anything, the bitterness had festered, and when Joseph spoke his voice was infested with the seething maggots of disappointment. "You're not a Boy!" he snarled. "You're a lump of useless bloody wood! I might as well have left you in the lumber yard for all the good you're doing me! I'm off to the pub!" And he stalked out of the cottage, slamming the door behind him.
Petey slumped into an armchair and gazed moodily at the fire. He might as well throw himself on it, he thought. At least then Master would get some heat out of him. "Oh," he said aloud, "if only there were someone who could help me! Someone who could wave a magic wand and make everything all right again!"
All at once, there was a jingling like a million sleighbells, and the Blue Fairy popped into existence in front of Petey. "You rang?"
"Um, no, I think that was you, actually," Petey told him, determined not to be tricked into a lie. He shielded his groin with both hands, just in case.
The Fairy sighed. "Figure of speech, honey. Now, what gives?" This time, the Blue Fairy was clad in a cobalt blue mankini, together with matching thigh-high glitter boots with flashing blue lights set into the platform soles.
Petey took a moment to admire the spectacle, then recalled his misery. "Oh, Blue Fairy! My Master is fed up with me because I'm just a lump of wood! Not to mention, that cock-blocking conscience of a cricket keeps screeching at him every time he goes anywhere near me." He sighed. "Perhaps if I was a real Boy, things would be different. Please, Blue Fairy, tell me how I can become a real Boy!" His eyes narrowed. "Remember, you owe me big time after that lying thing!"
The Fairy raised an eyebrow. "Worked though, didn't it? Eventually." Then he pursed his lips, his wings fluttering. "Sweetie, are you sure you want this? There's a lot to be said for being hard all the time, you know." His hips writhed, as if at the very thought.
Petey sighed. "I know—but sometimes I want to be soft, too. I want to lie in my Master's arms at night, and hear him call me a good Boy, and when I'm naughty I want his whips and floggers to raise pretty welts and bruises on my flesh, to have my bottom hot and throbbing from his paddles when he takes me over the work bench. Isn't there any way I can become a real Boy?"
"We-ell," the Fairy drawled, "it might just be possible. But that aside, honey-bun, do you really want to hitch your wagon to a cosmetically enhanced cantankerous old carpenter? There are other options, you know," the Fairy added, licking his lips and running his wand over the bulge in his mankini.
Petey found himself leaning forward—then quashed the impulse hurriedly. "No! Joseph is my Master, and he's all I want!" He sighed heavily. "You don't know what he's like when he's not so stressed. I remember all those months of him carving me, speaking to me. He used to kiss me at night, and tell me how beautiful I was—even when I was only an old tree trunk. I know he loves me. Deep down." He paused, a sticky tear in one wooden eye. "Really, really deep down."
The Fairy rolled his eyes and abandoned his seductive pose. "Well, whatever jerks your strings, I guess. Now, the first thing you've got to do is squish that kill-joy cricket. And then, honey, it wouldn't hurt to get your Master to see you as an adult…"
* * *
When Joseph returned home that night, he was astonished to find Petey sitting in an armchair reading the Times, a pair of Joseph's reading glasses perched upon his finely-chiselled nose. "Isn't it dreadful, this spate of farm thefts?" Petey murmured. "Apparently the police suspect a schoolboy gang. I blame it on the prevalence of drug dealers in the Forest." He paused, and turned the page, pursing his lips. "And I see that the bottom has dropped right out of the pine futures market."
Unnerved by this unlooked-for evidence that his Boy was actually possessed of a brain (for he distinctly remembered deciding not to fashion him one), Joseph sought solace in a hefty shot of whiskey, and then took refuge in his workshop.
Or at least, that was the plan; Joseph stopped, aghast, in the doorway. A scene of carnage lay before him. Shelves hung maimed from the walls, split in two by some mighty force. The workbench was pitted with circular indentations like an adolescent's face after a really bad acne attack. Tools, screws and nails littered the floor, admixed with a generous sprinkling of broken glass from the jars in which the latter had formerly been kept. And in the centre of all lay Joseph's largest hammer. Joseph crept closer, his feet crunching upon the debris, and cautiously hefted the hammer. Underneath it lay a glutinous, greenish smear, identifiable as a tiny corpse only by the battered remains of a top hat that lay beside it.
"Suicide can be a messy business, can't it, Master?" Petey murmured in a sorrowful tone.
Joseph whirled. His eyes automatically fell to Petey's crotch, but there was no movement there. Still, that had been a rather general statement. "Did you kill..?" Joseph paused as the meaning of recent events percolated through his mind. His conscience was gone! A strange sensation descended upon Joseph, making his stomach feel light, his limbs tingle, and his mouth curve upwards in a decidedly unfamiliar way. He was happy! "Come here, Boy!"
"Oh, Master!" Petey ran towards him, shedding clothing as he went, until he stood before his Master clad only in a leather harness and a posing pouch Joseph recognised as having come from his back catalogue. The Boy looked good enough to eat, provided one were some sort of beaver or other wood-gnawing creature.
"My word, Boy, you're looking very grown up these days," Joseph growled, launching himself at his Boy and bearing him to the floor in a clatter of wooden limbs.
"Oh, yes, Master!" Petey breathed. "And I think I've had enough moral guidance now. I think it's time for some immoral guidance!"
"Then roll over, Boy," Joseph told him. "I always find practical lessons to be most effective."
Trembling slightly, Petey did as instructed, and Joseph pulled him up to his hands and knees. He took a moment to congratulate himself on the smooth contours of Petey's arse, before reverently peeling off the posing pouch and freeing that magnificent (and no longer mendaciously enhanced) cock. "Beautiful," Joseph sighed. "And mine."
With a sound appropriately like the popping of a champagne cork, Joseph removed the butt plug from his Boy's rubber-lined entrance. A shudder ran through the pine frame beneath him, as if he were a bed that had been lately bounced upon. Joseph hesitated.
"Oh, Master, please don't stop!" Petey wailed.
Encouraged, Joseph slammed his weeping manhood into his Boy's precision bored channel. He moaned. Yes, that was perfect, fitted to his dimensions to within the smallest fraction of an inch. It felt exquisite, and all the more so for having been so long denied him. Changing his aim minutely, Joseph rammed in once more, nailing the little knot he had so thoughtfully installed.
"Master!" the Boy screamed, as Joseph pummelled Petey's pine-fresh prostate.
Inflamed by the sound, Joseph groped for those perfect peaked nipples. He'd spent hours carving them, having to take frequent breaks, and suffering Repetitive Strain Injury of the wrists as a result. Impossibly, the acorn-like little nubs seemed to harden still further under his touch.
"Oh, Master, yes!"
The heady, fresh scent of pine filled Joseph's nostrils as he pistoned into his Boy again and again.
"Master, please!"
Petey's begging was sweeter than the sap in springtime, or even a bulk order for Giant Redwoods. Enchanted, Joseph clapped one hand around his Boy's cock and tugged on it, revelling in the feel of the polished wood under his palm. Petey howled, and impossibly the rigid wood seemed to pulse in Joseph's hand as Petey shot sticky streams all over the floor. It was too much for Joseph. He gave a last mighty thrust and stilled, his breathing ragged as he climaxed deep within his Boy.
As the waves of bliss receded and Joseph's vision cleared, he gave himself a mental pat on the back for the finest bit of craftsmanship he had ever achieved—and then realised with a jolt of shock that Petey was changing. The wood beneath Joseph's hands became warmer and softer to the touch. Joseph froze, a sudden irrational dread of dry rot robbing him of every thought but the certainty that he could not lose his Boy. "Petey!" he gasped, grasping the Boy's torso as if to hold him back from whatever danger seemed to threaten his very existence.
The colour of Petey's limbs and torso changed little, but the wood grain entirely disappeared. The woolly black hair took on a new lustre, and the channel surrounding Joseph's softening cock altered in ways that nearly made Joseph's eyes pop out. "Petey?" he whispered.
"Oh, Master! Look, I'm a real Boy!"
"But how?"
"Well, the Blue Fairy told me it was your spit and polish which brought me to life, so it was your spunk that made me real!"
Joseph had never heard of anyone's spunk having magical properties before, least of all his own, but most uncharacteristically he felt himself unwilling to muster any argument. It had, after all, been far too long since he had last felt the heat of another's skin against his own, felt soft lips worshipping his neck and throat. Amazing, really, the effect this 'happiness' could have upon a man, he mused. Withdrawing from Petey's channel, he turned the Boy and pressed ecstatic kisses to soft, plump lips, delirious with the sensation of holding his Boy—his real Boy—in his arms at last.
They lay there for a long time, Joseph boggling at the thought that he had created something so wonderful. At length Joseph stirred, being of an age where workshop floors littered with debris do not make ideal beds. "But what am I to do with you now, Boy?" he wondered fondly.
"Well, Master," Petey purred seductively in Joseph's ear, a faint scent of pine still lingering on his breath, "all your paddles seem to have survived the wreckage and," he paused to lick his rosy lips with a deliciously sinuous red tongue, "I've been a very, very bad Boy."
End
JL Merrow is an English author of m/m stories. She writes by day and emerges from the house only under the cover of darkness. For many years, she has subsisted entirely on red wine and grey squirrels, for which she forages in the local churchyard. (The squirrels, not the wine, which comes from Tesco's, obviously.)
She may or may not have been born and bred on the Isle of Wight, where the squirrels are all a nice reddish colour.
Stories by JL Merrow are available from Torquere Press, Dreamspinner Press, and Ravenous Romance.