AUTHOR: M. Caspian

PUBLISHER: Goodreads M/M Romance Group/Love’s Landscapes event 2014

LENGTH: 95 pages

PHOTO DESCRIPTION:

A dark-haired, young man crouches naked in the corner of a bathtub, beneath a spray of water. White tiles and chrome fittings surround him. A heavy chain with a sturdy padlock is draped over his right shoulder, above a large tribal tattoo on his bicep. The man protects his head and chest with his arms, cowering, as he apprehensively meets the gaze of the viewer staring down at him.

 

STORY BLURB:

Isaac is tired to the bones. He keeps his head down and looks after his family, but every two years the sick fear comes around again as the Feds arrive for a new harvest of kids. It’s Trace’s last sweep; he’s about to serve out his term of slavery. One last run and then… what? A life alone, with his books and music? He’s seen far too much of the dark side of human nature to think that’s a possibility. Trace and Isaac both know happy ever after doesn’t grow in the parched desert. Maybe together they can change that. This story was written as a part of the M/M Romance Group’s “Love’s Landscapes” event. Group members were asked to write a story prompt inspired by a photo of their choice. Authors of the group selected a photo and prompt that spoke to them and wrote a short story.

 

STORY PROMPT:

Dear Author,

I always knew it was a possibility. Have known since childhood that they could take me someday. The slave traders have been sweeping the area for weeks now but I didn’t think they’d want me. They usually take girls and if they take boys they’re younger, blonder… prettier. There’s not usually a demand for someone who looks like me and has reached the ripe, old age of twenty-four. But I was wrong. Someone did want me. I’m so fucked.

One last sweep of this dirt water town and I can get back to my life. My books, my music, my art and my life that doesn’t revolve around grabbing kids to sell to the highest bidder. I hate this shit. One last run. My debt will be paid and I’ll be free from that son of a bitch who grabbed ME as a kid. Maybe then I can finally stop thinking and dreaming. Turn off those dark desires that swirl in my head and wake me up at night in a cold sweat. I’m not HIM. I will never be HIM. My last fucking run and it all goes to shit when some guy, trying to be the hero, gets in my face. He’s too old, too dark, too inked… but God help me I want him.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I stood up to him. I just wanted the kid to have half a chance at getting away. He’s so angry. I screwed up his quota and now I’m going to pay for that. He told me to get clean. EVERYWHERE. Then he gave me a thick chain with a padlock on it and told me to chain myself to the table when I was done. Something about “inspecting the merchandise”. I’m so fucked.

I’d like a story that caters to my medical kink. Examinations, medical instruments, non-con that turns consensual, never penetrated straight virgin, training, etc… Prefer some angst with a lot of internal struggle for both characters. Straight guy should struggle against getting aroused by his captor. No Stockholm syndrome and a HEA.

Thanks! Sincerely, Moderatrix Lori

 

REVIEW:

 

The Arroyo… or, what goes around, comes around.

 

Wow. This is probably one of the more wrenching reads I’ve encountered in this genre, wonderful in its mix of dystopian horror and unsettling sensuality. Totally held me in its spell, so intelligently crafted, I ate it up, couldn’t turn away. Tore my heart into pieces.

 

It’s storytelling outside the box, maybe not for everyone, but for those who get it, refreshing. This author continues to grow and flex those writerly muscles. Stand back.

 

The flashes of violence against Trace, a slave to the Federation of the American States, are gut-twisting, graphic and shocking. He was born and raised in the Protectorate of Southern California, important for its slave exportation in this dystopian new world. For twenty years, half his life, he’s been owned by the Colonel, living under his foot, passed around like a pet whipped into obedience, treated like nothing more than a cigarette butt ground into the dirt.

 

We get an up close and personal view of just what this life has done to Trace, how this man who reads Flaubert and listens to Bach in his precious-little personal time, subjugates himself to the degradation of others. Dystopian horror: Trace is also right hand to the Colonel’s brutality, forced to exact the same evil that is acted on him. He’s been trained as a medic, a scientist, really, and his job is to carry out the census and the culling of future-slaves, procuring and indoctrinating them.

 

Enter young Isaac; he’s new bait. Taken from the herd, Trace is priming him for his own twenty years. But Isaac has issues of his own…

 

Is Trace a monster? He certainly walks a line between victim and perpetrator. He’s a man with nothing, forced against his softer sentiments, forced to find his replacement. No one-dimensional character here… Trace is literate, sensitive, and has the incredible ability to shut himself off from the vicious abuse while perpetrating it.

 

It’s central to this story… just who is this man and why does his story reach its climax now?

 

The characters are unforgettable, Trace and Isaac, Pete… the evil Colonel and his monster side-kick, Sergeant Miller (“He [Trace] wasn’t even real to Miller: just a piece of equipment waiting for its turn.”)… I keep coming back to them. They offset Trace’s struggle. If you’re gonna write a bad guy, make it good. Make them real, something for our nightmares. So that the torment is made more real, so that the oppressed can rise that much more sweetly above it, shine more brightly through it, or fight more desperately against it. There is nothing scarier than the evil that can live within someone who looks on surface, and is deemed by society, to be normal.

 

The setting is scary good… this dystopian United States known as the Federation where supposedly god-fearing Citizens can have it written into their creed who are the haves and who are the have nots. Where ordinary, common people can be rewritten as classless subordinates to those in power. This Federation becomes the limitless bad-guy. Not just one or two monsters… society has become the monster.

 

In the end, I do wonder what will become of Trace and Isaac.

 

“The people who make the rules don’t have to follow the rules. That’s the one thing that stays the same no matter where you go.”

 

So good, this one will stick with you for a long time. Kudos to the author for matching the prompt and delivering so much more.

 

 

RATING:  

 

STORY LINK:

The Arroyo by M. Caspian ♥