Ruined [Demungo & Sekah]

[Sekah]

​

On the balcony of the opera house, Taiga jerked against the man holding him down once more. The man's breath was hot in his hair, stirring it. He'd hitched Taiga's robes up around his waist, had his two wrists clamped in a grip that bruised.

The opera house was dark. Each push of the muscular brute behind him increased Taiga's panic, but he bit his tongue, bit his plush lip, kept even his breath low, though it hurt, the bastard was hardly being gentle with his use of Taiga's ass.

His eyes scanned the crowd. Anyone could see him up in this box. Anyone. On the stage, the actors played their parts. If one of them were taking this thick rod, it would be no issue. No one would think twice.

But Taiga was a Bannerman, the ruling caste of Manchu and Mongols, just like the Emperor himself. One of Taiga's cousins was a high concubine in the Emperor's house, and he was related to several heirs to the throne. He was the son of a respected Mongol family. His father had a long list of titles, his brothers had all distinguished themselves, his marriage was happening in weeks to a lucrative young lady, he was a shoe-in for a magistrate position, appointed by the emperor himself.

All of that would be abjectly squandered if he were found to be sodomized by a man.

The man shoved his cock into Taiga. Taiga felt his aching, bleeding hole filled with sticky cum. Good. The brute had finished, and perhaps no one had seen. He may yet get out of this . . .

The man pulled up his robe, clearly showing a view of the state Taiga was in, sweaty and cum-striped and stuffed with a man's cock.

And then he raised his free hand in a pre-arranged signal.

Oh no.

Taiga twisted, trying to get away, but the brute was strong, and easily held the smaller man in place, splayed and defiled for the whole Beijing opera to see.

 

[Demungo]

Zhao hated the opera, he preferred smaller, more intimate performances because he felt one could better appreciate the art being performed. Attending the opera house was less about the art and more about the spectacle, at least in his mind. But then, he'd been accused of being ignorant and uncultured before which was funny, that exact accusation was why he was now sitting in the opera house in Beijing enjoying a particularly powerful performance of Farewell My Concubine. Despite his feelings on such lavish public performances, he had to admit that seeing the great Li Jiao-long sing with such passion and pain was beginning to sway his opinion.

Zhao didn't travel often to Beijing so getting to enjoy such a performance was a bit of an indulgence for him. he was usually content to remain at home looking over his businesses. His family was wealthy and well-off though perhaps not as politically connected as some, they were powerful in their own right and especially in his town. So one could imagine the slight one might feel if someone of greater standing were to publicly insult and humiliate them and their family's station. Such a humiliation would need to be answered for with an equal or (preferably) greater response.

He had calculated everything to the letter and it had taken months for his plan to reach fruition but it had all paid off. He had his man Bao at the ready to assault his target the moment he spied the man alone. He made sure the only empty theater box would be perfectly within sight of everyone who was anyone, especially the family. He had worked out exactly the pitch and tone of his surprised gasp once Bao gave the signal and when everything had fallen into place, it took all his willpower not to squirm in his seat out of anticipation. He and Bao had decided the signal would come after Consort Yu made her final appearance on stage. He hated to interrupt such a performer as the esteemed Li Jiao-long but Zhao didn't think even an actor of his caliber would be able to hold the audiences attention once everyone saw what was taking place on the balcony.

The night progressed and the closer it got to the 'big reveal' the harder Zhao's heart began to pound, he worried people would hear it beating loud as a drum anytime the performance grew quiet. He chanced a glance up at the balcony but had to turn away out of fear his whoop of victory would ruin his carefully constructed plan. He had to stay calm, it would all be over in due time and his well deserved victory would be soon at hand. He wondered what was going through the asshole's mind as he was brutalized by a well-dressed, well paid, hired thug. He couldn't possibly know who had crafted his downfall but Zhou wondered if he suspected or if he was focused too much on the ravaging his ass was taking. He suddenly very much wanted to know.

However, his questions were going to have to wait because now was the time. His heart was smashing against his ribcage and he had butterflies in his stomach. His body felt electric and alive and he was doing his best not to smile or let on in any way that he knew what was about to happen. His eyes followed Li Jiao-long's Consort Wu across the stage, saw her take her cue just as he turned and readied to take his. As soon as Bao's hand went up, Zhao let loose with the loudest, most aggrieved gasp he could muster. he pointed up at the balcony and to the two men doing the unspeakable above them. Others turned to see what the fuss was about and soon they two were gasping in shock and pointing in surprise. Soon, the room was abuzz with the murmurings of the opera goers. The performance had stopped and been replaced by one far more lewd. People had begun to steal glances at the respected family now mired in scandal and all Zhao could do now was lock eyes with the man so freshly and royally fucked and smile.

 

[Sekah]

The bastard flung him into the balustrade and fled out of the box in some predetermined motion, fixing his robes. Taiga didn't run. He thought he would collapse if he walked after that brutal fucking.

He didn't cry, though painted with sweat and dripping cum. He didn't bother to scream. Nobody would believe him a rape victim.

His gaze locked with one man's - Zhao, a country upstart who Taiga had roundly humiliated at a party for no reason other than joy and pride. The man smiled.

Taiga fixed his robes with quiet dignity. The actors made no attempt to end the show - nobody was watching. Guards came up - there must be dozens of lawmakers in the crowd, and someone had called them.

But they hadn't come to find out if Taiga was alright, or to persecute his rapist. They came to arrest Taiga. The crime of ji jian - sodomy - was a serious one. He was now a criminal.

---

His father didn't visit him in jail. His mother and favorite brother did, once, bringing him a plate of the sweet buns that were his favorite food. Prison was cold and many prisoners died of illness.

It took months before his trial reached the Emperor.

His father didn't come to support him. He had heard before this had happened a story of a boy who'd been raped in Kangxi province. When the rapist's father came to the boy's house to shout abuse at the family, the boy's father had strangled him for bringing such shame on their family.

By then, Taiga was thinner, still beautiful, with his hair no longer perfectly oiled the way it had been, in the rough clothes of a prisoner. His punishment had been decided months ago. He had confessed to the sodomy; in the courts, confession was better than not. If you didn't, they tortured you until they obtained clear confession, and increased your punishment. Nobody believed for an instant a man like Taiga could be raped.

On the day of his punishment, a full five months since he had been dragged from that opera house leaking cum and blood and the ruined ink of his old life, he was tied to the post in the middle of Beijing. Bannerman or not, cousin to the Emperor's concubine or not, the law knows every man's number. He had disgraced the Emperor by soiling the office he would have been given.

Still, as a Bannerman, his punishment was lightened one degree, and he would only be beaten one hundred times with the light bamboo rod - a sentence that men usually survived.

His eyes, cold and bitter, didn't have to look far in the crowd to find the one man who'd been incessantly on his mind throughout this situation. Taiga's mother, his brothers, his father, no one from his clan had come, but his enemy was here.

Taiga hawked a huge wad of phlegm, and spat it at Zhao, hoping it hit him.

The drum pounded.

"One," the yamen called out, and the bamboo rod slashed over Taiga's bound shoulders. He arched, crying out between grit teeth.

The second drum. "Two," and the blow made his knees give out. No matter; the ropes held him up, to the jeers and cheering of the crowd, who loved seeing a Bannerman and a respected Imperial family member suffer in the dirt.

 

[Demungo]

It had all happened just as he had imagined it, his great enemy disgraced and led out in shame. He had won and the selfish asshole got exactly what he'd deserved and the whole thing couldn't have gone better. Zhao was ecstatic, he silently celebrated his victory while maintaining his guise of cultured shock. As Taiga was being led from the opera house, Zhao had to stop himself from laughing.

Later that night as he was settled in bed he replayed the scene over and over again and committed to memory the look on the Bannerman's face. For the first time in many months, he slept soundly.

---

News of the trial so many months later served to reignite something within him. It was no longer enough to see his enemy so thoroughly degraded, now he wanted to see him further punished. He made plans right away to travel so he could be there in time to witness the sentence being carried out. He didn't know why but since he'd found out about the trial he could think of very little but Taiga and when he did think of him, it was only a frozen image of him being brutalized in the opera house. He could conjure up no other image of the once proud man.

Zhao arrived the night before punishment was given, he was overjoyed he hadn't missed it. Sleep did not come easy this time, he was too full of excited energy. He paced his room, stared at the walls or out the window all the while the image of Taiga burned in his mind. He'd finally managed to get some sleep but he was up the moment the first ray of sun shone on his wall.

The crowd was larger than he'd expected it to be, he knew a Bannerman would draw the people out but he hadn't realized so many would wish to see him beat. Somehow that knowledge filled him with satisfaction and furthered his conviction, this was no less than the asshole deserved. Zhao could only guess that some others in the crowd had been wronged by him as well, he took pleasure knowing that his actions had brought them all some kind of retribution.

He managed to push himself through the throng of eager people and secured a prime spot to watch the flogging. His eyes brightened the moment he saw Taiga led out and tied to the post and he made sure that the man saw him there, smiling triumphantly. He had noticed how thin his great enemy had become and how his hair, no longer smoothed down drifted about as the wind lifted it. Prison had tried to wither his body but it couldn't stamp out how annoyingly beautiful he remained. he'd always been too attractive for his own good and when he was healthy Taiga could command a room on look alone. It drove Zhao crazy. Not to say that he wasn't handsome himself, he was tall and muscled and carried himself well but in a room with the bannerman, he felt like he didn't rate.

Zhao was reveling at how everything had been turned on its head and Taiga was the one to suffer indignities now. It was somehow deliciously poetic. When they made eye contact and he saw the cold fire glare reflected in his eyes Zhao felt something stir deep within him. He had no time to question what exactly he was experiencing because Taiga directed his ire at him in the form of snot. He chuckled at the show of utter hatred and feigned offense when the ball of phlegm hit the ground at his feet and exploded, dotting the tips of his shoes with little spots of goo. As a response, he mimed flogging him, the smile never leaving his face.

Once the show got under way and Taiga began to get hit, Zhao's eyes never left his face. He drank in every grimace, every furrow of the brow, grit of the teeth and wince of pain, it was a breathtaking play acted out upon the other man's features. He was enthralled and the sounds coming from the once proud man were like music to his ears. All of it combined was a far greater performance than any he'd seen at the Beijing opera house.

The punishment continued on and as the crowd roared louder, reality for Zhao began to sink in. Once Taiga had been properly reprimanded for his crimes, what would become of him? He was less than nothing now, a blight upon society. Zhao hadn't thought that far ahead and now he was beginning to realize that unless he intervened, Taiga's story ended here. That didn't sit well with him at all. He looked throughout the crowd for Bao, he had brought the bigger man along as an afterthought and was now glad that he had. When he caught sight of him he motioned him over.
"This isn't over, understand? When he's alone, subdue him, gag him and bring him to my room. Our great enemy is not done making things right."
Once he was certain that Bao understood he returned his attention to the spectacle before him. They had just reached forty-two.

 

[Sekah]

Taiga saw his phlegm hit his shoes, his disgusting mucus drip from that embroidered slippers, and smirked - tired, bare-chested in public, his hair lopped off, still he caught Zhao's eyes and let him know some of his filth had caught him.

But soon, the pain was too much for that.

The beat of the drum and slash of the cane went on, and on, and on. For the first half, Taiga's eyes, when opened and not rolled back into his head, met Zhao's.

Beating a man is fun for a while. But eventually, the blood and sweat starts to stink. He turns into an animal, moving and screaming, then moaning pitifully, like a tired work horse. Finally, Taiga just hung there like a side of meat while the yamen tenderized him.

When they were done, he was cut from the post, delirious, barely conscious. He was absurdly light from all the blood loss. Men from his family's service came forward and doused his wounds in liquor, making a final, exhausted, hoarse scream echo from his throat. They bandaged him, his back and a little his ass and thighs raw, open wounds, which were quickly covered by herbs and cloth strips by the doctors his father had grudgingly paid for.

Taiga came to, drank the water they gave him, and then the final aspect of his punishment was placed on him. A heavy wooden square, two feet in every direction, with pasted letters writing of his crime, was fastened to his neck, locked there so it couldn't be removed. For the next month, he'd struggle to sleep, to sit, to lie down, and it would sorely stress the wounds of his beating.

The yamen then proclaimed him forgiven for his crimes. The law was done with him.

Now he was loaded into a palanquin to meet his parents and elder brothers, who he'd disrespected, and whose parents he had disrespected, and whose ancestors down to the first and most noble man, all the way back in the time of the Zhou Dynasty, he had pissed on by taking it up the arse.

His punishments were only beginning.

His eyes met Zhao's in the crowd just once as he was loaded onto the palanquin. Taiga's look was flat and dignified.

It promised they would meet again.

---

He had more knots than he had earlier when he awakened with his mouth gagged and his body floating on a cart in the open air. He tried to sit up, moaning in pain, and was pressed down by a man - a man whose hand he felt he couldn't possibly mistake.

This was the brute who had raped him that night. Taiga jerked away but was pulled back; if he'd been too weak to fight the man at his best, after torture and months in prison he was weak as a kitten, and only curled away from him as the brute pet him, some perverse fondness.

Where was his family? Would they look for him now that he was gone? Bitterly, he doubted it. This man had done them a favor by removing the shameful burden from their midst.

They arrived at a house that must have rented space to travelers. Taiga, sick and dizzy from his too-recent brutalization, was pulled to his feet and had to be dragged up the stairs he didn't want to climb, his cangue thumping every step. His hand remained clenched on Taiga's sore, cut ass.

Finally he was slung on the ground, not without gentleness, though the sound was a muffled yell of pain. He looked up and saw Zhao.

He didn't glare. He was in pain and tired and he already knew who he'd see. His eyes were flat and cagey with misery. He was beautiful on the floor, with his curly hair and limpid eyes. Younger than Zhao by many years, his wrists tied behind his aching back.