Full Fathom Five

1.

I awoke from being drugged so deeply disoriented I needed to reconstruct how I’d come to be in this situation.

My dad had gone missing during an undercover job that went bad in a secret sex trafficking compound. The Algiers Club was a node in an international sex trade ring that my father had been rescued from as a child. Four years after his disappearance I returned with his former partner, now my stepfather Tony, to find that he’d been turned into a mindless sex slave for Mr. Sparrow, a higher up in the Algiers ring. Then it came back to me that Tony had betrayed me. He used my Dad, right in front of me, and as the drugged drink brought me down he said I was fucked.

Lying on a slim bed, I turned to take in my surroundings. I was in a simple cell, clean and modest, with smooth white walls, a bed, a chair, a small table and a door. The door had a pass-through, and a lock that was so simple in its appearance it almost had to be sophisticated in its technology. I didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious, but I was wearing the same clothes I arrived in. I had a little gnawing in my stomach but wasn’t starving, so I must not have been out for more than overnight. 

I stayed on the bed, feeling certain the lock must be active. I also needing to understand the situation better before making a move. Before long the door opened, and both Tony and Mr. Sparrow arrived. They were escorted by two of Sparrow’s bodyguards. Although Sparrow was older, maybe in his 60s, he was tall and broad and formidable and probably didn’t need much guarding. They were accompanied by a server who placed a tray of food on the table before making his exit.

“Good morning, young Mister Miranda,” said Sparrow, standing in the center of the room, his hands folded over the top of his walking cane.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked.

“Kid, I told you to accept your dad was dead and move on,” said Tony, standing beside Sparrow. “You had to fucking keep digging.”

“Tony?” I asked. I still hoped this was some sort of triple agent situation and any second now he’d pull out a gun, shoot the bodyguards and Sparrow and take me and Dad back home.

“Let’s get this over with,” Tony replied. “I turned your dad over to Algiers, way back four years ago. The operation going down was me. It was all me. Good news for you is your little faggot kiss and confession didn’t mess him up. I did. So you can let go of that.”

I had a million questions but couldn’t put any into words.

“Mister Miranda,” said Mr. Sparrow, “this will be an adjustment for you. If you will allow me a brief exposition, I will orient you to your new life.

“As you know, your father was born into our breeding pens for a life of servitude, but was liberated in his youth. You may have gathered, I am something of a perfectionist, so you can imagine how unsettling it was to lose our property. You may also imagine my delight at the prospect of reversing that loss, decades later, returning him to his proper position.”

“Why?” I asked, “Why is my father so important?”

“Individually he is not,” Sparrow answered. “He is less than nothing, a beast without a true name. Even the simple offense of his liberation is not consequential enough to alter that, as in every business there are gains and losses. 

“Your father, however, was not satisfied to be freed. He could have lived an ordinary life in your world, and have been remembered here as simply as lost livestock. But this he did not do. He became an agent targeting businesses such as ours. Moreover, he returned to Algiers in a false identity, in an operation perpetrated by his agency, to strike Algiers. To end us. And that... that, Mr. Miranda, cannot be tolerated. 

“For the whoreson escaped slave to return to oppose Algiers is so intolerable an offense that it calls for a singular show of our dissatisfaction and our will to retaliate. 

“To that end, we have broken him, mind andspirit. He will live out his days in the most base form of servitude, his body well cared for with only the purpose of making it a source of sexual pleasure for his superiors, for as long as it is fit to do so. He is less now than even a meager slave, for even a slave has the domain of her or his mind. But your father is left with no quarter left that is not my possession.

“Not only this, Mister Miranda, but so all will know the consequence of striking against Algiers, our retaliation does not end with your father. All the generations of his line, from this day to eternity, will live thusly. All of his line, Mister Miranda, which must include you.”

“Me?” I asked. “Why punish me?”

“Of course the accident of your lineage is not your fault,” Sparrow said. “It was your father’s unsanctioned breeding of you that is at fault. If you look at it in another light, you are not being punished, merely returned to where you should have been since birth.” 

2.

Sparrow raised his staff and he tapped it against the wall opposite the bed where I sat. The entire wall seemed to raise, revealing a second room partitioned by thick floor to ceiling clear glass. On the other side was my father, facing us, in what I could only see as a horror contraption.

He was fastened in a chair, completely naked but for a black leather blindfold over his eyes. His eyes, and his throat, wrists, elbows, thighs and ankles were secured with thick straps. Most terribly, a device covered his genitals, pumping like a cow milking machine, connecting to a catheter tube that ran from the pump to a container. As the machine pumped he squirmed. His hips worked to thrust, but with no leverage was unable to do much.

“Dad!” I yelled, and ran to hit the glass wall with my fist. 

He registered no awareness of me, or of anything but the device sucking at him. His body writhed, his muscles twisting as the machine worked his cock. His breathing intensified, sweat pouring over his rapidly rising and falling chest, and his abs flexed as he struggled against the machine. 

Finally as little as his hips could thrust they did rapidly and his muscles all contorted. He was shooting a load into the machine, making choking sounds as it sucked the cum out of him relentlessly. Even after he must have purged his balls, the device worked his cock and balls tirelessly.

Sparrow studied my stunned reaction. He then turned and left my room. 

As the machine continued on, sucking at my strapped down father, I sank against the glass wall. Too much was happening and I couldn’t take it all. I was drowning, struggling to breathe when I saw in the glass Tony’s reflection. Rage suddenly grounded me, thinking of Tony and how he betrayed us all.

“You shit fucking pig,” I spat at him, glaring at his reflection.

He just chuckled and rolled his eyes, folding his arms across his barrel chest.

Sparrow re-appeared on the other side of the wall. He looked at me as if it were the most ordinary social setting, and not a demonstration in an insane chamber of tortures. 

With the press of a button he ended the device milking Dad. His chest heaved and his limbs trembled with relief. Sparrow gently removed the pumping device from Dad, and then the restraining straps one by one. He left the blindfold on.

Dad’s posture eased, and he relaxed into the chair, covered in sweat and still breathing hard. I tried to maintain my belief that he wasn’t there, that this was just a body waiting to be used.

“He is conditioned,” said Sparrow, “to treasure semen above all. To seek it from others, and to resist the taking of his. The very act of greatest physical pleasure, sexual climax, has become for your father the most excruciating.”

“What the hell did you do to him,” I asked.

“Hell?” He asked. “As your bard would say,” he lifted my father’s head in his hands and tapped his temple with two fingers. “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

3.

The last thing I wanted was to take anything from these people, but I felt suddenly weak to the point of collapse. I turned to the tray of food that was brought, and saw a cup of something - tea, broth, I couldn’t tell by sight. I picked it up and drank, and realized how dry my mouth was.

“Young Mr. Miranda,” said Sparrow, “even at your age you must know it is possible to break a man. Algiers has always had methods. When our understanding was crude, so were our ways. But as our knowledge of neurochemistry and psychology have increased, so has the sophistication of our techniques.

“At the core of all methods we include sensory and sleep deprivation, positive and negative reinforcement, pain and reward. These have long been our hallmarks. And today we can augment them with sophisticated neurotoxins developed by one of our scientists – a witch, I’m tempted to say, so magical are the effects of her creation.”

“I get it,” I said, watching my father’s body finally ease into a more relaxed state.

“Ah, these all would serve to break an ordinary man. But your father…. Mister Miranda, your father is a special case. We have attempted much, and learned much. Allow me to explain.

“Like his peers in our custody, your father was conditioned from early age to please others to ensure his comfort and survival. This is not extraordinary, and requires no intellect beyond that of a common household dog which does much the same. What was unusual - extraordinary - was your father’s exceptionally keen mind, fractured by trauma or traumas, which resulted in an uncommon adaptability.

“Whereas his peers learned to please their masters and our clients, your father developed an exceptional ability to reflect their desires. Imagine a mirror, fracturing again and again, each time resulting in a new face to meet its circumstances. What a gift it would be in his proper station.

“After his liberation from our custody, unknown to those who studied him he retained his conditioning, masking it to please those he saw as his new masters. He fractured to mirror the expectations of his rescuers, then again for his adoptive parents. He fractured again to mirror the desire of his wife, your mother. He mirrored the expectations of the agency which believed he would be an ideal agent, and indeed he made himself what they expected.

“His mirroring was so effective and thorough that this core deficiency was never detected. Not in his early assessments. Not even in his recruitment and screening in your armed forces or intelligence agency. It is quite ingenious that the mirroring function of his defect resulted in making itself undetectable. Of course Algiers knew something of his past. And we have an understanding of the mind from experimentation unencumbered by ethics.”

Sparrow raised my father’s chin, then turned his head one way and then the other. 

“A most impressive mind, is it not?” he asked. “He could have gone on this way for the rest of his life, mirroring the desires of others, had he not been returned to our custody and our purposes.” Sparrow turned to me with a raised eyebrow. “You provided us with a crucial opportunity, however, with your... confession and kiss.”

I was surprised he knew about that. I still thought of my thing for my dad, how I kissed him the day he disappeared, as my secret.

“That moment fractured his psyche, yet again, immediately before he was restored to us. And quite powerfully. I think it is fair to say no one but you could have done so,” Sparrow continued. “Think of each fracture as a break that captures his psych in a moment in time. Your father was in this break, creating an opportunity to contain him in it.  His mind is… trapped there, deep in this marvelous head, leaving just base animal functioning to govern his form.”

I didn’t understand really, except that he said it was me who did this.

“You will have heard that no man is an island. This is a comforting lie. In truth is every man is an island. In your father’s case it is yet more true, his mind locked into the moment of your kiss. And we have built walls to seal his mind there. We call this a White Cell, devoid of feature, absent of hope. It is built, brick by brick, of relentless despair. 

“With his mind sealed away in its White Cell, his body is trained to be used to please others. 

Fear not, he is aware of everything around him, but is helpless to do anything but satisfy others desires. The despair of his every self degradation reinforces the the White Cell and the comfort he derives from it. Do you see? The only thing that comforts him imprisons him. It is an ingenious device.”

I couldn’t even feel the tears continuously streaming down my face.

“The White Cell took well over a year to build,” Sparrow continued. “You may be pleased to know your father fought vigorously. Curious, given his early conditioning to please his masters. We determined that the moment of the fracture that gave us the opportunity also was the source of resistance. With his mirroring was focused on you, he had leverage to fight us. But we found a way to turn that to our advantage, as we do all resistance.”

“And you’re the one who did it, Will,” said Tony, chuckling.

“What the fuck do you mean?” I snapped.

“Like Sparrow said, it took a long time to get him like this,” said Tony. “Despair, brick by brick.  We told him how I was fucking your mother, showed him videos. That was fun. Told him he was forgotten, everyone moved on. Pretty true too.”  

Sparrow gestured with his walking stick, and one entire wall flickered on, showing video. It was of Tony on my mother, and I covered my eyes. I could hear them too, moaning and Tony’s heavy breathing as he humped her.

“I don’t want to see that,” I said.

I could feel Tony leaned in to me, could feel his breath on my face. “But the stuff that got to him,” he said, “the stuff that REALLY got to him was the shit you told me. All your pussy stories about riptides and Houdini books? That got to him. Had to figure you gave him up, otherwise how would we know?”

“STOP!” I shouted. I noticed the recorded sound of fucking stopped, but I kept my face in my hands.

“But the big shit,” Tony said slowly, “the shit about you kissing him that night, that was dynamite. He folded like a beat dog when we told him about that. And Sparrow locked him up right there.”

“NO!” I cried, “STOP! TONY---”

And then I heard it. I heard a sound I knew, my own bed springs. I lifted my face and saw the wall was no longer Tony and my mom. It was him on my bed, his cock down my throat and him leering and patting my head.

“How do you think your old man liked this show?” Tony asked, smirking.

Sparrow gestured with his walking stick one more time and the video flicked out. It was replaced by Tony fucking again. But fucking me. I knew it was coming, and it did - I could hear my own moans and my words, “Yes... fuck me… Dad.”

“That was this week,” I gasped, as the video flickered out.

“Everything’s recorded,” Tony said. “Ev-er-y-thing.” He shook his head and strutted across me. “The first few times a little disinhibiting formula in your brownies helped. But you were into it enough all on your own after that.”

“Tony,” I whispered. “Please…”

He laughed.  “You arrogant fucking shit. You thought you were using me, milking me for information. Thought you were smarter than me. Just like your fucking old man.” He took my head in his hands, and twisted it around to face my father, trapped in his own head in a cell made of my bad choices. “But look at him - LOOK AT HIM NOW - and tell me who’s smarter.” 

I couldn’t turn my head away until Tony let go. Then I slumped on the floor, muttering “No, no, no…”

Everything I had done to try to find my father had only been used to hurt him. I cried till everything went black. 

4. 

Tony was back the next morning, I think, based on my physical state and the meals provided. I had no other way to estimate the passage of time. But this time he was on the other side of the glass, in Dad’s cell.

He pounded twice on the dividing glass with his fist to get my attention. I didn’t want to give him anything he wanted, but I saw no way to do anything but watch. Not where he was.

“You stupid fucking prick,” he said to me. “You could have had it all if you just listened to me. But you had to have it your way, just like your stupid old man here.”

“Fuck you,” I replied. The knowledge of his part in all of this emboldened me.

“No man,” he laughed, “not fuck me. Fuck HIM.” 

He jerked his thumb at Dad, who was lying curled up in his bed. Then, eyes locked on mine, he stripped himself naked. His cock was hard, and the smirk on his face was terrible. 

“Wakey wakey Calvin,” he said, turning to Dad and stroking his erection. “Face down, ass up.”

Dad turned in his bed to comply. He rested his face and shoulders on his bed, and lifted his ass. 

It was the first time I’d seen them together in years. They were so different – Dad so slim and muscled and dark, Tony so stocky and strong and blond.

“What are you doing?” I asked, realizing I wasn’t Tony’s only target if provoked.

“Don’t worry kid TOO much,” he said. “Sparrow’ll have my hide if I do any permanent damage to his prize over here. But I can still take a little out of his hide without leaving any marks.”

He took a bottle off the milking unit in Dad’s cell that appeared to contain a thick clear fluid and poured it over his cock, spreading it with his hand. He then climbed up in the bed and positioned himself behind Dad, his cock level with Dad’s raised ass.

“Tony,” I said, “don’t - please - ”

“You deserve this Calvin,” he declared, not even taking note of me.

He plunged his cock into Dad, who gasped from the shock of it, and Tony inhaled deeply. 

“Fuck, I have wanted to do this for a long fucking time,” said Tony. I could see him twist his neck and roll his shoulders as he enjoyed the full body sensations of lodging his cock in Dad.

He pulled back and thrust in again, repeating until her was ramming Dad hard.

“Calvin,” Tony said, loudly annunciating every word, Sparrow says you can hear me in there. Says you know everything”

Dad moaned as Tony gut punched him with his erection.

“Here’s what I want you to know, pal,” Tony continued, pummeled Dad, “I’m FUCKING you pal! My big COCK is right up your shit hole and you are loving it.”

“Tony...” I groaned, knowing I couldn’t stop him. 

“Feel that?” he asked. “I hope it feels like Hell. You earned it with your fucking smug superiority.”

He groped at Dad’s body, clutching his chest and squeezing his nipples. I could see it was hard enough to make Dad wriggle. Not hard enough to leave lasting marks, but hard enough to hurt.

“Leave him alone!” I shouted, and rose to hit the glass with my own fists. 

“Cal,” he continued, “I fuck your wife just like this. And she purrs like a cat. Like a fucking pussycat, now that she has a real man in her twat. But that’s not all. Noooo Calvin, buddy boy. I bang your son too. Took his ass cherry. And when I did he said ‘oh fuck me Daddy, fuck me’ just like a little cunt. Calvin he loves my dick so much I just have to let him have it.” He thrust even harder, knockin Dad almost off his knees. “Now I know where he fucking gets it.”

“SHUT UP!” I was yelling, crying and resisting my own arousal. “Dad, don’t listen! He’s a liar!”

At that, Tony stopped. He pulled out of Dad suddenly and barked at him to get on his back. As he did, Tony jumped off the bed and stepped to the glass barrier to face me. His dick was still rock hard, smeared with goop from the lube bottle and from Dad’s ass.

“You fucking shit,” he shouted through the glass. “Not one word I said was a lie. NOT ONE WORD! Now you tell your old man the truth. You tell him, or I take it out on him. You accuse me of lying again, I take it out on him. And kid, I have receipts. You saw the videos. I’m happy to share with old Calvin here. So tell him before you make things worse. TELL. HIM. NOW.”

I was choking on my own mucus from crying so hard, but yelled out, “Dad - it’s all true. Everything Tony said was true. I’m sorry” 

I slid down the glass in a heap of sobs.

Tony pulled Dad’s legs up over his shoulders and plunged his erection back into his ass. 

“Calvin,” he said, “I forgot one thing. I live in your house, the one your parents left you. The ones who adopted you - not the whore whose snatch got pregnant from some sleazy trick. Calvin, I’m gonna’ burn it when I get back. I’m gonna’ burn it to the ground.”

Dad moaned and I couldn’t tell if it was in pleasure or pain or both.

“Calvin, how’s that feel?” Tony asked. “If you love this – IF YOU LOVE ME – give me a kiss.”

Dad opened his mouth and Tony thrust his tongue in, kissing Dad as hard as he fucked him. I remembered how much he liked kissing after a blowjob, and he was so into kissing Dad. 

Finally Tony pulled back and said, “Let’s finish this up.”

Dad moaned louder at Tony’s next slam, and I could tell Tony was going to cum by his frenzied fuck and hid breathing. I knew him so well this way, even though it was clear I didn’t know him at all.

Tony threw all his strength into pounding Dad’s ass, then said “Fuck, oh fuuuuck!” and his whole body shook. He came deep in Dad’s bowel, working hard to drive his seed in deep and in full. He shook and slowed down, and when his balls were emptied he pulled out.

He flopped down on the edge of the bed, his legs spread and his filthy cock near full erection.  He looked at and said with a sneer, “Calvin, clean my dick off.” 

He laughed a bit as Dad dutifully went down on him, sucking everything off.

Before leaving the room Tony collected his clothes, and tapped on the dividing glass again.

“I’ll see YOU later,” he said.

Dad curled up in his bed again, and stayed there. He must have leaked Tony’s cum there, I thought..

“I’m sorry Dad,” I said through the glass. “I don’t know if you can really hear me or not, but if you can I’m sorry. I made a lot of mistakes while you were gone. I’m so sorry.”

We were each curled up on either side of our shared glass wall in silence.

5.

In the days that followed both dad and I were tended to well, but separately, in the most technical ways. We were fed, groomed, exercised. I was surprised to see that I was not used sexually, not beaten or tortured in any physical way.

Mr. Sparrow checked in on me from time to time. He walked me through the grounds of the complex on a rainy Pacific Northwest day. Outdoors it was almost silent but for the steady rain and the sound of our footsteps. For the home to a pit of despair it was surreal in its tranquility.  He took an almost tutorial interest in me, though each lesson ended in the same hopeless place.

One day he showed me the barracks for the sex gladiators. They were performers, both male and female, many of whom had sold themselves into a sort of indentured servitude, for the amusement of those with such vast wealth that almost no expense could be felt. They were used in competitions for endurance, vigor, form and so on, with each other and with wealthy clients. 

Another day he brought me through the lounger where I’d seen on my first night where I was drugged and taken into Sparrow’s custody. He even showed me the business offices, where Sparrow’s people accounted for their bountiful income from the sex trade, catering to the wealth of the entire northwest and other areas. 

He didn’t even use his bodyguards on these strolls. Maybe it was assumed I was not a threat, or not one Sparrow couldn’t handle on his own. Or that with my father in their custody there was nothing I would do to merit defense at all.

“When are you going to start with me?” I asked, as we walked together on yet another day.

“Start?” he asked.

“You torture and brainwash people. I saw what you do. But so far I’m fed, cared for, just confined. When do you – start?”

“Mr. Miranda, of course it would reduce your anxiety to know what is to come. Alas, I will not aid you on this point. Your education has begun already, and continues every day.”

“So I’m not going to get drugged or raped or whatever?”

“All will be revealed in its own time, young man. Now attend. I will show you my great library.”

The library, I learned, was not the stately room with leather and dark wood and bound volumes of book I expected. Instead it was a chilly antiseptic lab, all in white ceramic and brushed metals. Instead of books, the walls were lined with sealed cooling units.

Sparrow opened one such cooling shelf, and it released its contests with a cold gasp. A set of tubes slid out on rollers, each labeled simply Calvin 87, filled with a milky substance. In the warmer air, the surface of the tubes gently perspired.

“Your father’s seed,” said Sparrow.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, somehow unsurprised.

Sparrow turned the tube from side to side, studying it without turning to me as he responded.

“For the first years after your father returned to our possession, we tried to breed him. This was  for the purpose of maintaining his genetic strain in the herd, as well as demonstrating the fate of any who oppose us, on them and all their descendants.” He glanced at me. “Tragically, he has proven infertile.”

I almost had to smile. Way to fuck with these crazy assholes, Dad.

“We are, however,” Sparrow continued, “optimistic that we can manipulate these samples to achieve our ends, developing the viable sperm.”

“You’re so sick,” I said.

“And in the event we fail, young Mister Miranda,” he said with a confident smile, “we have you.”

Fuck.

6.

Of course it was not all strolls and oddly formal chit chat.

I was kept physically separate from Dad at all times, but frequently in sight of each other through our glass barrier. To be more accurate, I was not in his sight, though he was in mine. He was frequently blinded by any of a number of hoods. And when he was not, his eyes were vacant and had no more recognition of me than of any other person or object.

For the first days I did not try to communicate with him, outside of my initial outbursts. When I saw those went unrecognized, I stopped. And I admit half or more of my reluctance was my own horror that he would in some way recognize me and that would make matters worse. I liked to believe he really was tucked away somewhere, ignorant of the degradations visited on his physical form.

But I recalled also that Sparrow said his mind was aware of everything that transpired. And if I could reach him, if I could comfort him, I had to do that.

So at night I sat on the floor on my side of the glass, holding my hand to its own glassy reflection, hoping Dad would rouse and do the same.

“Dad, it’s me Will, I’m here,” I said, watching for any recognition, a twitch or turn or sigh, but there was none.

In our most adult of situations, he seemed as helpless as a baby, robbed of his own agency and higher functioning. I thought of our abilities reversed, and him reading to me as a child.

I tried to remember our favorite stories and told them as best I could.  

I told him about Max in Where the Wild Things Are, and how the wild things said, “Oh, please don't go—we'll eat you up—we love you so!”  

I told the story of The Day I Swapped my Dad For Two Goldfish, and how the boy had to go on a series of trades to get his father back, and then promised he would never swap his dad for anything again.

I told him the story of Houdini, our chapter book, and how Harry would be locked into a safe, with a key secretly pass by his wife Bess in a kiss, and the safe dropped under the waves, still as could be with Harry inside.

It did not escape me that here, in the worst place on earth, these stories all seemed so cruel.  

7.

One day I awoke to find Mr. Sparrow on the other side of the glass wall. His comings and goings were so quiet, especially for such a large physically intimidating man. He had Dad already on his back, his legs spread wide in a sling.

“Observe, young Mister Miranda,” he said, “as we visit your father in the White Cell.

Sparrow produced his walking staff and uncapped it, which I had never seen before. Beneath its veneer was the shaped of a cockhead, though larger than most, the shaft smoothing into Sparrow’s walking staff, making it overall at least three feet long.

He administered the clear liquid I’d seen previously to the head of the staff, and looked to me.

“The staff simulates the erect penis,” he said, “as you might gather from its appearance.”

"You don’t have to do this,” I said to him from my side of the glass partition. “I’ve seen what you do here.”

“You have not seen this,” Sparrow said, and prodded Dad’s hole with his staff. His lean muscular body responded immediately, clutching at his ass with his hands to give Sparrow more access.  Even though the staff head was large enough to cause discomfort, it was plainly something he desired. “Young Mister Miranda, we are about to enter the White Cell. Or as near as we can come.”

Dad’s back arched and he spread his legs, breathing heavily as the staff penetrated him more and more deeply. 

“Due to your father’s conditioning,” Sparrow continued, “in which this is the source of both comfort and shame, we trigger his receptivity.”

“Mr. Sparrow,” I said, but could see he was not interested.

“Observe,” he said, his eyes on my father’s slowly contorting body, “Calvin. Calvin. Respond?”

Dad’s mouth slowly opened. “Yes.”

Without thinking, I stumbled  out of my bed and pressed against the glass between us. It was the first time I’d heard him speak in five years. His voice was deeper than I remembered and more earthy.

“Where are you Calvin?” asked Sparrow.

“White,” answered Dad. “A white room. Nothing else. “

“Nothing else, Calvin?”

“A hole.”

“Yes Calvin, there is a keyhole. I know you see it. I know you study it.”

Dad nodded yes. 

Sparrow turned to me and said, “There is a small imperfection in the White Cell. A last bit of detail, that manifests as a keyhole. Though it is small, you may imagine in an otherwise bleak sea of nothingness it gives your father a considerable focus. At first this vexed our process, but by fashioning it into a keyhole for which there is no key, a puzzle for which there is no solution,it may actually serve to enhance the despair that is the White Cell.”

“DAD,” I yelled, hitting the glass. “DAD! It’s me WILL!”

Mr. Sparrow chuckled. “There’s no need to shout. Your father knows you are here. He’s known from the start. And known as well all that you have seen.” He shoved the staff harder into my father and said, “Calvin. Do you know who is out here? Who is with me?”

Dad shook his head, No. 

“Calvin,” said Sparrow, “I think you do.” He withdrew the staff to the tip, resting it against Dad’s hole, rubbing up and down teasing.”

Dad tried to grind against the staff, to get it inside him again, twisting and writhing without shame.

“Who is with me, Calvin?” Sparrow asked again.

“Boy,” Dad croaked and his chest heaved. 

“Very good Calvin,” said Sparrow, again sliding the length of the staff into Dad, in and out in smooth twisting motions. “The boy is here, seeing all you do.”

“Dad! I don’t care about any of that!” I yelled. 

“Do you want to leave the White Cell, Calvin?” Sparrow asked.

Dad nodded No, spread his legs again and lifted his pelvis and groaned “Fuckk meeee.”

“With a trigger, I release the neurotoxin.” said Sparrow

He tapped a spot on his staff and shoved the staff in, deeper and harder than before. Dad’s body tensed up, his back arching and all his muscles tensing for what felt like a long time, until he released and dropped. Sparrow triggered the neurotoxin, repeating the cycle a second time, and then a third time. Dad’s body was spent, his muscles engorged and his skin was covered in sweat.

“The neurotoxin is no longer necessary to his training,” Sparrow said, sliding his staff out, and wiping it clean. “But it’s good for you to see.”

Dad’s body trembled as he absorbed whatever chemicals ejaculated into him.

I mentally calculated what I’d learned. Dad still responded to his name, which was given to him by his adoptive parents, not by these people. There was a flaw in his prison. And he resisted, her lied to Mr. Sparrow. He was really in there, with his own identity and his own will. That left at least one mystery.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why show me?”

“So when the day comes for you to do the same,” said Mr. Sparrow, “you will know.”

END, ACT FOUR OF FIVE. TO BE CONTINUED.