Please, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger. (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

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I realized that I can't write good yaoi when it's based on a relationship. Rape, no problem—just look at Taking Sora. It's just a little slow in coming because I can only do so much evil at one time. But nice loving guy relationships are proving to be difficult so, of course, I have to do it just to torment and challenge myself.

So, bear with me because this will be hard to write and I'll update when I get something I like on paper… err, on Internet, on Microsoft word. Ah, damn it…

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Anyway, I have MOVED this story COMPLETELY to another site. You can find this STORY and all its subsequent UPDATES here, just remove the spaces and asterisks (*): h*t*t*p : / / archiveofourown. o*r*g /works/1144773/chapters/2317441

I have the same penname there as I do here: ParadiseAvenger

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~July 15, 2023: past midnight

The young child woke to the sound of shattering glass and opened his eyes to tongues of bright fire licking quickly across the carpeted floor. He lurched up in bed, grabbed the covers tightly in his little fists, and screamed for his mother. The nearness of the fire was a threat, a promise, and a quiver of terror ran down the boy's spine.

Again, he cried for his mother and then wailed for his father.

Somewhere else in the house, he heard his mother's high-pitched scream and his father's enraged shouts. Then, there were two harsh bangs that cut through the silence of the night. The sound echoed in the boy's ears over the crackle of the fire.

The young boy whimpered and pressed against the wall to escape the fire consuming his bedroom greedily. He clung to his teddy bear and stared through the scalding brightness.

Suddenly his door was kicked inward with a crash and he saw the shape of a man in the darkness, lit up by the bright flames. He was wearing a mask.

"Daddy?" the boy whispered eagerly, but this man was the farthest thing from his good strong father. In fact, he might have been closer to the devil, especially dancing in the flames like that.

The masked man grabbed him up from his bed in a tangle of sheets and blankets. The boy's favorite teddy bear slipped from his fingers and fell into the fire. Without thinking, the child grabbed the burning treasure and screamed at the flames licked into the flesh of his hand. The heat from the fire was searing and it was like nothing the young boy had ever felt before in his short life.

Shouting something like a warning, the man knocked the burning bear from his fingers, slung his small body over his shoulder, and left the blazing house. The child couldn't breathe, his eyes watered in the smoke, and his hair crackled in the heat of the flames. But the man knocked open the front door with his fist and they finally spilled outside into the fresh night air.

Someone shouted, but the words were lost.

Then, the boy was thrown onto the wet grass, coughing and choking. Someone slapped a wet cloth over his burnt hand, tied it tightly without a care, and tore a scream of pain from the child's lips. The boy rolled onto his stomach and stared in horror at his burning home.

"Mommy? Daddy?" he sobbed and tears streamed down his face.

He turned away from the sight of his ruined home and looked towards the man who had pulled him from the fire. Was he a policeman or a fireman? Why was he wearing a mask?

In the bright firelight, the men and their van were illuminated in stark relief. The men who had taken him out of the burning building stood watching it burn until the house was nothing but a skeleton. They laughed amongst themselves and a chill ran up the child's spine. Somehow, he knew these men hadn't come to save him and he realized his parents weren't going to emerge from the rubble to rescue him either. The boy thought of his bear.

With one quick glance at the men, the child scrambled to his feet and ran through the wet grass. The nearest neighbor was too far to walk and he knew that, but he also knew deep in his heart that if he didn't run something terrible was going to happen to him. His heart pounded and his burnt hand throbbed.

One of the men shouted, "The brat's getting away!"

There was the sound of pounding footsteps on the grass behind the child.

"No!" the boy shrieked. "Stay away! Please!"

But his pleas were ignored. Within moments, the man scooped him up by the back of his pajamas and caged him in a grip like iron. No amount of kicking or screaming would save the boy, but he struggled anyway. The blow was sudden and the boy tasted blood. He cried out and dug his nails into his captor's clothed arms to no avail.

"Load him up," one of the men ordered. "I want to finish this before dawn."

There was a nod above the boy's head and the back door of the van opened wide like a mouth to devour him. There was a cage inside, but it was small and probably meant for a puppy. The boy continued to scream and struggle, but he was easily shoved inside. The door of the van slammed shut and he was plunged into total darkness that was broken only by the eager chattering and laughter of the men who had destroyed his home.

:::

~Ten Years Later

There were three indisputable facts this month. The first two were that it was nearly Christmas and it was freezing.

Axel Inferno did not like winter and did not like the cold. If he had had his say in the matter, he would be warm and comfortable on the couch in front of the television, but some unforeseen events had screwed up his plans. So now, he had his hands shoved deep in his pockets and toyed with the lighter he carried but he did so carefully. He had already set his pants on fire once and did not to wish to do so ever again. His chestnuts did not need to roast on an open fire.

The winter sky was a shade of gun-metal-grey and concealed by a thick blanket of snow-bearing clouds. According to the weatherman, there was the very real threat of the blizzard of the century on the horizon though nothing but a few flurries had arrived yet. As Axel's father always said, "Great storms announce themselves with a single breeze" and so flurries would arrive before blizzards.

Axel was out and about today against his will today because of the third indisputable fact of life this month. His slave—a nicely-built and strong blonde who he had owned for about two years, Cloud—had run away. It had been over a week now and no one had even glimpsed hide or hair of Cloud. So Axel decided he was as good as dead and was out shopping for a new slave in this bitingly frigid weather. But it was going to be a pain in the ass to replace Cloud.

Axel was already in a bad mood and the weather wasn't improving it much.

Neither was the atmosphere.

Going to the Slave Market—cutely and badly named the Puppy Mill—was often like going to hell in a lace-trimmed hand basket but it was even worse on a bleak day. In the harsh light of a warm day, the slaves were grubby but alive with their cheeks pink and their eyes bright. This close to Christmas and on such a dreary snowy day, the usually busy streets were deserted and it just looked like the road into a hellish necropolis after the end of the world had come and gone.

The only activity on the wind-swept streets were the few slaves that had been forced to stand outside by their vendors. Most of them were naked and all of them were in chains. As an icy breeze gusted through, Axel hugged his jacket tighter around his body and a pang of pity went through his heart.

One girl in a tattered dress was shivering so badly that her teeth were chattering like bones and she cupped her hands desperately over her breasts. Another boy's feet were getting blue with frostbite from standing barefoot on the cold concrete with cold chains around his ankles for so long. A naked beauty was chained to a storefront's threshold with a small phallus pushed deep inside his body to show how much he could take and his bruised skin was covered in goose bumps.

Axel stuck his head in the doorways and told both the shopkeepers, "Bring them inside for pity's sake. No one was shopping except me and it's damn cold." Then, he continued up the street, window-shopping and not finding anything that tickled his fancy.

He was too pissed off at Cloud for running away. That bastard! It wasn't as if Axel beat him black and blue or starved him or anything so Cloud didn't have a good reason to run away. Axel kept his slaves well-fed, dressed, and bathed. It wasn't that bad a life if you could get over the worst aspects of being owned, body and soul by another person.

Grumbling to himself, Axel stamped his feet to warm them up. He had to stop trying to figure out why Cloud had run away. It certainly wasn't doing him any good and Cloud was never coming back. He had to get a grip and move on which was precisely why he was here at the Puppy Mill in the freezing cold so close to Christmas.

It was then that something caught Axel's eye.

The movement was so quick that it might have been a ghost, but Axel glimpsed the beautiful creature at the threshold of the shop just a stone's throw up the road. Immediately, he wanted that one—no matter the cost.

He quickened his pace and positively rushed into the shop with the tails of his coat flapping like wings. The interior of the shop was brightly-lit and harshly illuminated the many slaves that were chained or caged inside. They all stared at Axel with mingled fear and want, but he looked past them for the stunning youth he had glimpsed in the doorway only moments ago.

The merchant stood behind the low counter with the cash register atop it and he had the stunning beauty bent violently over the desk.

Axel's breath caught as he laid eyes on the beauty in full light. Her hair was cropped short in haphazard spikes around her head and her eyes were a shade of sapphire that would have made the gem weep in shame. Her pink mouth was parted in a cry that was stifled behind her thin white hand and her cheeks were flushed. A filthy brown cloak was thrown over her naked back and obscured her body from view.

When Axel entered, the shopkeeper quickly cast the girl away into the shadows of the small room just behind the desk. "Ah, how may I help you?" he asked immediately and there was a ridiculously small tent in his pants. It took all of Axel's restraint not to comment as he approached and the shopkeeper did his best to hide his erection behind the low counter.

"I'd like to see the girl that was just at the doorway," he said and his green eyes flicked to the shadowed office behind the shopkeeper. "The one you were so interested in. I hope you didn't exploit her. I'm not interesting in such used merchandise."

For a moment, the shopkeeper looked stricken—probably from being caught in the act—but then he barked a laugh, turned, and shouted, "Get back out here, you little shit." Then, he smirked at Axel as if he knew something he didn't. "The girl, eh?"

Axel didn't understand until the beautiful girl came slinking out of the shadows.

Her bright blue eyes darted fearfully from the shopkeeper to Axel and back. The shopkeeper grabbed the girl's filthy cloak in his meaty hand and they fought over it for a moment. The girl's eyes were wide and desperate and her mouth opened in a small silent cry, but the shopkeeper finally tore the single article of clothing out of the girl's hands. It was then that Axel realized why the shopkeeper had smirked.

The beautiful girl was in fact not a girl at all, but a young boy.

Axel only glimpsed the stunning boy's pale nudity for a second before he dropped into a crouch. He wrapped his thin arms around his nakedness and hid rather effectively behind his legs. All Axel could see was the rounded skeletal thinness of the boy's narrow shoulders and the slight trembling that wracked his body.

The shopkeeper grinned further. "Not a girl. Sorry, sir," he said and then tossed the ragged cloak over the boy's back carelessly.

Immediately, the youth grabbed the cloak around his narrow shoulders and scrambled backwards into the shadows. Those blue eyes glowed in the dimness of the shadowed office space, peering out of that gaunt yet breathtakingly beautiful face, but the rest of the youth's body was hidden by the filthy cloak.

Now, it was Axel's turn to grin. "That's even better," he said shortly. "I'll take him."

The shopkeeper's smile faltered and he cast a quick glance at the hunkered boy. The pathetic tent in his pants quivered as he asked, "Are you sure? He's a mute, sir."

"Even better, even better," Axel repeated. "How much for him?"

Greedily, the merchant forgot about his arousal as he and Axel haggled on a price. After all, the slave was stunningly beautiful but mute and the merchant had probably used his body recently. All that counted towards a hefty discount, but money hardly mattered to Axel. After all, Axel had more money than God since his father was the CEO of a robotics corporation and Axel was his second-in-command. They settled on a price quickly and easily.

"Okay. Thank you for your business," the shopkeeper said as he eagerly scanned Axel's card into the register. After handing back the card, he turned to the beautiful boy and snapped, "Get to your master's side, you worthless wretch!"

The stunning boy showed no signs of moving. He remained crouched in the shadows like a pretty gargoyle with his lower lip caught painfully between his teeth. He trembled all over and his fingers clenched in a white-knuckled grip on the filthy cloak.

Then, the merchant put his foot in the youth's side and savagely kicked him to sprawl on the floor at Axel's feet. The youth cried out sharply and he looked up at Axel with those blue eyes so full of fear and pain. A drop of blood rolled from the corner of his lips and dripped onto the floor.

Axel grasped the boy's wrist and pulled him to his feet. "You belong to me now," he told the boy and reached to cup his face.

The boy flinched, but was unable to pull away as Axel gently wiped the blood from the edge of his soft mouth with his thumb. The boy trembled, his face was ghost-pale, and his eyes were like looking into a blue abyss.

"Let's go," Axel said coolly.

Then, Axel pulled the boy out into the freezing cold, marched him to his car, stuffed him into the passenger seat, turned the heat on full blast, and put the pedal to the floor on his way back to his nice warm house. The boy gazed out the window, silent and shivering.

More flurries had begun to fall—faster and faster—and the blizzard was coming.

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And… since I don't normally write yaoi… The more reviews and encouragement I get, the better chances are that I will continue working on this story. For once, I need encouragement. If nobody likes this, I'll probably ditch it because why work on something I don't really like and no one enjoys reading?

Questions, comments, concerns?

Review!

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Please read this story and all its updates in its intended content on the new site, Archive of Our Own.