Moral Hazard

By Samuel Glavney

For hundreds of years, the fangpères have ruled the cities of the world. Beautiful, long-lived, and possessing incalculable wealth, these beings have become little more than myth. Now, in the sprawling slums of Verdun, a fangpère has appeared for the first time in living memory. His gaze has fallen upon Andre, a boy without a future, and he offers a monstrous pact.

The inheritance. With it, comes security and prestige and power. Prosperity and ease for a family, for a generation. However, the fangpère’s legacy comes with its own price: one which lies at the center of the fangpères’ depraved existence, one which Andre will have to pay in days and flesh.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samuel Glavney
• Release date: Dec 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311435132

Samuel Glavney

SAMUEL GLAVNEY lives and works in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Miriam. He writes science fiction in the mornings and drinks coffee until the walls hum. He is the author of BUSINESSLIKE CONFIDENCE! the novella MORAL HAZARD (sold for free by Smashwords) and, as D.S. Larsell, THE SEVERING KISS (vampire story, buried deep in the internet).

Book preview

Moral Hazard

Samuel Glavney

Copyright 2015 Samuel Glavney

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Miriam

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Author Bio

One

Andre ofthe Street had heard men described as ‘long of tooth’ before, but the fangpère had the longest teeth the boy had ever seen. They were evident every time the fellow smiled-- and Yezekael ofthe Families loved to share his smile. Long of tooth! The fangpère, we know, didn’t actually have larger teeth than most men, but his shining, brutalized gums had pulled back on themselves over the years to reveal more and more yellowing root. It was an illusion, then: those shark teeth nothing more than a trick of the eye; but that didn’t stop Andre from being afraid.

Andre had been warned not to deny the fangpère. There might-- there probably would-- be some strange requests of him: embarrassing, unpleasant, even painful things. No matter: he was to acquiesce to every last desire quickly and without question. No hesitation. He was old enough to know about whoring and to know that boys aren’t beyond the long reach of that profession. Standing at attention before the fangpère, he was prepared for a rough time. His heart was pounding and he was reminding himself not to fight and not to make much noise, even as Zek asked him to remove his shirt and pants and undergarments. Trying not to show his terror-- trying, Allah help him, to appear eager-- he complied. No hesitation.

Now Andre stood before the older man, very naked, inside the cinder block dwelling of the hedman. They were alone and the fangpère was smiling. The hedman and the doctor and the fangpère’s police were outside, waiting. Andre took in a breath and held it.

Yezekael ofthe Families andofthe Financiers, Prosperity Bringer, Innovator, and Necessary Personage took off his gloves, yes, and sawed his long teeth upon one knuckle, but he didn’t move forward. He didn’t lick his lips. The fangpère let his eyes trace the boy’s body. The large man seemed as interested with Andre’s chest and arms and feet and the dimensions of his neck and hands and chin as he did with his hips and buttocks and genitals.

But maybe this long examination was only the first part of whoring?

The fangpère circled behind him and Andre felt his asshole clench and his testes pull upwards. He gritted his teeth as he had when the guest doctor had given him his vaccination. Zek noticed all of it. The fangpère laughed and put his hands on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. Andre felt his sphincter shrink even tighter. He wanted to turn his head and bite down on the big hand resting on his shoulder. He wanted to run. He remained facing straight ahead.

I’m not going to fuck you, purred the fangpère. Not with fingers or tongue or fist or special toy. Not even with my cock! That would be rape, my boy. Whatever you may hear, raping a finalist is illegal under Rest-Vostok. And I am one for following the rules: a great defender of the treaty! Yes, and I bow to her in all things. Everything we do will be consensual, Andre ofthe Street. Understand? There will be a contract involved. I insist! And you will have a say in all of it. Everything. Your signature is very important.

Zek re-appeared suddenly in front of Andre. The big man was removing his gorgeous, white frills and charcoal vest and satin dress-bandoliers. Every engraved button on the fangpère’s vest might have recompensed Andre’s aunt for a decade of labor. Every dress-bandolier could probably bring steady electricity-- and the new infrastructure necessary to run it-- to one of Esham’s streets for five years. Andre had watched the fangpère enter the district every day for the past two months to hunt for suitable boys. The man had never worn the same ensemble twice. Now Zek tossed these priceless garments to the hedman’s cement floor.

If I raped you, continued the fangpère in his marvelous accent, or, God forbid, if I gave you my inheritance without that signature? Well, Andre, like all important men, I have enemies. Men-- and worse: women; these so-called progressives!-- who love any chance to leap upon weakness. To smear an honest businessman’s name...

Yezekael ofthe Families was shirtless now. He had an exceptional physique: his chest was covered in coarse, black hair and his broad shoulders and thick upper arms were decorated in expansive, swirling tattoos. His collarbone looked as though it had been chiseled from rock, and his stomach contained six fat muscles which flexed themselves with every inward breath. Twin obliques cut sharply above either hip and buried themselves in some mysterious zone beneath the front of Zek’s tightly-fastened pants.

And so it was the boy’s turn to stare. Andre had seen shirtless laborers all his life: welders, porters, framers, machinists, fishermen, cinder masons, road menders, and garbage collectors. As a young child, he had dreamed of someday joining them, walking shirtless through the midday heat of Esham with a wet cloth tied about his head, towards the export mills of the Line. He’d imagined himself with the height and strength of a man grown, and the authority, certainly… but he’d never imagined this. Those laborers he admired were sun-scorched and mostly-hairless men. Their ropey arms and torsos only supported as much muscle as a diet of rice and fish and the yearly holiday goat would allow. They seemed like walking stick bugs compared to the exaggerated musculature of the fangpère.

The older man smiled. Zek was obviously proud of his body; he was enjoying the boy’s reaction. He said: Not so bad, right? I’ve worked very hard to maintain this. Sixty-four years old, but with yearly regens I can expect to keep this muscle for another twenty! You see, I don’t simply comply with the letter of the law, but the spirit as well! Now I won’t deny I’ve had my setbacks-- a blood sickness I’m not fond of-- but we’ll go over that unpleasantness in detail when the time comes. The fact remains: you won’t be swindled, son. I’ll make sure of it!

***

Esham District hasn’t received a fangpère in living memory. Which isn’t to say that no one ever comes from the center of the city! Quite the contrary! Every month or two there’s a new crop of guest doctors and community organizers and elementary school teachers and infrastructuralists and tourism specialists from Palais. They’re all volunteers. They’re highly-intentioned and well-educated and they speak with that beautiful Palasian accent and use stock phrases which are exclusive to development professionals. They grow frustrated with Esham and her problems quickly. Mostly, they return to their walled district after a few months and leave their work to the next crop of volunteers. The ones who stay are tough, cynical, and chronically discontent people who, I’d argue, find it romantic whenever the sewers flood out into the streets after a hard rain. They go to planning meetings with the district hedman and they’re always fixing shacks or contributing a new room to the school or organizing a course on nutrition. They complain endlessly about funding. Once or twice a year, one of them will get an Eshamer pregnant. The Palasian, almost always, flees back beyond the Line in embarrassment, and the Eshamer will raise a child that looks slightly more cream-colored than the others in her neighborhood.

To be fair, the Palasian usually sends money to help.

But a visit from a fangpère! That’s an altogether more rarified event: so uncommon, in fact, that before Yezekael ofthe Families arrived, most Eshamers had settled back into the easy belief that these peculiar visitors were nothing but words; old tales suddenly remembered with the chill air and early dark of October. Something to tell around the cook stove. Caravanners will talk about having seen a fangpère in Hardadin District less than ten years ago, certainly, but hasn’t every Eshamer at one time or another been cheated by a caravanner? Those people see dragons and fangpères and airships everywhere they travel! And those magic turnips they sell? The ones, which, when buried at midnight with fresh menstrual blood and the right words, are supposed to shrink your swollen lymph nodes? How are those working for you? Have you noticed any difference? No? Well, there you go! Those people are born storytellers! No wonder we stopped believing in their distant boogeymen long ago!

But there was no disbelieving Yezekael. One morning, even before the goats had been driven through the gravel streets, that impossibly tall and handsome and well-dressed and purple-caped figure arrived with little fanfare but frantically preannounced. His name, somehow, was on everybody’s tongue before they knew quite what they were talking about. The hedman, closer to panic than anyone can remember, went digging like a madman through the instructions of his deceased predecessors to come up with a necessary protocol.

And here it was: every young man, aged ten through eighteen, was to be lined up on Rue 181, south of where it intersects with the