Life in a cage is still life. Or so he had been told when he would question the world, as young men were wont to do. When the world was opening in front of him at last, moving out on his own, looking at jobs, a nagging feeling from his youth was now rising like a heat around the collar.
The feeling of being trapped.
That cloying, sickly, sticky feeling that something has a hand around your neck. Trapped, and knowing there was no escape.
When Rick looked out at the town he lived in it was easy to let your eyes glaze over if you ever looked too closely at the horizon, to simply ignore the deep grey military cement bulwark which separated his life from the world outside. Houses gave way to a no man's land, from which arose the wall which surrounded their town and kept the world away, and kept him away from the world.
It wasn't exactly taboo to mention it, but nobody did regardless, and he could well understand why now that he was older. Like casually bringing up a tragedy, but one that never ended, as that wall served to remind them all. The world had been lost to them. All that was left of the world was that which survived within the walls, islands of normalcy that dotted a landscape overrun by...
He tried not to think about it. Largely because he didn't know how that sentence ended. What was outside was more or less left unsaid and unthought. In old books he'd seen pictures of the oceans, boats and more. His college library had kept some until they had been “bought by a private collector”, more likely confiscated to stop anyone from remembering how things were before, but he'd managed to steal one in time.
As he sat on a bench, sun blazing down, on the roof of his new living quarters, he tried to angle the book in ways that would let him see past the edges of the images. Anything to see even a fraction more of the world he would never know. A world that was gone.
He peered over the top of the book, and there in the distance the grey walls lay. For a moment he craned his head up, here on the roof which was constructed to be low enough to not allow any chance of it, and tried to see anything over the edges of the wall. It was, of course, all for nought.
Naivete warred with curiosity and a lifetime of unspoken warnings. It was like discovering you were too late to a party you had no chance of attending. The world had been robbed from him before he had a chance to see it. Time had landed like a gavel, separating his life from the lives of billions before, a judgement passed down that he would grow up in this cage.
“What's that?”
Rick did an excellent impression of someone with something to hide by acting as naturally as he could, half-dropping the book before stumbling to his feet.
“Nothing,” he lied, truthfully.
“Lost in your own world again, huh?” the girl he half-knew at college and fully knew now as Jessica tittered, hands crossed in front of her as she leaned over. Even if he hadn't been sat down she still would have been leaning over him, a few inches taller and carrying herself with a lot more confidence.
“Not my world,” he muttered, and put the book down next to him.
Jessica had been on the periphery of his social circle since his final year of study. Occasionally at a party he would see her, or she would see him, but only really when the two circles overlapped. Now, however, he had a job offer at the same company she had begun working for halfway through her degree, and was living in the same building.
“Want to talk about it?” she offered innocently, but increasingly he had begun to suspect her intentions as anything but. This was punctuated when she sat down next to him and put a hand on top of his, on top of the book.
She always found an excuse to be in the hallway when he got back, or was going to the same place he was. A few shy discussions and snuck kisses had happened here and there. Rick would have been lying to say he didn't enjoy the attention. She was nice. Usually. And when she wasn't, he might have admitted he didn't mind that mischievous side either.
He had suspected that she had suspected what she suspected for some time.
“You remember what Dr Pross said right? Everybody goes through this.”
He knew she was right, but as ever, that didn't change how he felt.
“Did you?”
“Yeah. I have family over...” for a moment she paused, looking at the wall for the first time as if she had been directly avoiding doing so, “there. That way, I think. A few miles.”
Rick looked, following her finger, after spending a little too long lingering on her and her breasts which had been distracting him from the moment he'd first seen her in class.
“Might as well be on the moon,” he mused, and then shook his head, “sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”
“It's okay. I've accepted I'll probably never meet them. Yeah, it's sad, but there's nothing I can do about it. That's the point I'm making, I came to terms with it. I went through it just as you are now.”
She had sat down next to him on the bench now, and whereas normally he would have found this a little more intimate than he was comfortable with, especially given the topic of discussion, he was perhaps a little too downtrodden to care.
“You're not happy, are you Rick?”
He thought about an answer but didn't say it, just staring down at the roof below.
“All through college you were the guy who asked questions, got in trouble, and now you learn when to keep your mouth shut?”
He smiled a little at that, but shook his head.
“I'm a prisoner, Jessica. We all are.”
“Are we?” she asked, pointedly, which shook him from his morose for a moment, “They had prisons back in the old days too you know. They still built walls to keep monsters locked inside. They still separated the world.”
“Yeah, but back then the walls were facing inwards...”
For a while they just sat, not quite enjoying each other's company, but definitely more comfortable than being alone. She put her head against his after a time, and he sank into her shoulder, not solely out of obligation.
“Let me do something for you,” she said, at last, as they watched the sun waning in the sky.
At first he hadn't noticed she had spoke. It was when the feeling of her body vibrating with her voice registered that he took account of it.
“Sorry?” he asked, having only half heard her.
Her hand moved across his lap, and he felt a set of lips on his ear.
“Let me do something for you,” she said again, quieter, and yet it hit him like a ton of bricks.
He froze, unsure what to say.
“There's nothing in this book that can change what's right in front of you,” she said, as her hand drifted straight over his lap, and grabbed it from his side.
“W-what?” he stuttered, understandably confused.
“Let me get rid of it,” she said simply, and looked him dead in the eye.
He was silent, facing her, but his eyes on the book in her hand.
“You're never going to be happy as long as your mind is stuck wondering what's outside the wall.”
She said it. Not just mentioning the wall. She had pretty much summed up his life in a sentence. He suddenly felt quite small.
Slowly, her one hand slid the book further and further towards her, as her other moved to replace the former on his lap.
“B... but-”
“Did looking in that book make you happy?” she asked bluntly.
“No,” he admitted at last.
“Then let me get rid of it, and I'll show you something that will make you a lot happier,” she offered with an impish grin.
He felt like the hand tickling its way across his jeans was around his heart instead, gently but firmly, as if holding a leash. Or, perhaps, offering one.
The book slid further, and he struggled to keep his eyes on it, and off her.
“Tell me what you want me to do, and I'll be happy to oblige,” she said, her tongue caught slightly between her teeth as she pulled it ever closer to herself.
“W... well...” Rick mutely sputtered, as her face won out for his attention.
“Hmmm?” she asked amusedly, delicately tracing the now hardening cock she could feel, straining to be freed of its confinement in place of its owner.
“Yeah,” he offered quietly.
Her hand clasped around the outline of his dick rewardingly, even as she pulled his other most prized possession away.
“Say it nice and clearly for me,” she cooed, grinning, as her lips came closer to his.
“Get rid of it,” he uttered, defeatedly, and slumped, in the process falling into her enrapture.
“Good boy,” she spoke into his mouth as she closed the distance.
The rooftops were rarely used, let alone in a mostly empty building like theirs. They could be assured of some privacy, but decided to take it to the bedroom regardless. Hers to be precise. He hadn't been in her quarters before, but didn't get much of a chance to see it as, after being led by the hand he was pulled into another kiss which escorted him to the bed.
He wasn't entirely unversed in the arts, but Jessica had a far firmer grasp of the finer details, evidently. She took great delight in slowly lifting his shirt over his head, and toying with his temporary blindness, as they undressed.
“I'm glad you listened,” she giggled, and ran a hand down his chest.
“So am I,” he smiled, genuinely, for the first time in years.
With a delicate but firm hand, which he was quickly getting used to the feeling of, she pressed his shoulders down into the bed as she used that same firm delicacy to grasp his now freed erection.
“Now you just relax and let me take care of this, okay?” she said sweetly, before lying down next to him.
“B-” was all he got out before a fingertip silenced him.
“Uh uh, you already said you'd let me take care of things, right? No more out of you. All I want to hear from you is happy sounds, got it?”
She slid up the bed, placing a pillow behind him that she took the opportunity to rest on, and brought her chest directly into his view.
“Good boys get rewards,” she said softly, running her fingers through his hair even as her other hand began to deftly work his cock, leaving his chest thrumming with pleasure, “and I'm very proud of you.”
Jessica then buried his face in her soft shirt covered chest, as he had been dying to do for years, and began to stroke him in earnest. Smiling at the delighted moans this elicited from her captive, she jostled her chest slightly, soft flesh lapping against his face ever so slightly.
“I think I know just how to cheer up a guy like you,” she whispered into her tits, sure that they would pass on the message to the guy they held confined.
Making a ring with her finger and thumb, she began to jerk his cock faster, ensuring to lovingly enclose the head each time. Soon he found the rhythm, and began thrusting his cock into her grip, at which she giggled, shaking her chest around his head.
“Now now, not too fast,” she admonished, and slowed down, keeping her strokes just out of time with his thrusts.
When his legs shifted, electric pleasure coursing through him, she took the opportunity to slip one leg under his, and clasp another on top of them.
“That's better, now, where was I...” she mused, and began to stroke again, faster.
This time, however, with the weight of her leg atop his thighs he found he could barely thrust his hips at all. A muffled groan of frustration escaped her chest which she found delightfully amusing.
“There there, I told you I'd make you feel good,” she whispered, panting slightly from a mix of arousal and exertion, “and I will.”
Her hand which had been lovingly caressing his hair, and keeping him firmly pinned into her breasts, now moved its way down his body, trailing along his shoulder and eliciting a powerful jump as it played across his waist. At last, her fingers found his balls, and cradled them lovingly.
“All those negative thoughts, I want you to let them melt down into nothing, and we'll milk them out of you...” she whispered, seemingly uncaring whether he could hear it over his own muffled breathing.
“What a good boy...” she smiled wickedly, before releasing her leg clamp at last, and working her hand in a flurry.
“Cum for me,” she cooed, silken words of promise working their way down into her cleavage and into very welcoming ears, “cum for me.”
She laughed with surprise as he rose up off the bed with the desire to buck, to rut, to thrust into her hand.
“That's it! Cum for me! Cum for me and stop worrying about the world,” she soothed, tightening her grip as she did so, “I'll be your world from now on.”
At that, a hot jet of cum blasted up her forearm, and she slowed her strokes to an even firm pace, milking the maximum pleasure from him that she could. A molten load now spattering across her fair skin.
“That's it, thaaaat's it...” she comforted, holding him close.
Practically hyperventilating, he bucked up into her grip with increasingly stilted movements, until at last he collapsed onto her bed in a sheen of sweat.
For some time, they just lay together, until she at last got up to clean up. She again just left a finger on his lips when he tried to speak.
“You did enough today,” was all she said.
He spent the night there, eyes open, looking out of the window. In her arms, for the first time in a long time, things made a semblance of sense. Having someone just reach out and be willing to be there had, for the first time, given him a reason to re-evaluate.
What was it he hadn't found? Was it this? His mind raced against itself.
The moon rose at last, but did so only when it crested the horizon. A flat, towering wall that was their horizon. The rest of the world might as well have been up there, on the moon, he mused further.
What good did it do to be... whatever it was he was feeling. He couldn't change it. If he was stuck here, he might as well be happy. Rick didn't like thinking of it as “settling”. He was lucky. Luckier than he could have imagined a short day ago. He wasn't settling for her, he was settling for this. A gilded cage. She and he were both prisoners of it.
Or were they?
For a moment, his brow furrowed.
Was she trapped here? Or was she part of that trap? Was just being here enough to make you a part of it? By existing did you indelibly become an integral piece of the confinement? Were you culpable by association? Was he encouraging others to stay by staying as she just had?
It could have ended there. Rick could have ended his obsession there and then, and by all rights the world had given him a very good excuse to do so. However, it was wrong. What it was that was wrong, he wasn't sure, but something about everything was wrong. People weren't supposed to live like this. No matter how happy he was in that moment, that was a spin on the exercise wheel of his cage. The hard borders of existence were just as closed in as they had ever been. No matter how gilded the cage was, a cage it remained.
The book sat on the bench where it had been left, cool to the night air, and filled the gap in the bag he had packed. A letter left behind explained in no uncertain terms everything he wanted to say to the girl he would probably have told he loved some day.
Walls designed to keep things out, the common theory would go, serve equally well to keep things in. However, any architect could tell you otherwise. Indeed, everybody knew Rick wouldn't be the first person to leave. The powers that be were far more interested in keeping the world out than them in by anything other than suggestion. To a determined person, really, it was just a matter of trying.
He managed to get atop a truck as it rested among a dozen others, preparing to leave. A convoy to the neighbouring town. He made his way down into the well between the cabin and cargo, and removed a spare wheel, leaving it by the wall before climbing into the covering that had contained it.
Within an hour he was outside. He opened the bag, and braved the short jump to the ground below as the vehicles slowly trundled in column. As soon as he was on his feet he was running, and ignoring the shouts of people behind him. Ahead was a treeline separated from the wall by endless concrete. The undergrowth closed in tightly, and as he made it past the first few trees, he turned to look back, and couldn't even see the concrete floor.
He had done it. However, he might discover that the effort to erect walls usually comes from good reasoning, and had merely traded one cage for another.
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