Note: I've amended the text in the first chapter slightly to account for the fact that the 3D illustrations show Eric being tied with something that is most definitely not rope. It's proven impossible (at least at this time) to make 3D renders of rope, and drawing in 2D rope looks pretty fake unless it's jet black and looks like the cable used in cable TV and the internet. So all references to rope have been changed to references about cloth from a cut-up set of curtains instead.
Chapter Two – Eric’s First Evening at His New Home
The boy who was middle in age between the remaining three boys grabbed the second chair, turned it around to face the one Eric was tied to, and sat down in it; grinning gleefully at Eric as he did so. The youngest boy walked over the bed that stood at Eric’s right and sat on the edge, while the oldest boy stood behind Eric and was completely out of his sight.
“Well, now that you’re all settled in, I’ll introduce us,” the boy in the other chair announced conversationally; acting as if Eric wasn’t helplessly tied and gagged. “I’m Kevin, I’m 13 years old, in eighth grade, and I enjoy basketball, wrestling, soccer, weight-lifting, and track.”
Eric merely looked Kevin quietly - as he couldn’t speak anyway – and attentively. He looked the boy up and down. Well, Kevin certainly looked fit enough to be active in sports. In fact, all of his brothers did; including Kyle. Eric, on the other hand, had never liked sports. Although he’d always thought he was in good physical shape, Eric certainly wasn’t anywhere near as fit and trim as his current captors; in fact, if anything, he was a bit on the flabby side. He had little muscle definition, whereas all these boys – even the youngest – had quite a lot of it. He suddenly found himself overwhelmed with intense feelings of inferiority that had little to do with his current bound and helpless condition.
“Over on the bed there is Clark,” Kevin continued with his introduction. “He’s thirteen and in seventh grade, likes to play soccer and video games, watch and read any science-fiction he can, and he’s into photography big-time.”
“Which reminds me,” Clark exclaimed as he suddenly got off the bed, grabbed a Nikon digital camera he had apparently placed on a nearby desk earlier, and began snapping off a series of pictures of Eric tied helplessly to the chair. He circled all around Eric and took pictures from all angles; sometimes standing and sometimes crouching to get as many different angles as he could. He acted for all the world like a professional photographer snapping pictures of a model for the swimsuit issue of sports Illustrated.
“I can hardly wait to post these online,” he exclaimed gleefully as he rushed to a tablet sitting on the desk and began uploading his photos of Eric into it.
Eric made a sudden noise of alarm through his gag.
“Don’t worry,” Kevin told him reassuringly. “No one will know it’s you. Clark knows how to blur the area around the face to conceal someone’s identity. Later of course he’ll probably want to record a series of videos of you for YouTube. But we won’t release those until you’ve been here a while. Maybe in a month or two.”
Eric’s already-wide-open eyes opened even wider in horror. A month or two? How long did these kids think he would stay here after they had tied him up like this? He planned to flee from the house and be off like a shot the moment he was untied!
Then a new, even more horrible thought occurred to him… did they plan to keep him tied up here all the time so he could never leave?!? He made noises to indicate his desire to ask about this, but the three boys ignored it. In fact, Kevin was now introducing his remaining brother.
“That’s Chris, my next older brother,” Kevin explained. “He’s 16, a sophomore in high school, and likes football, baseball, weight-lifting, gymnastics, and cars.”
Eric could not see Chris while the older was being introduced, as he still stood directly behind Eric’s chair and Eric was unable to turn his head enough to see him. In fact, at that same moment, Chris suddenly began to run his fingers playfully through Eric’s hair as if he was petting a friendly dog or cat. Eric was annoyed; not so much because of Chris playing with his hair but with himself for realizing that he was actually liking it!
“Well, I suppose you’d like to be more comfortable now?” Kevin suddenly asked Eric kindly.
Eric nodded his head eagerly in affirmation. Maybe these kids weren’t so bad after all if they were going to untie him this soon.
But rather than begin to untie him, Chris grabbed a large carving knife Eric had not seen before and approached him with it. Eric reacted with even greater alarm than ever and struggled violently to free himself from the chair. All he managed to do was tire himself out; although he almost succeeded at one point in toppling over chair and all onto his side. But Kevin managed to catch him as he began to teeter over and set him back upright.
“Calm down, you doofus,” Kevin chided him while giving Eric’s face a stinging slap to the face. “You trying to make him cut you or something?’
Eric stopped and looked at the boy; his eyes clearly indicating to Kevin that he’d thought that cutting him was precisely the idea.
“He’s not going to cut you, provided you remain perfectly still,” Kevin told Eric mildly. “He’s just going to take that grubby clothing off of you.”
Kevin began sawing away at Eric’s shirt. In a couple of moments, he’d slashed it enough so that the tattered remnants could be easily pulled off of Eric’s torso; even the parts that had been trapped between Eric’s skin and the tight cloth bonds that were wrapped around his torso and upper arms. Eric was now as shirtless as Clark was, and had not received a scratch.
“There, doesn’t that feel better?” Kevin asked cheerfully as the final remains of Eric’s shirt fell into a small heap on the floor like so much barbered hair.
Eric looked as dubious as he felt.
“Maybe he wants us to get his shoes and socks too,” Clark suggested. “I’ll get them off for him.”
Eric tried to voice a different idea, but the boys ignored him. Clark got down on one knee beside Eric, unlaced his right sneaker, and pulled it off his foot. “Phew!” Clark exclaimed in disgust as he tossed the shoe to the far side of the room along with the tattered shirt. “That stinks!” he declared as he scooted over to Eric’s other side, crouched down, and unlaced Eric’s sneaker. He tossed it over to the other one. “I’ll toss the skanky things in the trash when we go down to dinner,” he said then; adding the remnants of Eric’s torn up shirt to the pile as well.
Now Chris hunkered down beside Eric’s right foot with knife in hand and proceeded to carefully cut off his sock without removing the cloth rope that held Eric’s foot securely in place. A couple of minutes later, Eric was bare-footed and his slashed socks joined his sneakers in the disposal pile Clark had created with his sneakers.
All Eric wore now – besides the cloth strips that tied him to the chair – were his board shorts and his underwear. For a fearful moment he thought the boys were going to cut those off as well, but Chris casually put away the knife without attempting to do this. Eric breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Despite his current situation, he still felt a sense of modesty and dignity.
“Dinner will be ready in five minutes, guys,” Kyle’s voice called to them from downstairs.
“Okay, Kyle,” Chris called back.
“Well, we’ll head downstairs now and let you get more used to the place,’ Kevin told Eric cheerfully as he stood up. “Don’t worry though; we’ll save you something to eat and bring it back to you. And we’ll even tell you some funny stories about when we first started tying up Kyle and kept torturing him until he agreed to do whatever we told him to. Maybe we’ll even try to do some re-enactments…”
Eric lost his temper and began to struggle again while swearing as loudly as he could through his gag. He was tired of all this; and he wanted to be untied and allowed to leave right this very minute. His ranting and raving were almost incomprehensible however, and his struggles failed to slacken the knots in his bonds whatsoever. Despite this, Kevin and Chris checked their handiwork over very carefully and even tightened the already-secure knots in some places where they felt a slight amount of give – mostly where Eric’s shirt and socks had been slashed away.
“It’s a waste of time and energy struggling,” Kevin assured him. “It might be good exercise, but we’ll make sure you get plenty of exercise each day anyway so you don’t get soft and flabby. Well, any flabbier than you already are!” he added as he gave Eric’s belly a contemptuous pat.
Eric glared angrily at the boy and said something that was incomprehensible as usual but was probably not very nice.
With a contemptuous grin, Kevin stood directly in front of Eric, reached out, and flicked Eric hard on the nose. Eric jerked as if he had been stung by a bee. Chuckling, Kevin flicked Eric’s nose again – and then again. Eric tried to avert his face, but Kevin easily managed to shift his fingers and flick Eric’s increasingly sore nose a number of more times; making his victim more and more frantic. Kevin chuckled again and then mercilessly launched a virtual barrage of flicks onto Eric’s nose, which now began to look very red and sore.
Eric made more loud and frantic noises through his gag, but now they sounded more like he was pleading for mercy rather than being derogatory.
Kevin finally relented and folded his trim but muscular arms across his chest as he smiled sardonically down at his victim. Kevin’s handsome young face openly expressed his contempt for his victim. “Maybe that will teach you to behave like a guest instead of a pest!” Kevin finally said to Eric with a false note of sweetness. “Think about that while the rest us have dinner.”

The three boys then turned around and walked out of the room; Clark taking away Eric’s cut-up clothing with him as he went and Kevin waving cheerfully and grinning good-naturedly at Eric as if he hadn’t just been tormenting him a few moments before. The door was closed behind them without another backward glance at their prisoner. Eric could hear them as they hurried down the stairs and talked loudly to one another; just like ordinary boys discussing everyday teenage things. No one who came to the house just then would have had any idea from the way they walked or acted that they had a bound and gagged prisoner awaiting their return upstairs.
Eric could dimly hear the activity of his four captors downstairs as they apparently sat down to dinner and talked with one another. He could only make out the occasional word however, and had no idea if they were discussing their plans for him or about other matters entirely. In any case, Eric knew that he didn’t want to remain here another moment longer and set about trying to secure his release while the others were away and unable to stop him.
Calming himself down and attempting to work methodically, Eric tried to move his hands and fingers to find and loosen any knots within reach. After several minutes of increasingly frantic probing however, he was unable to find more than a single knot within reach, and that one was tied in such a way that he could not even begin to loosen it even after thirty minutes of steady, patient persistence. His body was beginning to get stiff and sore from being forced to stay in one position for so long; although he could shift his body just enough to ease the worst of the discomfort while at the same time being unable to loosen his bonds one iota.
He suddenly remembered about the knife Clark had used to cut away his shirt and socks and began to look around for it; if he could just get a firm grasp of it in his right hand, perhaps he could cut his wrists free! After that; freeing himself could proceed much more rapidly. But Eric could not see the knife anywhere no matter which way he turned; although of course he could not turn his head very far while his shoulders were bound to the chair. Eric was, however, fairly sure that none of the boys had taken the knife with them when they left. If he could find it, and somehow move himself and the chair over to where it had been left…
But Eric soon found that seeking the knife was fruitless. Eric tried shifting his body; bouncing up and down in his chair while he also tried to rotate himself. He hoped that the chair would slowly rotate with him as it hopped slightly up and down on the floor. He was soon forced to give up the idea however. The chair – especially with him strapped so tightly into it – was too heavy and his ability to move too limited to enable him to shift the chair’s position or orientation noticeably even after several minutes of intensive effort. Not only was he tiring himself out pointlessly, but it also proved impossible to budge without enough noise to attract unwanted attention from his captors downstairs.
Eric was unaware that his quest was hopeless from the start. Unseen by him, Chris had placed the knife inside a drawer in the desk by the corner window behind him and had locked it. Bound as he was, the knife was as inaccessible to him as the gold bullion in Fort Knox.
He remembered how physically fit his captors all were and sighed quietly. If only he had the strength, agility and stamina that any of them – even young Clark – had, perhaps he could have worked himself free of his entrapment by now. And then again, he thought to himself ruefully, maybe not. After all, Kyle was stronger and fitter than any of them; and yet his three younger siblings supposedly had no trouble keeping him completely under their control for the last few months. That was why he resorted to suckering Eric into this predicament in the first place!

Eric nonetheless continued to struggle against his bonds; working up a considerable sweat (and making his wrists ache the more he flexed them against his bonds) with his efforts in the process despite his half-naked state. But he had managed to make no progress at all when he finally heard increased activity downstairs, followed by the sounds of several sets of feet climbing the stairs to the accompaniment of the younger boys’ loud and cheerful chatter.
Eric looked up as the door opened and Kyle’s three brothers re-entered the room, but without Kyle himself. Chris came in first, holding a plate with three slender but nonetheless appetizing-looking slices of pizza in it in one hand, and a can of soda in the other. “Well, we’ve got Kyle tucked away for the evening,” Chris told Eric cheerfully the moment he entered the room; “so now we’ve got you all to ourselves!”
“Poor Kyle thought we weren’t going to tie him up and torture him anymore,” Kevin added happily. “But I guess he knows better now. But at least we tied him into his own bed after we finished dinner, rather than just sticking him into his cage as usual. So he’ll probably get a quiet and restful night’s sleep tonight. After all, we’re all going to be too busy playing games with *you* to bother with *him*for a while!”
“Of course, once we turn in for the night we might pay him a visit,” Clark added, "just so he knows that we’re still the masters around here now; not him.”
Chris pulled the empty chair up alongside Eric’s and sat down in it while Kevin stood behind Eric and pulled at the knot securing Eric’s gag. After a moment he loosened it and, rather than pulling it off, simply pulled it down until it loosely encircled Eric’s neck. “We saved you three whole slices,” Chris told Eric as he picked up one piece and held it up to Eric’s mouth. “They’re still reasonably hot, so eat up.”
Eric hesitated a moment out of mingled pride and fear; that ever-so-casual mention of Kyle being sometimes being kept in a cage had unnerved him. But then a sudden realization of how hungry and thirsty he was took over, and he bit into the pizza slice. Chris let Eric eat and drink at his own pace while the other two boys watched. When Eric had finished his first slice, Chris stood up and gave the plate with the remaining two slices to Clark, who sat down in his place in the chair and offered Eric a second slice of pizza and a few more sips of soda. When this was finished, Kevin took over to give Eric the final remaining slice.

At the same time, the three brothers were ‘entertaining’ Eric by telling him in greater detail how they began their odd life-style. When their father had died, Kyle – who had previously moved out of the house to go to college – had moved back in and got a job to support the four of them so that they could continue to maintain their house and their farm. But when Eric got too bossy for their liking, they saw him more as an intruder than as a brother. After all, he’d moved out whereas they’d lived here all along, and they felt this house was now *their* domain. And so they had all decided to teach bossy Kyle a lesson.
One night, after Kyle had sternly lectured them for neglecting doing their chores, they had sneaked into his room, ganged up on him as he sleep, and tied him securely to his bed. They had then subjected him to a series of torments; such as sitting on top of him and smothering him with his own pillows. They even took turns sleeping so that they could rest but Kyle couldn’t; depriving him of sleep as at least one of them would torment him around the clock.
They also fed him only small amounts of stale bread and scraps, and only a little water to drink. The only time Kyle was released from bed was to make occasional brief trips to the bathroom, and even then was allowed virtually no privacy. Even then, the three well-rested boys had no trouble forcing him to return to his bed and submit to being tied back up – and resume torturing him; including many ways that they hinted at but didn’t specify. They only released Kyle part-time only so that he could continue working for a living, shop for groceries, and do household chores. The rest of the time, he was kept tied up and subjected to more torture; especially if he had displeased any of them in some way. And apparently displeasing them was woefully easy.
“But now that you’re here, I suppose we can give him time to rest and recuperate while we concentrate on you instead,” Kevin told Eric cheerfully as he fed him the last of the pizza.
“Can’t we talk this over?” Eric asked pleadingly as Kevin gave him a final sip of soda.
“Nope,” Chris replied tersely as he replaced Eric’s gag. “But we’ll take it easy on you your first night,” he added as he fitted Eric with a blindfold as well. “We don’t want to break you on your very first night here, after all.”
“But I’ve got to go to the bathroom!” Eric pleaded, but his restored gag made his words almost incomprehensible once again. He persisted in trying to plead with them anyway, in hopes that they would get curious (or tired of hearing him whine) and pull the gag back off to see what he wanted so badly.
“Shut UP!” Chris snapped at him; giving Eric a couple of hard slaps to the face that hurt much worse than the milder ones Kevin had given him earlier. Eric’s face stung so much that he forgot all about the lingering stinging sensations on his nose and face from Kevin’s previous torments. He also quieted down; while he was so completely in the power of these boys, he had no desire to further annoy them. After all, of they were willing to torture their own older brother – and their sole source of financial support at that – then what might they not do to *him*?!
He heard one of the boys doing something just behind him and to his right, and a moment later another one making a slight noise behind him and to his left. He heard some whispering on either sound of him but coming from somewhat lower than his own head; evidently both boys were kneeling or crouching at the two rear corner of his chair. What were they up to now?
Suddenly, Eric felt the gentle stroke of fingertips brushing against the undersides of both feet! OH NO! Eric laughed into his gag, and then frantically writhed and thrashed in his bonds as he sought to escape, but there was no escape. He could not move his feet away from the tickling fingers, which continued to brush and gentle caress the undersides of sides of his feet and toes like so many soft ostrich feathers.
“No! NOOO! Stop! I’m ticklish!” he tried to shout to them, but his gag turned his cries to muffled, high-pitched squeals. His entire body began to shake with muffled laughter, which in turn made his two unseen young tormentors giggle and chuckle in their turn. Eric’s body continued to wildly twist and contort in many interesting ways within the remorseless confines of his unyielding bonds, but it was all for nothing. He could even begin to wriggle free or avoid the soft torture of those unseen fingers, and the boys continued tickle-torturing their captive with pure glee. They had done this with Kyle (and to one another) numerous times before and were now quite adept at it, but Eric was evidently far more ticklish than any of the four of them were, and his wild gyrations within his chair provided them with much satisfaction.

“My God! If you keep this up much longer I’m going to wet myself!” Eric cried out through his gag, but as before his cries were muffled and garbled, and so he was completely ignored.
Just when Eric thought he was going to completely lose it, the tickle torture suddenly stopped.
“Well, that’s enough for now,” Kevin cheerfully told Eric. “Luckily for you, our favorite TV show is about to come on. So we’re headed downstairs to watch TV for a while. Try not to get too lonesome before we get back.”
Eric heard the sounds of departing feet and then the bedroom room door close. He sighed into his gag, hung his head, and tried to catch his breath. Then, gathering his diminished strength, Eric tried once again to work his hands free of the cloth ropes that bound them. He was unaware that only two of the boys had left. Chris had remained in his room and was now quietly watching Eric’s every move from the comfort of his own bed; careful not to make a sound.
tbc
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...