The Standup Boys' Fall

Author's note: this story is part of a series, but they can be read in any order.

* * *

The honeymoon was over. The city of Standup had begun as a collaboration, but now the cracks were showing. On the half-mile-wide expanse that had been cleared in the jungle, the city was divided into districts, each with a grudge against all the others. At the biggest one in the middle, the supporters of Leader Bruin had set up their little wooden fortress, thinking their man would lead the city for the rest of his life. Instead, the poor brute had been usurped and discredited by that ambitious little street rat, Vot. He lived with his boyfriend in the uphill district on the edge of the city with his perilously few supporters. Downhill were the shabby old huts that had gone up before the city even had its ramshackle wall. It didn't look like much, but it was home to Fingir, the man who had started it all. All those months ago, it had been his idea to flee the crushing matriarchy of the great stone-walled city of Izaz and to forge out into the jungle. It hadn't been easy. Monster girls stalked the brush, as did tribes of man-hungry women. A few Izazi women had even gone native out here, picking up the rifle and machete and living permanently outside the walls.

Now that the men had their own city with their own wall and their own troops, they should have been safe.

Riman knelt at the garden behind the tent he shared with three other men. With delicate care, let well-water drip from his bucket onto the soft, dark soil. Mumbling a fertility charm, he turned to give the bucket back to the storehouse where had gotten it.

He looked over his shoulder at the garden. He was not a farmer, but his mother had been, and he had learned the basics by listening to her. His patch of loose soil was a far cry from the carefully irrigated barley rows of Izaz, but it was a good start. It's what this whole city was, really: a start. The start of a new life away from female possessiveness, in a place where a man could walk in the open air without a woman to 'protect' him.

Back at the storehouse, as Riman set the bucket back in its place, he felt a stern hand grip his shoulder. "Hey," said a cold voice. "What's a downhill boy doing with our bucket?"

Riman swallowed. "Were you using it?"

"Doesn't matter if we were using it." The owner of the heavy hand turned Riman around, letting him see a surprisingly thin frame and a narrow, mean face. "You're from downhill. This isn't your bucket."

"I thought it was everyone's bucket," said Riman, horribly certain where this was going.

"Which part of the city are we in right now?"

"Uphill." Riman kept his voice even, refusing to be intimidated.

"And where do you live?"

"Downhill."

The thin man leaned in, their noses almost touching. "You see the problem, small fry? So unless you want to throw in with us, you'll leave this bucket to its owners."

"He'll do no such thing!" said a firm old voice behind him.

Riman looked back and was shocked to see Fingir standing in the entrance, old and weak but still tall and proud. He took a few steps forward, and the thin man stepped back as if pushed by a forceful aura.

"I may not run this city anymore," said Fingir, "but you're acting the child, and I wouldn't let that stop me from spanking you until you behave."

The thin man clenched his fists, as if contemplating fighting Fingir and going down in history as the man who started Standup's civil war. He decided against it.

"Remember why you came with us!" Fingir thundered, his voice filling the room. "We didn't band together so we could bully and resent each other. We did it so we could live safely. So we could be safe, free and together." He pointed at Riman. "He remembers that. Do you?"

Riman stood still, staring defiantly back at the thin man even as he feared him. But the thin merely adjusted the bucket in its spot on the ground and weakly said, "Sure."

Fingir and Riman left the hut quietly.

"That was amazing," said Riman, as soon as he dared speak. "I thought I was in trouble. If you hadn't shown up, that man might have lain into me."

"Ah, it's just a boys' scuffle," said Fingir. "In Izaz, they raise us to be boys forever. They raise us to obey our mothers, then our wives, all without a thought in our heads. Men like that don't become good citizens overnight." He patted Riman on the back. "Take heart. This will pass."

Next, Riman's house needed fruit. He patted his pocket knife, which he had not dared use against the man who mugged him, and grabbed his friend Ogma's sack from the corner of the hut. He made for the edge of the city.

The wall was still a humble thing. A chin-high barrier made from two fences angled together, it threatened outsiders with a pikes set irregularly into its outer face, and guardsmen every few dozen paces waited with muskets, matchlock rifles and even antique crossbows, ready to fight back if anyone might think the city looked ripe for the taking. Even as it was, with no infrastructure and little in the way of tools, Standup was fragile and brimming with the jungle's most valuable resource, fertile men.

"Hey!" said one of the guardsmen, watching Riman vault over the wall, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Only foraging," said Riman. "Settle down."

Getting up from his high stool, the guard stood up on the crest of the wall. "You heard about the new rules. No one goes out without at least three partners!"

Riman's shoulders sagged. "I'll only be out for a few minutes."

"A few minutes? A monster girl can snap you up in a few seconds. What district are you from?"

"Oh no..." Riman glanced down at the guard's flintlock pistol. "Please, we can get along, can't we?"

The guard huffed. "It's not a threat, you numbskull. I want to pair you with people from your district, so you'll work together. So which will it be?"

"Downhill. I live by Fingir's place."

The guard's eyes widened. "You too?" He squinted. "You're Maglin?"

"You're close. My name is Riman. Maglin shares a tent with me."

Over his shoulder, the guard called out, "Hamul! Take over for me!" He slid down the wall. "I met Maglin," he said. "He's a good man. My name's Wari." He extended a hand.

Ramin shook. "Now, who will the other two partners be?"

Wari shrugged. "Maglin's roommates are both decent boys. The two of us should be enough. Now, are we going or not?"

Riman smiled. "Let's go."

No one else objected as they forged into the jungle, Riman's knife and Wari's gun ready against whatever the wild could throw at them.

Deep in the jungle, something felt off, then Riman realized that Wari wasn't walking anymore. Turning, Riman saw him staring up at a tree enwrapped by a vine studded with little round orange fruits.

"Perfect," said Wari. He stuffed his flintlock pistol into his handmade holster. "Watch my back." Gripping the trunk, he pulled himself up onto a foothold where a knot in the bark admitted his foot. Stretching up another leg, he hooked it onto a fork in the trunk and pushed himself up, getting a grip between the two trunks.

Something crashed against the back of Riman's head, and the next he knew, he was on his stomach, his head throbbing from some phantom impact, his chin tingling with pain from striking a stone. Hands hooked under his arms, and his body began to lift off the ground. With a grunt, Riman pulled against the hands, and when they kept pulling, he aimed his foot at the ground behind him and forced it down as hard as he could.

His boot hit something hard, and a female yelp rang out. One more kick, and one of the hands released him, giving him the time to twist free of the other. He faced his opponent.

He saw a woman dressed in coarse cloths draped over her shoulders and hips. She wore black hair cut into a mane that hung down past her shoulders but exposed her forehead, face, and the little carved wooden mask ornament hanging from her necklace. Her skin was tan, just a shade lighter than the Izazi norm.

That was all Riman saw before the butt of a spear cracked into the side of his face, sending him onto his hands and knees. A rope was tied perilously around his throat, and when he looked up, he saw a spear tip aimed at his heart.

"Move, hunk," growled a woman's voice. "Go fast."

She pointed, and the twin threats of the noose and the spear kept him hurrying. When his senses cleared out, he heard Wari's voice shouting for him, but already it was terribly far away.

After a moment of not paying attention to the ground, Riman paid for his mistake by falling off a riverbank, wailing as he tumbled into the cold, muddy water.

The current pushed. The noose pulled. His limbs flailed, trying to find something solid. When he finally broke the surface of the water, it was because of strong hands on his right arm dragging him up onto the shore. His eyes smarted from the cold water, and he coughed and spat. The hands laid him against what felt like a tree trunk.

Finally, everything slowed down. His heart calmed, the water drained from his head and the pain died down. He blinked his eyes clear and looked around.

He sat against an old tree whose trunk was wider than he was. The woman knelt in front of him, tying a rope around his wrist. Her thin black eyebrows skewed low over intent eyes as her fingers worked at a complex knot.

"Who... who are you?" Riman croaked.

The woman looked up, and Riman saw that she was barely a woman. Riman gave her even odds for being older than twenty, which left her probably a few years younger than him. At his question, she looked into his eyes. A toothy smile grew on her lips. "I'm Yissa," she said. "Was out hunting when I saw you. I was alone. You were alone. It was a gift from above."

"I wasn't alone," said Riman, still processing the rest of what she had said. "Where's Wari?"

"You have a wife? She won't find you all the way out here."

"Not a wife. He was a partner."

"There were two hunks? I thought I heard another one yelling... just as well I missed him. I can only carry one."

Riman tried to raise his hands, only to find them tied together by a rope that looped back around the tree, keeping his arms spread. The woman, Yissa, straddled his legs, and her hands delicately picked at his shirt. She began to untie it, and in a moment of panic, he realized what she was trying to do.

"No!" he cried, thrashing his bound limbs. "No, no get off me! Get off me!"

A dirty palm covered his mouth. "Hush!" Yissa's breath broke over his face. "There's monster girls out here, you know it. Some would bounce on you and leave you. Some would eat you, and not the fun way." She removed her hand, and her voice went low and sinister. "My aunt had a son, was kidnapped from my village. They tracked him down, found a monster girl had him tied to a wood frame, his arms and legs and all stretched out, his juice-rod just hanging out in the air. They even had the frame hanging from a tree, so he couldn't touch the ground. Couldn't do a thing except watch and wait for a monster girl to come use him." She grew a distant smirk. "When they found him, the monster girl showed her teeth right by his juice-rod, said she'd bite it off if they took another step." She chuckled darkly. "Must be, he's still on that frame, giving them daughters. So don't make a noise, because a monster girl is worse than me. Much worse." She finished undoing his shirt, unwrapping the sleeves and gently pulling it away, exposing his skin to the warm, moist jungle air.

Rolling the shirt into a wad, she stuffed it into a burrow underneath the tree. Riman doubted he would ever see it again.

"Now stand up, hunk," said Yissa.

Even as Riman obeyed, he remembered a little of the pride that made him leave Izaz in the first place. "I'm not a hunk," he insisted. "I'm a man."

"Pff." Yissa didn't look away from his groin as she worked on the cords keeping his pants up. "A man's too old to bounce on. And a boy's too young. But you're nice and ripe. You're a hunk." His pants came down, and Yissa tilted her head as she peered at his cock. Reaching down, she pinched it between her thumb and forefinger.

Riman did his best to hide it, but he couldn't. The attention, the prodding and even her husky, feminine whispering had gotten him most of the way erect, and now her fingers were finishing the job.

Yissa gave a little murmur of delight. "You're going up for me," she said. "You do want it." She faced him with a vindicated grin. "I knew it! You big faker, you want it!" She gave another deep chuckle. "When I come back, you'll get it."

"What? You... you're going to leave me here?"

She pointed to her right shoulder. "Do you see a tattoo?"

He shook his head.

"I'm not anointed. I haven't done the rite. I'm not allowed to have a hunk to myself, and if they found out, it would be a bad day for us both. So you stay out here, nice and secret." Reaching into the burrow, she pulled out a small earthenware pot that looked as expensive as it did fragile. Gently, she lifted away the lid, then dipped her hand into the pot, pulling it out covered in thick white cream.

"What...?" Riman could not decide if he wanted to know what that substance was.

Stepping up to him, Yissa smeared the cream across his collarbone, then worked it into his skin with hard circular motions. "Scent cream," she said. "Monster girls can smell hunks. But this will make you smell like moss. Keeps you warm too. You need it, because I like you naked."

"Savage!" spat Riman.

Yissa looked evenly at him. "Do you want to end up on a frame?"

He spent a long time considering it. "No."

"Then hold still."

Riman bit his tongue as he felt Yissa's hands run all across his shoulders, then down his thick arms, across his cheeks, into the base of his hairs, under his arms and then, with special care, down his sides, her fingers running slow and hard across his abdomen, then over his flat stomach. But then Yissa knelt, took two fresh handfuls of the cream, and began rubbing along his inner thighs.

"You like it?" she said, and the best Riman could do was keep silent as he felt cool, slick pressure massage his legs, then his hips, then finally run down his shaft. Her touch was light at first. Then she squeezed a little and pulled, then ran her hands up and down, her wet touch teasing his nerves.

Riman breathed deeply, trying not to let the pleasure reach him, but it was out of his control. Then, just as he felt the beginnings of an orgasm, she let go.

Riman looked down, seeing his cock bobbing in front of her, so thickly covered in white that it looked like a candle. Yissa pretended not to notice at as she lathered his legs, then the soles of his feet. Finished, she placed the pot gingerly in the burrow, then stood up.

"Nice and white," she sang, as she patted his cheek. "I'll be back."

Riman made no reply. He did not struggle. As Yissa loped off, he realized that he had even stopped feeling embarrassed that he was naked.

Back in Izaz, he had thought that the wild was an empty place. He had imagined the jungle as a cool, quiet expanse of trees, flat ground and nothing else. He had thought that out here, no woman could ever tie him down.

Now he thought differently.

* * *

Yissa picked her nails. She knew she shouldn't have, but today she couldn't stop. Today, she would sneak off to her captive hunk and have him for the first time. She had spent the last night preparing with the wooden peg, curing herself of the first-time pain. Now she knew what to expect.

From her open hut, she glanced around at the other women of the village, terrified that they might guess her secret. All of those women were anointed, their shoulders painted with badges of their womanhood. But not Yissa. To be unanointed three years after coming of age was a disgrace. In a fair and even world, Yissa knew she would die a virgin. But this was not an even world. This was the jungle, and opportunity was everywhere.

Gathering up her things, Yissa stepped carefully out into the jungle. As far as the rest of the village knew, she was out to forage. She hid her gourds of paint from sight, knowing they would give away her true intentions.

Morning sunshine barely lit the thick jungle, and Yissa knew where to place her feet only because she knew this part so well. Eventually, she found the tree where she had left the Izaz hunk, and to her delight, he was still there.

He stood on his feet, his flaccid juice-rod dangling in front of him, all soft and ripe, waiting for a woman. Yissa giggled at the thought of a monster girl coming within arm's length of him and that ready rod, only for the cream to cloud up her nostrils and make her miss him.

Eventually, the hunk perked up. He faced her with an exhausted, desperate face. "Water," he murmured. "I need water. I was already thirsty when you grabbed me. I need to drink."

"You poor thing," said Yissa half-seriously, trying to focus on untying his hands instead of his looking at his glistening abs. She grabbed the ropes tied to his wrists and led him toward the stream. "Let's get you ready."

"Ready for you to rape me?"

"Rape? What's that?"

"When you have sex with a man without his consent."

"Consent? When he wants it?" Yissa snorted. "Hunks always want it. If he doesn't want it, he doesn't get hard." They reached a gently flowing river, and the hunk threw himself into the water as Yissa stepped gently in, letting the river rinse off her skin. "It's always been that way," Yissa continued. "As long as there have been males, they've been made for women. Tens of tens of tens of years ago, when the world was covered in ice, the spirits saw the first three women freezing in a cave, so they took pity and sent down some boys to hold them. Help them stay warm."

"Couldn't they keep each other warm?" said the hunk, between gulps of water.

"Don't ask me. I've never been cold like it is up in the mountaintops. And it wasn't enough, anyway. So the spirits took the boys and turned them into hunks. Then they gave them back." She laughed again. "At first, the women didn't know what to do with boys' new juice-rods. Didn't even think to call them that. Then they figured it out, and they were never cold again."

"And then what?" asked the hunk, as he wiped his body clean of Yissa's scent cream. She watched as his fingers squeezed it off his flesh, first from his slender, supple arms, then down his thin, fit frame, leaving no scrap of his skin untouched, doing everything she had done to him in reverse. "I suppose those six people founded your tribe?" he prompted.

"Not just my tribe. All the tribes are the children of those three women. Everyone in this jungle, except you Izazi. You came later."

"How can all those people be descended from three families? They would have had to inbreed so much, it would have killed them."

"We don't know how they did it. When I meet them after I die, I'll ask them." She gave him a minute to drink from the stream. "Are you done? Get up here. No more stalling."

With a deep breath, he marched back onto dry land, where he put up no resistance as Yissa stretched his arms out, tying one wrist to a fallen log and the other to a sapling that would bend if he pulled on it. But he wouldn't pull. Already, he was like a man, quiet and compliant. Yissa felt a twinge of disappointment; the way the Izazi hunks had boasted from behind the walls of their fortress-village, she had hoped that they had more spirit than this.

Straddling his hips, she ran hands across his chest, wiping off the water as best she could. Reaching into her sling, she pulled out the jars she had smuggled from the village, opened one and coated her right thumb in deep blue pigment.

Reaching down, she passed it gently up and down his right thigh, then his left, bracketing his waist in dark purple chevrons.