Chapter XI (Final) – The End of What I Was

Weeks passed, Gustavo no longer clearly remembered what it was like to wake up alone, decide what to eat or when to train.

The gym had become just another maintenance function: he went when Sánchez ordered, trained his body so it would remain attractive and resistant, and returned to the dungeon. Vince was still there, sometimes more broken, sometimes recovered, always available. Between them there was a silent, dirty brotherhood, made of complicit glances and of helping each other clean the other's marks.

One winter night, after an especially long gathering in which Gustavo had been used by five different men until he was almost unconscious, Sánchez made him stay on his knees in the center of the basement when everyone had left. Vince slept in a corner, wrapped in a blanket. It was just the two of them and the echo of the stone.

Sánchez sat in his usual chair, poured himself a whisky and watched him in silence for a long time. Gustavo waited, naked, marked, open, with the collar shining under the dim light.

“Look up,” he ordered at last.

Gustavo raised his face. Sánchez’s eyes no longer had the curiosity of the beginning. They held absolute possession, satisfaction and something that almost looked like pride.

“Almost nothing remains of the trainer I met at the gym,” he said in a low voice. “That man died long ago. What remains is you: a trained body, a set of obedient holes, merchandise that I know exactly how to sell and how to use. Do you accept it?”

Gustavo felt something inside him, something that had been resisting in the deepest part for months, break for the last time. Not with a shout, but with a silent and total surrender.

“I accept it, master,” he answered with a voice clear and broken at the same time. “I am no longer Gustavo the trainer. I am whatever you want me to be. Your toy. Your merchandise. Use me until nothing is left. Or lend me out forever. It doesn’t matter.”

Sánchez stood up, approached and placed a hand on his head, heavy and definitive, like someone sealing a contract.

“Good. Then this is the end of what you were… and the real beginning of what you are.”

He made him stay on his knees for the rest of the night, forehead against the cold floor, while he finished the whisky and quietly planned the coming weeks: new men, new houses, new ways to use him. Gustavo listened to every word and felt no fear. Only a dark and absolute calm.

When dawn light began to filter weakly through the small barred window of the basement, Gustavo was still in the same position. The collar weighed on his neck like the only truth he had left. Outside, the world kept turning. Inside, he no longer belonged to that world.

He had been initiated. He had been broken. He had been converted.

And for the first time in a long time, he did not want anything to be any other way. The cold of the stone had seeped into his bones, but he ...