There was the bell and there was the slamming of metal against the wall. It was the morning call for the twenty boys housed in this eastern wing of the rehabilitation center for juveniles.

As was the center's precautionary requirement to proof itself of breakouts and mutinies, the boys must stand at the edge of their bunks as soon as they got up. Next, they were ordered to strip off every article of their bedclothes until they were completely naked. Hands commanded to the tops of their heads, the adolescent inmates were inspected and after that given the nod to proceed. While their hands stayed atop their crowns, the platoon of young men marched in two orderly rows to the shower stalls.

Today was the first Tuesday of the month. This meant a body shave was in the itinerary before the boys were allowed to shower. The bath common was going to be an engaging thoroughfare this morning. It was going to be engaging for the staffs at duty there, that is.

For of course the inmates, particularly the new and fragile ones, were loath to present themselves for the compulsory shave and shower. It was a time they were forcibly relinquished of ownership of their bodies and functions to the staff of orderlies and nurses. The staffs had consecrated the time to flashing out the young and naked bodies that lay below them on the steel examination benches awaiting their shave. Naked, cold, alone and scrutinized, the boys felt and were treated like lab specimens for analysis about to be dissected by the steel razors and clippers.

On the other hand, there were the boys who had accepted the situation as a fact of their life in detention and had grown immune, even grown to regard the experience as an innocuous _s_e_x_ual trip. Such a boy was Fabian.

Fabian was the third boy in his row, waiting his turn to be shaved. He would soon hear his name being called and as he proceeded to the steel bunk, his eyes set upon the fair-headed boy before him being hosed down with water. While this boy's fingers separated his own buttock cheeks, his exposed and just-shaved anus submitted to the hose-down.

Fabian smiled. "Nice ass, Basil," he jested, his penis wagging animatedly.

"This way, c'mon now," a nurse called out impatiently, restoring Fabian's attention to himself and the metal table before him.

"Kneel down on all fours," the male nurse directed him next, "spread your knees wide and raise up your backside."

Fabian climbed onto the table. He had no trouble following the instructions. This was going to be his fifth body shave since he was committed to the center half a year ago to be cured of his drug dependence.

The responsibility of shaving the boys always fell on two attendant nurses. While one assumed the main task, the other assisted to hold, out of the razor's or clippers' way, the boys' genitals.

Sometimes the deluge of physical contact between the shaver and the shaved stirred to hardness a boy's penis and this led to embarrassing moments when the boy needed to unload his wad.

Now as Fabian's buttock cheeks were being pried apart by the assisting nurse, the other directed his anus and its periphery to the steel razor's precision shaving of every strand of the hair there. The process didn't take long, for the regularity of the body shaves that were conducted at this institution with the fervor of a religious rite meant that many of the boys here were kept perpetually smooth.

And this was a hygiene standard that had been the practiced norm at the center since its founding by the missionary brothers at the turn of the last century.

Fabian was placed on his back as soon as his bottom hair was denuded. Ignoring the pre-cum seminal fluid slowly starting to drip from the slit of Fabian's hardened tool, the assisting nurse held away his private parts. Fabian's crotch was put through the shaving routine. Throughout the process Fabian would feel the biting cold of the bunk under him and the razor on him. But it was an inconvenience all the boys had learned early, in their confinement at this institution, to tolerate.

The hose-down that followed the body shave was also found quick, precise and cold.

With their shave and shower now completed, Fabian and the rest of the boys submitted to having their urine samples taken. This was a daily ritual and to ensure no error was committed, the samples were taken by the staff of orderlies who, standing in front of the boys, held out the empty pre-labeled lab bottles to their organs to fill.

The mission of the urine sampling was to keep the boys clean of drugs at all times. But this was not always successful since even a hallowed institution such as the Green Haven Drug Rehabilitation Center was not spared its share of corrupt staff who abused the system and their vocation by proffering drugs to the inmates in exchange for _s_e_x_. It was an ongoing problem Warden Jessup was trying vehemently to stem, but a number of the culprits were still able to conceal their tracks and slip his fingers.

The day's agenda running as scheduled, the boys assembled next at the mess hall for breakfast. Sometimes a number of the boys were called to the Warden's office for a spot inspection, and if the Warden located a missed hair, the boy's shave would be repeated.

This morning Armand, Yesev, Brodie, and Emmet were the four boys called up to see the Warden, which was why they had only half the allotted time remaining to finish their breakfast. This they visibly gulped down before the duties were handed them for the morning. These were skills-development duties, akin to an apprenticeship and even given the moniker, that were designed to equip the boys with knowledge of a trade which would help them make an honest living in the future.

Fabian's heart skipped a number of beats when he was apprised that he had been indentured to Mr. Salomon at the laundry.

He hated laundry duty, not on account of the work, although it was classifiably hard labor, but on account of Mr. Salomon, the teacher. Fabian had a feeling that Mr. Salomon himself had him singled out for the apprenticeship all the time because he, Mr. Salomon, seemed to have taken a liking to Fabian.

Which might be a favorable position for any boy to be in if it meant the boy was given longer rest time during the chore and a smuggled stick of cigarette to help him through his cold turkey in the night. But this was not the case with Mr. Salomon and Fabian. Being a favorite of Mr. Salomon meant extended time at the chore, serving out a punishment for a trumped misdemeanor charge. Mr. Salomon harbored a punitive attitude toward all the boys, especially cute boys like Fabian, but this attitude camouflaged a licentious thirst for the boys' youthful bodies.

Last week, Fabian had been rostered to do laundry duty. He remembered with bitter rancor how the day had gone for him.

It was the close of the apprenticeship. Fabian had already inspected the laundered sheets and remembered their being clean and white. In fact, he had sworn that they were clean and white. But a second inspection by Mr. Salomon found the sheets still soiled and reeking of perspiration and boys' fluids.

"You're lazing on the job, Fabian," Mr. Salomon said. "I'm writing you up for disciplinary action."

"You lying mother f ... " Fabian replied.

Fabian hadn't the chance to complete his sentence but a hard smack was issued to the side of his face. He crumpled to the floor and when picked up, was ordered to remove his uniform.

"You can receive your punishment from me now," Mr. Salomon threatened, "or later at the coming monthly assembly. It's entirely up to you, but consider very carefully."

Fabian opted to receive his punishment from Mr. Salomon. It would be better than the alternative: being stripped naked and publicly spanked at an assembly. Besides, a boy that was spanked at an assembly must have been found guilty of a transgression and this was always accompanied by a demerit in his record books. A demerit could mean a delay in his being released from the center. No boy here would volunteer to do anything that would impede the progress of his release, cured of his addiction or not.

In addition, every boy on this block knew the words of Mr. Salomon were untrustworthy. They were the feint of a mountebank, and even if Fabian chose the alternate route, in the following weeks, Mr. Salomon could find a reason to malign him again.

Now, Mr. Salomon kept a blackjack illegally in his concealed trouser pocket. This was fished out and amply applied to Fabian's eighteen-year-old shaved bottom cheeks for about seven minutes.

Fabian was not new to being spanked. He had received a lot of beatings from his father upward of his tenth year, and years later from his stepfather. He had been subjected to all the variations of a spanking and the implements of a spanking: the hand, paddle, cane, stick and switch. He had been spanked over a parent's knees, standing up, his legs over his head, bent over a piece of furniture, totally in the nude, or bare-bottomed only, and also just on his underwear. Indeed, Fabian had been put through the routines.

Fabian's last spanking was exactly six months ago, just before his mother ratted on his cocaine addiction and petty thieving, and later convinced a district judge to order a habeas corpus for his detention. Aurora Devereaux could no longer handle her son and the rod had been deemed to fail as well.

Though Fabian was experienced with the rod, he hadn't been able to rise stoically to Mr. Salomon's brutal use of the blackjack. Fabian had howled, but his mouth then was gagged with a piece of dirty laundry. He had also made promises after Mr. Salomon's own words. He had had to swallow his pride and plead with tears before Mr. Salomon would stop.

The beating from Mr. Salomon was not all that Fabian had had to endure. Of course the company of a naked and helpless boy locked together in the limited borders of a small room with an older man presented to the otherwise decent man a _s_e_x_ual possibility. It also sometimes did irrational things to a man who had been incarcerated in an institution devoid of opposite-_s_e_x_ companionship for prolonged spells. Mr. Salomon could be counted as an example of such a man. Fabian shuddered as he recalled how Mr. Salomon had finger _f_u_c_k_ed his virgin anus and then later introduced his phallus up it.

Needless to say, there were other boys apprenticed to the same job that day, but fear had kept them silent and uninvolved. So all eight of them had looked the other way while inches from them Mr. Salomon kept up his abuse.

Fabian wondered how much farther of the abuse Mr. Salomon would have subjected him if they had not been intruded upon by another boy, a senior inmate, who witnessed the anal intercourse in progress, but later assumed a furtive innocence toward any knowledge of the episode. It was for Fabian's own good, for none of the boys felt safe to wager on the inordinate powers of the teachers put in charge of them.

There was the bell again. No more time for reminiscences or nostalgia now, for Fabian felt a hand prodding him toward the laundry.

Fabian stepped into the room, steaming from the heated irons. There was Mr. Salomon, his head in a white cloud.

Fabian felt his bile on his tongue. For there, on the iron pad, was also the blackjack.

Fabian's eyes darted about the room. Except for Mr. Salomon, he was alone. Fabian's fingers found the little key inside the pocket of his shorts. He curled his fingers tightly round it as he imaged in his mind a gasping Mr. Salomon on the floor, his hands desperately plugging a gaping hole in his jugular.