The Devil Below Us: Chapter Four

This chapter covers serious issues of child, drug and sexual abuse and mild profanity, which may cause some readers distress. Please be warned. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. It is a work of cautionary fiction.

Father, Amen | (The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing — Psalm 23:1)

Chapt 3 | Contents | Chapt 5

ho knows what people are capable of, when they think they won't get caught?

Almost anything.

Caleb peeked out of Derek's bedroom window through a gap in the curtains. The way the rain fell, it blurred his view, but he could hear the voices of his friends from outside.

It was his signal from the shadows. It was time to go. The dealer's spot was moving on. The undercover police, the feds as they called the pigs that wore their masks, was coming to patrol Downland tonight.

But he didn't want to leave Derek. He turned around to look at him sleeping in that large double bed of his. Caleb worried he was getting soft. When he had been homeless, he had slept under bridges and hedges in all sorts of weather. Now the sight of the rain made him feel like crawling into Derek's warm bed to sleep beside him.

During his usual hustles, he would take a rape drug that would make him fall asleep, and silently pliant to his host's expected advances. There were times he didn't remember anything, other times he would wake, screaming in agony, while they were still on top of him. Sometimes he fought them, until they restrained him and finished in him. He didn't know how he would react to the effects of the drug at any given time, but it always ended the same way.

He would make his host feel guilty, but reassure them, with one of his perfectly crafted smiles, that he wouldn't say anything if they gave him money for his next fix. Then he would tell them that he would creep out as quietly as he came in. No one would need to know.

If people think they won't get caught, they are capable of almost anything. Taking advantage of this basic human weakness had always come easy to him.

When a trade off had been secured, and depending on the hospitality of his host, he would either leave, or wait for a signal from his friends, coming out of the other flats in the twilight hours, having earned their keep in much the same way. Usually, his sullied feet would be itching to get outside, and run wild with the hooded shadows, to share his experiences with them and laugh about how easy the previous night's catch had been.

But Derek had been different. He had kept what they did between them a secret.

erek tilted Caleb's face up so he could make him look in his eyes. He slapped Caleb in the face.

"Kill your eyes," he commanded.

Caleb couldn't respond. His knees hurt. His mouth was full. But he tried to give a choked gurgle in compliance.

"Keep looking at me, boy." Derek's fingers gripped Caleb's cheek, leaving deep imprints on his pale, now russet coloured, skin. When Caleb tried to wrap his arms around Derek's waist and move in closer, Derek pushed him away. Caleb fell backwards, naked, weak and shivering, into the large dresser in a corner of Derek's bedroom.

"No. You only do as I say. Exactly as I say. No deviation."

Caleb nodded compliantly, eyes downcast. Saliva dripped from his nose and mouth. He was suffering from withdrawal symptoms from the heroin, and he knew he wouldn't be allowed a fix of the dark until he had obeyed his old man's commands.

"Get back here, boy."

Caleb tried to stand.

"No, boy. Crawl." Derek made a tugging hand motion, as though his hand held an invisible leash, tied to the dog collar he made Caleb wear around his trained throat.

Caleb did as he was told; a little Jack terrier crawling back on his hands and knees to where his owner stood, legs apart.

"Again." Derek grabbed Caleb's face and pushed it between his legs. He filled the boy's mouth, and pulled his face up again. "Kill your eyes, boy. Like mine. Keep looking into mine."

Caleb nodded again, pushing back the need to gag. His old man's deep thrusts shoved deeper into him with a growing force that finally broke through his gagging reflexes. He felt the back of his throat expand, and tried not to let his eyes roll to the back of his head.

"My eyes, boy. Look into my eyes."

He did his best to obey, but all he could see were Derek's large white biceps mottled with grey-black hair, and his hands that grasped both sides of his swollen face to keep it in place.

"Keep going boy. Open and swallow. Open and swallow. Like I showed you."

When Derek had enough, he pushed Caleb away.

Caleb fell back into a different corner of the room this time, landing with a loud thud, spluttering his snot and saliva. He tasted it in his mouth, mingled with the taste of his old man.

"What do say, boy?"

"Thank you, Father." His voice was monotone, it sounded dead, flat. He hoped his eyes looked the same. Just as Derek had taught him. Just as Derek would teach him. Always and in all ways.

Derek nodded, and the first lines of emotion crossed his face. A small grin. But his slate eyes did not smile. They narrowed. "Get in position, boy."

Caleb lay on his back, and raised his legs into the air. Exposed, he began to rock back and forth, like a child in a cradle. His body ticking like a clock on speed. Counting his racing heart beats. Waiting. In anticipation.

"We are about to pray, boy, What do you say?"

Caleb closed his eyes. "Our Father. Amen."

"Good." Derek's grin widened as he straddled Caleb.

Caleb began to squeal, as his guts turned to fire.

Collateral damage.

erek didn't talk much. And Caleb liked that.

But Caleb talked. Especially when he was on the crack, the white. It made him happy. Then he would talk and talk.

"There was one fecking time," he began, picking up his glass pipe by the cabinet beside Derek's bed, "when three Polish men, big, big guys, did me in a phone box. In daylight. And no one stopped it. Can you fecking believe it?"

Derek said nothing. He just listened.

"They promised me a hundred quid, but they gave me foreign money, the bastards. The street is fucked up. But it's a good teacher. I learnt my lesson after that."

"What did they do to you?" Derek asked, quietly. He was stretched out on the bed, naked; Caleb's training was over for the night.

Before Caleb replied, he put the loaded pipe to his lips. He lit a lighter flame down its spout. After a quick inhale, he said, "All three of them tried to fit in my mouth!"

Derek shifted his position in the bed. "Tell me in exact detail. And don't leave anything out."

Caleb gave a hoarse laugh, breathing out a white plume of smoke. "Can I take this collar off first?"

"No. Continue."

Usually, Caleb would exaggerate about his experiences for sympathy. But he knew instinctively that wouldn't work on the ice man. So, for the first time in a long time, he spoke with brutal honesty. He told him of his experiences on the street after he ran away from home. The peadophiles in the park that would hunt him. He told him in exacting detail what they did to him when they caught him.

As Caleb spoke of his collateral damage, he watched Derek get wet, and harden. The more he went on about his abuses as a homeless young boy, the more he saw it excited Derek. And the happier Caleb felt.

Then he began to talk of the old men who paid him for tricks, to carry out their rape fantasies on him, or to beat him senseless. And of the wealthy weirdos with torture cells in their cellars. But they paid the best.

"You look at them on the outside, and you wouldn't believe the freaky shit they're into. Kinda like-" But Caleb cut himself short.

"Like me?" Derek said, guessing correctly.

"You're different," Caleb said quickly.

And he was. Derek reminded Caleb of a line of smack. You didn't realise it, but after the first dose of heroin, you were a lost cause. The more time he spent with Derek, the more he wanted of him. The more Derek beat him, the more beats he wanted to take. The more Derek humiliated him, the more humiliation he wanted to suffer.

He watched as Derek spat in his palm, and began to stroke himself. Caleb took that as a sign. He loaded his pipe again, and flicked his lighter, the flame touching the white in the glass. He closed his eyes as he pulled the smoke into in his mouth, his throat, and his lungs.

The things most people wanted to forget, were things Caleb wanted to remember. He didn't take drugs to forget. He just took them to feel good. Without them he was angry, He was always angry. You couldn't pull tricks if you were angry. You had to smile. But with Derek, he took it because the collateral damage was extensive.

He inhaled, and held it, and held it for as long as he could. The back of his throat burned as he let it out and opened his eyes to watch the white smoke drift off to the ceiling. The dog's collar around his neck didn't feel so tight now.

He gave a wide grin, "I was gay for a day, then gay for pay, and now I'm gay all the way."

Derek's fist caught him unawares. It landed on the side of his face, and knocked him off the bed, His pipe fell out of his hands. He saw stars. For a moment he thought he was eight years old again, in his mother's kitchen.

He watched as Derek went limp, and felt a deep disappointment. What did he do wrong? Dazed, he asked, "What was that for?"

Derek looked unplugged. But not in a good way. "I'm not gay," he said. "Neither are you."

"Well you could've fooled me," Caleb said, sounding like his old self before he had met Derek, and instantly regretted his remark.

Derek kicked him in the face. "I'm not gay. You're not gay. Say it."

"Okay, okay. I'm not gay." He touched his bleeding lip. His hands began to shake as he reached for his broken glass pipe on the floor. He began to feel angry. "So what do you call what we do?"

Derek bent down to stare at him, with flat, dead eyes. When he spoke, his words were scripture, "We're praying, boy. Don't ever say that word to me again. I hate gays."

Caleb could see that Derek was deadly serious. His anger dissipated. "Yes, Father," he said, meekly.

"Good boy," Derek said, going back to his bed. "And no more meeting anyone else. You hear me? You're mine."

"Yes, Father," Caleb said, lowering his eyes.

They had begun to beat in sync, even though neither was ready to admit it.

aleb sucked on the used butt of a cigarette as he waited for Derek's signal to go in for his nightly training. He was huddled in one of the maisonette's communal stairways, a block down from his old man's first floor flat.

It was a cold night. He stamped his feet, to bring them back to life. He looked at the new shoes he had stolen that morning. Wondered how much he could sell them for to get a fix. His hoodie was threadbare. His bottoms soiled from having to shit in the woods earlier that day. The life of a homeless hustler meant that you either stayed in the same clothes, stole off your friend's stash of clothes or hoped your host would give you some of their cast offs. Sometimes they even washed your clothes, if you were lucky.

Derek wasn't generous in that way, but Caleb didn't care. At least he would be able to have a shower at Derek's, if his old man was in a good mood. Caleb had to admit that Derek was a bit of a miser, even getting some food off him was a task in itself. A bowl of dry cereal or some fruit salad was the best he could hope for on his good days. But Caleb didn't go to Derek's for food.

Caleb couldn't give a name to the pull that dragged his feet to Downland late at night, to crawl into his old man's flat and put on the dog collar. For the time being, Derek had warned him not to tell even his closest friends on the street where he disappeared to on an evening anymore. And never to greet him in public.

"If you see me outside, day or night, you ignore me. Got it."

Caleb got it. It was part of the unspoken agreement between the drug users on the street and the residents of Downland. What happened behind their closed door, stayed behind it. During the day, you wouldn't even guess that half of the homeless had been a guest at one time or another behind almost every door on Derek's block.

It was like a strange game of pass the parcel. You went in, got unwrapped, then wrapped up again and sent on to the next door the following evening. You rarely went to the same door two nights in a row.

But what was happening between him and Derek, was different. Caleb sensed it, but didn't voice it, couldn't voice it because he didn't have a name for it. The word wasn't in his vocabulary. If Caleb had to give it a name, then Derek was like the father he never had. Always wanted to have. He had never known his father, he had died when he was young, but he would have wanted him to be like Derek.

"Hey, kid. What's my favourite boy up ta?"

"Hey, Baba Mamba. Nothing much."

A tall, black youth, Dean Adenuga, known by everyone as Baba Mamba, was Downland's local drug dealer. Everything passed through him, or nothing passed.

Baba Mamba looked up at the kitchen windows of the flats. "You not busy tonight? You haven't come to spot, yet."

"No." Caleb put his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, to hide them just in case they started to shake and give off his withdrawal; its symptoms had already begun to scatch at his guts. His usual nightly buy of three white and two dark was delayed. His old man was keeping him waiting for the money. Men fucked you from the outside in, drugs fucked from the inside out.

"Uh-huh," Baba Mamba said, not really believing him. But then no one who knew Caleb well, believed a word he said; you took anything he said with a large grain of salt. "If a pretty boy like ya can't get a night's shelter, what's the world coming to?"

"It's not that," Caleb said quickly.

"Oh, you got a regular? You gotta be careful of those."

"It's not that, either."

Baba Mamba looked down at him. His large frame was still, but then Baba Mamba never moved unless he had to. "You know you owe me a lot of dollar. And we haven't talked in a while, pretty boy."

"I know, I know, I am getting some tonight. Just waiting."

"Uh-huh." Baba Mamba took Caleb by the arm and got him to stand. They walked away from the steps to an intersecting alleyway between the blocks of maisonettes, which divided the buildings into blocks of three.

Caleb tried hard not to look back at Derek's flat as they turned the corner into the narrow slit of graffitied brick and urine stained concrete. Lamplight shone at both ends, but it was out of view of the closed circuit cameras on the street. They stood, facing each other in the shadows that stretched out to them from the artificial lighting.

Baba Mamba unzipped his Gucci jeans and brought out the reason for his nickname. It lay like a deflated snake in his palm. "Why haven't we talked in a while, Caleb?"

"I don't do that anymore," Caleb said, forcing himself not to look down. He remembered its taste. And he was hungry. His eyes glazed over. But he couldn't go against Derek's commandments. He broke into a run, shouting back from the far end of the alleyway, "I'm not gay, Baba Mamba."

Baba Mamba gave a wide, surprised grin, "Since when?"

"I never was. But I'm going to get you the money, I'm good for it."

With a nonchalant shrug, Baba Mamba zipped himself back up. "As you say, kid. But you better pay up, or else you'll be good for nothing."

"I promise," Caleb replied back with a nervous laugh. He returned to the steps, relieved to have gotten off so lightly, to wait for Derek's signal. In the pockets of his hoodie, his hands began to shake.

nce Caleb was in Derek's flat, Derek was in complete control.

When Caleb's training first began, he hadn't understood half of what Derek was commanding him to do, but during his time as a hustler he had seen, and had to do, a lot of weird shit. As long as he got his money for his fix, Caleb didn't care. He had very few boundaries, none if he was honest, and was willing to do anything asked of him for money.

Who knows what people are capable of, when they think they won't get caught?

Almost anything.

ante had been cleaning all day. Cleanliness was next to godliness, true enough, but the flat had needed a lot of work when he first moved in. His bedroom door had to be changed, the bathroom walls retiled and treated for mould, a new floor fitted for the living room. The alterations had been worth it, and much needed. It fell to him to clean the mess the workmen had left behind.

The state of someone's home was important to Sicilians. It reflected their character. He looked around at his handiwork with a contented grin. It was slowly beginning to feel like a home to him now. His new home.

The more time he spent getting to know this new space, the more he was falling in love with it. It was his oasis from the world outside. Now, it was time to be happy in it. He made his way to the bathroom and shook the wood dust from off his clothes. But first it was time to take a shower. It would feel good after a long day.

He was just about to undress when he heard the distant sound of a male voice. His ears perked up. Was he imagining things? Or was that someone singing?

He said out loud to himself, "I wonder where it is coming from?"

From above his head, he realised. He raised his head and stared at the ceiling. Sure enough, it was someone singing in the bathroom above him. It was coming down from the ceiling.

He smiled. To hear someone else's happiness, sparked his own.

He decided to put on some music as he finished cleaning himself up in the bathroom.

erek walked into his bathroom to find Caleb singing in the shower.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Singing. Elvis Presley. Me old ma's favourite singer."

"Well, don't. I hate singing," Derek said. "No one is meant to know you are here. I live alone, remember?"

"Sorry," Caleb said.

"And get out quick, that's water you're wasting. I didn't let you in to wash. You're here to train, and earn your money."

Caleb's voice dropped to an even more respectful, whispered tone. "Sorry," he said, again. He switched the shower off. "Thank you for letting me use your bathroom. I'll clean up after myself."

Derek gave a small nod. He was about to hand Caleb his dog collar, when the sound of opera wafted through the linoleum floor.

"Who is that then, at this time of night?" Caleb asked, confused, stepping out to dry himself.

"Don't ask," Derek said. "My new neighbour. He moved in below." His voice gave nothing away.

But Caleb did ask later. That was how it all began. The creation of Dante's infernal duo.

ut from the shower, Caleb quickly dried himself and placed the dog collar around his neck. He turned around to let Derek tighten and clasp it shut behind him.

Caleb gave a gasp. He felt he was going to faint. But instead of his neck, he reached out to put one hand against the frosted bathroom window. The leather bit deeper into his skin.

At the first sound of his pain, he had felt the tip of Derek's excitement rub between his cheeks behind him. He indicated his obedient consent by arching his back. With his free hand, he grabbed a cheek to expose himself, to show his old man his pulsing hole. Now he felt it's head pry and explore, and try to enter him.

Alongside his old man's, his own arousal grew. The touch of the ice man's wet tip worked to electrify his skin, a current seemed to ripple through his pores.

This was new to him. As a result of the highs and downs of the white and the dark he smoked, Caleb usually felt exhausted and raw from the rollercoaster of his own addictions. Tonight, he felt recharged. He was hard without effort. Derek felt so good against him that Caleb thought they might even skip the need for the sex drugs he had gotten off Baba Mama to trigger their sexual encounter.

"Face me and kneel," Derek commanded him.

"Our Father. Amen," Caleb said, as he did as he was told. He knelt between Derek's legs and turned his face upwards to stare at the eyes that occupied his thoughts, and the hands that filled his dreams.

There was moment of silence that felt like a century and when Derek spoke again, his voice was as cold as his icy eyes.

"Look down and behold the holy sceptre," Derek said.

"Our Father. Amen." Caleb nodded and stared at the single eye of Derek's veiny shaft. It's tip carried the scent of Caleb's hole.

"Partake of the holy water," Derek spoke again, and his single eye suddenly let loose a spurt of gold stream, with its own distinctive smell.

Caleb, baptised in a shower of new and old senses, closed his eyes and opened his mouth to taste his old man's will. Drinking Derek's piss fostered a sense of closeness, intensifying his pleasure.

"Good boy."

Caleb shuddered, a full body shudder, as Derek's hands tangled in his long hair. The caress became a pull, and the familiar presence of pain made itself known to Caleb. He knew pain. He had lived with it for most of his life. He welcomed it now like an old friend.

Pain meant money. Suffering meant money. He was just collateral damage.

erek held out two small white pills in his hand.

"Take them," he ordered Caleb.

They were in the bedroom now after Caleb's shower.

Chemsex was a part of Caleb's nightly hustles. The drugs his hosts would buy or provide to interplay with their sexual encounters, put him through a spectrum of experiences. It altered his perceptions to give the appearance of intimacy. They removed the need for real intimacy.

"I don't need them with you," he said without thinking, breaking out of his role.

The physical aspect of sex, Caleb knew, and knew well; had been trained for it since the age of eight, but he didn't understand these new dynamics of intimacy. He wanted to understand it with his old man and experience his fucking without the need for pills or poppers. He had never done that before.

Derek responded with the back of his hand to Caleb's face. It was a small slap, as though he were slapping the boy back to his senses. Or slapping a pet dog on the nose for barking without permission.

"Take them," he commanded again, without skipping a beat.

A millisecond of hurt flashed in Caleb eyes. He felt the old anger rise in him, threatening to blacken his hazel hues. He quickly supressed it, but didn't replace it with his usual signature smile.

You pay your money. You take your choice.

"As you wish," Caleb said, resuming his role, and taking the innocent looking pills in Derek's outstretched hand. He threw them into his mouth and swallowed them down.

His throat used to contstrict because of the crack, but Derek had helped him with that.

"Good boy." Derek took a step back, to watch Caleb as the drugs took their degrading effect.

Caleb stood by a chest of drawers in Derek's bedroom. He had begun to keep a few of his artifacts in there. The place was beginning to feel like home.

Home? What was that? What was he thinking? He lost the word to an ether that smothered his brain. His train of thoughts were derailed by the effect of the pills as they kicked in. His facial expressions softened, his eyes glazed into a single flatline of need; the pills had sucked all his sexual desire out of his soul into his physical body. He felt dead, but alive at the same time. He couldn't think. But he could feel.

Caleb felt it begin. A warm sensation in his chest. It spread out to the top layer of his skin; his goosebumps crackled and prickled as though he had stepped into fire. The downy hairs on his arms began to stand on end. A slow rising euphoria crawled inside him, as he would crawl, sometimes on his belly, to get through Derek's open front door unnoticed.

It picked him up, heightening his sensations and emotions. He felt he was standing on the tips of his toes. He stretched his arms out; looked as though he was ready to take flight, or was reaching out to stop himself from floating up to the ceiling.

He was naked, but he suddenly felt a thousand hands reaching out to touch him, undressing him. He began to strip as though he were dressed, miming a grotesque burlesque dance. His inhibitions stripped away one by one with the invisible garments he threw into the air. He began to bound up and down, making loud thumping noises as his feet hit the floor, turning and spinning, impersonating a ballerina who had been paid for a private performance.

His hallucinations, those shadows that ran with him in his dreams and nightmares, like his hooded friends through the shadows of Downland, came now to join him in this dance. He would never admit it, but his favourite colour was pink, and his vision blurred into a spectrum of his secret hues. He danced in unison with the clouds of pastel colours dancing across his eyes, watched them as they began to darken and bleed crimson.

He spun around, making his bum tick, tock from side to side like a two disc pendulum. He shook it at Derek, the lord of his dance, in what he thought was a sexy invite to join in, flicking his hair, licking his lips and stroking his sides.

To Derek he looked like a waddling duck. He had been silently watching this performance, his nondescript face slowly losing its stony stature as he watched the boy's degredation; his grin and his hard on getting longer and wider. He wanted to turn Caleb into a facsimile of his humanity, before he raped him. You pushed your acolytes to their lowest depths, and then kept them there with the heel of your boot. The shame made them obdient. It was what kept them crawling back for more.

He could see Caleb was ready. He grabbed the prancing boy and threw him across the room. As he landed, it caused a thud, loud enough to make the thin walls of the flat reverberate.

He walked over and picked him up. Punched him in the stomach. Threw him away from him again. Caleb landed in a corner of the room, his head collapsing down, in a dead faint, with his own intoxicated grin still pasted on his face.

A minute later Caleb came to his senses. He let out a piercing scream despite himself, shaking his head in confusion. Horrified, tears came to his eyes. Derek strode over to him, and slapped him across the face, hard.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

"Our Father. Amen," Caleb groaned.

"Good boy."

Caught now in Derek's hands, strong and primal, he was bent over, rough fingers roaming and probing his wet, exposed orifice. The real dance between master and slave had just begun.

"What the fuck-?"

An operatic aria and a male voice singing loudly came from below them, at the very same moment his old man arched and entered into him. The uninvited crescendo broke their prayer session.

Derek slipped out of him, and Caleb felt desecrated by its removal. It knocked him out of his stupor. His thoughts returned.

"Is that your fecking neighbour again? Doesn't he sleep?"

When he heard no answer from Derek, he straightened up and turned around to see his old man unplugged and breathless, but it wasn't his doing. The broad hairy was chest heaving. His eyes were no longer cold. The slate stone of his irises flecked sparks of fire, their thin, annular structure burned with an anger and hatred Caleb had never before seen on Derek's face.

"Y-you okay, man?"

Caleb watched Derek's transformation in real time, watched mesmerised as his old man killed the internal emotions that had escaped out onto the surface of his face. It was like watching a murder in slow motion. When Derek regained his control, he said quietly, "Training is over for tonight. Get dressed."

The opera music from beneath their feet continued.

ante had woken with a start to loud banging noises coming from above him.

There had been a muffled bang, followed by a thud, one so strong that it had caused his inner walls to shake. It sounded like a battle.

Unaware and uncertain of what he was hearing, he put on his music to calm his nerves, and lay back down to listen in the semi-darkness of his room.

And then the banging stopped.

f his new neighbour, Derek was silent. He didn't talk much outside of sex, anyway.

They were in the bedroom. Derek was in his bed. Caleb on the floor. It was his usual place. He loaded his new glass pipe with white powder.

Curious, Caleb knew he had to be the one to broach the subject. He did so tentatively.

"So how long you had this new neighbour, then?"

Derek was staring down at the floor. "Not long," he said, quietly.

Caleb brought the pipe to his lips with a shaking hand. He asked, "What you thinking?"

"Of a dog my Mum had I was young. Called Pixie," Derek replied, even more softly.

Caleb grinned, blowing out his smoke, and pointing at the dog collar still around his neck. "Was this hers?"

Derek turned his head slowly to look at Caleb. "No," was all he said.

Caleb dropped the grin. "Do you want me to go and have a word with him?" He got up and looked through the gap in the bedroom curtains. The street was silent of activity. It was still too early for the stable doors to open. "Or I could get one of my mates to have a word with him."

"No." Something changed in the colour of Derek's eyes. An idea had begun to form in his mind. "Not yet."

Caleb remembered his old man's expression from before, when they had been so rudely interrupted. An image of his third year teacher flashed into his mind. He knew that feeling. "You really hate him, don't you?"

"I like him. He's nice," was all Derek said.

Published 23 April, 2026

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