Waking Up in Vegas, Part I

Julian’s head rose from a pile of plush pillows with a start but no sooner had he sat upright he was forced to plop back onto the bed as a wave of dizziness struck him.  Where am I? He was barely able to formulate the entire thought as he lay in the bed staring up at an ornate chauffeured ceiling.  As his eyes adjusted to the dim light he rose his head slightly and began to assess his surroundings.  He was in a hotel room, and not just any room, it appeared to be a high end bedroom in a luxury suite complete with overstuffed pillows, Corinthian columns, modern art hanging from the walls and a marble hot tub in the corner.  The double doors that lead to the rest of the suite were shut tightly and Julian could hear wafts of pop music, laughter and muted chatter coming from the other side.  The wall to his left was a floor-to-ceiling window with the drapes shut tightly, though the glow that made it through was still enough to cast an orange glow in the otherwise darkened room.  

Several minutes passed before Julian’s head felt steady enough to attempt getting out of bed again.  This time he succeeded.  He looked down at himself to see that he was still wearing the black slacks, white collared shirt and black vest of his uniform, but his black tie was missing...

“Ugh...”

Julian put his hand on his forehead as another throb of pain shot through his skull. Then he remembered vividly what had happened to his tie...

In a wave of panic, the disoriented young man went to the window and threw open the drapes gasping in surprise at what he saw.  Clearly several hours had passed since he had started his shift that morning at the Casino Nehling, as the sky was now pitch black.  However the intense lights from the city below made it immediately obvious Julian was still in Las Vegas.  Julian pressed his face against the glass -- more to steady himself than to admire the view -- as traffic whizzed by on the Las Vegas Strip several stories below.

Before he realized what he was doing, Julian was at the double doors, pulling at them futily though it appeared they had been locked from the other side.  Despite his pounding, the music and prattling voices continued uninterrupted as if no one could hear, or cared to acknowledge, the trapped man just feet away from their debauchery.  

Suddenly the doors swung open and Julian was facing down a stern looking gentleman with shock white hair wearing a tailored brown suit.  Julian immediately recognized him and before he could speak the man rose his fist and punched Julian in his eye.  As Julian fell backward his mind began to unlock the memories which had gotten him here...

Several Hours Earlier

Twenty-five year old Julian stood, rather than sat, on the crowded bus to avoid wrinkling his freshly pressed slacks, shirt, vest and meticulously knotted black tie.  He was in an uncharacteristically foul mood as he followed a throng of tourists off the bus and onto the busy sidewalk.  There were of course less crowded back entrances for the employees of the dozens of hotels and casinos that lined South Las Vegas Boulevard, otherwise known as ‘The Strip’, and Julian could easily have avoided the throngs he was now walking through, but he chose not to.  For the ten minute walk between the bus stop and the entrance to The Casino Nehling where he worked, he could pretend to be an awestruck tourist instead of a bitter, regular guy just going to work for the day; and Julian certainly looked the part.   Julian was six foot four, svelte and toned with neatly styled blonde hair, a perpetually groomed five o’clock shadow and a devastatingly handsome face.  Dressed in his tailored black slacks, chest-hugging white shirt and stylish black vest and tie, the fit but somewhat scrawny young man carried himself with confidence and sophistication.  He could have easily passed for a Devil-may-care high rolling tourist who was on his was to a fitting at Barneys New York not a minimum wage job dealing cards at a casino, and judging by the numerous ogling stares he got from the women he passed, he was playing the part quite well.   He smiled to himself as he entered his workplace, The Casino Nehling.   

The Casino Nehling was a luxurious German-themed enclave plopped into the middle of an otherwise mainstream casino on The Strip.  Typically, Julian didn’t mind flinging cards and maintaining banter with his ultra rich guests, but today was different.  He had just gotten a notice of eviction from his modest apartment, his cell phone had been shut off for non payment and yet another modeling agency had sent him a form rejection letter; clearly his dreams of modeling glamour were not panning out.  Now, instead of tourists, he saw rich parasites who  saw him as nothing more than decoration on their Vegas vacation.  Of course this wasn’t entirely true; after all these were just people out looking to have a good time and most of them genuinely enjoyed Julian’s infectious smile and ability to hold a conversation in several languages, but Julian was in no mood to watch people wistfully gamble away the very thing he was in such desperate straits to have - money.

“Step right up, step right up. Hottest odds on the strip,” Julian belted out in German, Spanish and English in rapid succession as tourists filed by.

The crowds that day in The Nehling were unusually sparse and Julian stood behind his baccarat table nearly an hour before his first patron came up, a short, beefy middle aged gentleman in a brown suit and shock white hair who sat at the table and hurled down hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of large-denomination chips into an unorganized mess all over Julian’s table.

“What are you waiting for? An embroidered invitation? Pick them up!”  the man barked before Julian even had a chance to reach out for the gambling chips.

As Julian hurriedly turned the heap into neat stacks it was all he could do to keep up his fake smile as the man continued to bark out unpleasantries for ostensibly no reason.

“Where did you get that vest? Clearly not Versace, look at that fit,” the man laughed to himself.

“Player or banker?” Julian asked thinly veiling the annoyance behind his fake smile.

The white haired man gave Julian a glaring scowl with his emerald green eyes as he slid a large stack of chips forward.

“Banker. Alright then, good luck!”

Julian pressed the button on his card dispenser and laid out the cards, barely containing his schadenfreude as he declared that the gentleman had lost his bet.

“Better luck next time, sir.”

Julian grinned as he leaned forward and removed the chips from the table but no sooner had he done so than another large stack was pushed forward. The man lost again. And again. And again.

By now the man had lost what most people would have considered a large sum of money, but the man seemed hardly phased.  On the contrary, he tipped a cocktail waitress a one-hundred dollar chip as if it were pocket change and gave her a playful pat on the back-side as she left.

Julian shrugged as the cards were dispensed again.  Only this time the man won, instantly doubling his bet.

“Congratulations,” Julian dead-panned hoping that this would be the cue for the man to collect his chips and leave.  It wasn’t.  Several more hands went by and as the man literally gambled away more money than Julian made in a year, the bored and cynical baccarat dealer started taking sick pleasure in the man’s comically bad misfortune.  Of course the outcome of all the draws were predetermined -- Julian wasn’t even shuffling the cards, a computer was -- but the man’s losing streak was carrying on so long it almost seemed rigged.

“That’s another hand for banker, sir.”  Julian reached for yet another tall stack of chips to put them into his drawer.

“I think the casino at The Venetian does free lessons in table games in the evenings,”  Julian suggested in false empathy.

Julian’s smirk must have been too obvious since the white-haired man stood up abruptly, took a sip of his cocktail and without warning splashed the remainder all over Julian’s face.  Julian, still dripping in vodka, was too stunned to move or even speak but the white haired man turned and walked away as if nothing had happened.

“Secur...”  

Julian was mid-shout when the man pivoted and flew toward Julian with an agility that defied his stocky frame.  He rose his hand and for an instant Julian was afraid he was about to be punched, but the man merely made a hushing motion over his own mouth as he handed Julian a stack of chips.

“Listen buddy. I’m sorry, alright? Let’s say we keep this between us, keep the tip, OK?”

Julian could feel he was holding a handful of chips and nodded in agreement.  The man smiled as he turned to leave again.  As he disappeared into the crowd, Julian slowly opened his hand half expecting that the man had actually slipped him a stack of one dollar chips so was stunned to see he was holding thousands of dollars worth of shiny plastic.  Julian’s heart raced as he stuffed the coins into the pocket of his vest.  

He flipped off the small light that indicated his table was closed for business, radioed his boss that he was taking a break and headed toward back of The Nehling.  Along a wall filled with slot machines, Julian slipped out of a door marked ‘Employees Only’ as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.  

The door lead to an alley in perpetual shadow from the towering hotels on either side. As he stood taking a drag of his cigarette, Julian’s mind raced as he considered his stroke of luck, his free hand fiddling with the betting chips in his pocket.  Julian took another long drag of his cigarette as he heard the door open behind him.  He turned expecting to see one of the cocktail waitresses or a fellow card dealer coming out for break but dropped his cigarette at what he saw.

The white haired man was standing in front of the now-closed door flanked on either side by two tall, very buff looking Asian gentlemen wearing all black.  

“What do you want?”  Julian asked trying to be nonchalant.

“Oh,  I don’t know.  How about the quarter-million you stole from me in there,” the white-haired man growled as he and his bodyguards took a step toward Julian.

Julian stood his ground and spat back “I didn’t steal anything, You...”

“So what, I’m supposed to just believe I was just that unlucky and you weren’t skimming off the top?”

The three took another step forward and this time Julian took a matching step back.

“Look buddy...”

Without warning, one of the guards swooped behind Julian, grabbing his arms and holding them behind his back and despite his struggles, Julian was unable to break free.  Julian shouted for help but he knew how futile that was; the alley was empty, the nearby Strip - though crowded - was too loud for anyone to hear him, and the walls of the buildings they were between were metal and stone for at least ten stories up.

“You don’t think I know a con when I see one, son? I invented the game.”  

The white-haired man took a step closer so that he was toe to toe with Julian and though Julian was a bit taller an ostensibly more tone than the man, he was cowering like a leaf.

“Please, I didn’t... I couldn’t... the computer... I couldn’t cheat even if.... Oomph!”

Julian wasn’t allowed to finish as one of the man’s thick fists plowed into his solar plexus.

“Oooh!”  Julian gasped as the man’s fist found his stomach.

Julian was growing increasingly hysterical as the man’s fat fists sank over and over into his stomach.  Beneath his dress shirt, Julian’s abdominal muscles were contracting wildly, showing off their perfect corrugation in a vain attempt to dull the blows.  Julian’s model physique was gym-toned for looks, not necessarily performance, and he was entirely unprepared for the pain.

“Please, I can’t breath!”

Julian’s chest felt like it was on fire.

“Gimme’ back my money!”

“I can’t! I swear to God, it’s all the computer.  You can watch the surveillance... Yeeeeeeeeoooooow!”

The man’s fist sailed forward, missing its intended target of Julian’s abs and landing slightly lower, sinking into the bulge at the front of his slacks.

The two guards and the man burst out laughing at Julian’s comical high pitched yell.  It was markedly different than the deep, manly bellows that had followed each blow to his torso.

“Yeeeeoooo! Ooooh!”

The man’s fists found Julian’s crotch several more times, this time on purpose, landing with deadly accuracy and fury. Julian was so awashed in pain that despite being just feet from one of the world’s noisiest streets all he could hear was the sickening thud of the man’s fist colliding with his crotch. His tender nuts were his entire world and it was all his brain could comprehend.  He wasn’t even consciously aware of the girlish shrieks he was emitting or the roaring laughter they were eliciting from his captors.

“Looks like he likes to dance!”

One of the guards laughed as he looked as Julian’s frantically shuffling feet.  

The white haired man didn’t stop pummelling Julian’s crotch as he nodded in agreement.  

“These feel like some tough customers, let’s see what we’re working with,”

The man stopped his punching long enough to grasp the waistline of Julian’s pants and wrench them to the ground.  Julian’s cock had shriveled to a two inch completely soft nub resting on top of his oblong nuts.  They weren’t exceptionally large, though they were starting to swell slightly, and were turning a rosy shade of red under the thin coating of short blonde hair. The white-haired man grasped Julian’s balls - one in each hand - and before Julian even realized what was happening he proceeded to squeeze.... hard.

“Oooooh!”  

One of the guards holding Julian winced sincerely at Julian’s high pitched shriek as the man’s thumbs worked to meet his palms, Julian’s plump balls the only thing stopping him from being successful.  Julian’s screaming became a meek drone as the man’s thumbs dug deeper and deeper.

His balls felt so compressed Julian couldn’t believe they hadn’t simply burst, but the man kept right on squeezing creating a thumb-sized crater on each testicle.

“Shut him up!”

One of the guards reached around Julian, roughly ripped off his tie and proceeded to shove it into Julian’s gaping mouth and while it effectively muffled his screaming it did nothing to stop Julian from trying.

“Mmmph! Mmmmphmmm!”

The man laughed gruffly as he proceeded to tighten his grip so hard his hand was quaking and his own thumbs were now as beet red as Julian’s nuts.

This is it, Julian thought.  This guy was going to end his manhood right in the alley...

Julian’s own thoughts were filling him with such terror that for a brief moment they actually surpassed in priority of actual pain.  The pounding desert heat was causing the frightened young man to drip with sweat, causing his thin shirt to cling to his chest, leaving virtually nothing to the imagination and Julian’s heaving was only making his chiseled abs stand out even more.

Julian felt himself starting to blackout from pain right as he felt the white-haired man’s grip on his manhood suddenly let up. Julian attempted to gasp through his tie-stuffed mouth but the reprieve was short lived as the man went straight to work pounding alternating fists into Julian’s rippled stomach.

“Oommmph! Mmmmph!”

Julian sprayed the man with piss as he proceeded to use the card dealer’s abs like a punching bag.

“The fuck! This is new Collezioni!”  the man roared as he, to Julian’s horror, unleashed a volley of punches to Julian’s torso that made all blows previous seem like a weak first audition.

THUD

THUD

The man’s fist was colliding so hard with Julian’s pec that he was afraid it was was going to stop his heart, but the man didn’t stop.  

THUD THUD THUD

Julian faded in and out of consciousness and had lost all lack of time, though it had easily been at least a half hour since the man had started his brutal assault on him.  Welts and bruises marred Julian’s body from his perfectly sculpted pectorals down his six pack abs and of course his swollen nuts.  Julian was now so far gone he didn’t even consciously realize that the man was alternating blows to his torso with devastating punches to his defenseless crotch.  Julian’s entire sexual package was compressed to a half an inch thick meaty patty, sandwiched between the man’s rock hard fist and his own body at least a dozen times, causing Julian’s nuts to swell to almost twice their size and turn a hideous shade of purple.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT

Each impact on Julian’s swollen, squishy nutsack was met with an almost comically wet splat as the brutal bareknuckle assault continued unabated.

“Hey, I have an idea for this one...”

The man abruptly stopped punching Julian -- one fist implanted into Julian’s stomach and the other locked mid-uppercut between his legs.  And that’s when Julian passed out....

...

Julian covered his now blacked eye and slowly rose to his feet, somewhat to the white haired man’s surprise.  Here, removed from the larger-than-life scale of the Strip, Julian’s size difference over the man was most striking.  Julian was easily a foot taller than the white haired man and in unquestionably better shape, though it had been made obvious from their earlier run-in that the man’s Armani clad, beefy frame was more powerful and agile than it would at first appear.

“So, you’re awake.  Why the hurry,”  

The man chuckled and balled up his fist, Julian tensed up in anticipation and was happily surprised the man only playfully knocked his fist into Julian’s chest.  Beyond the man, Julian could see the common area of the suite and was struck by its opulence.  On on wall of the suite was a bar that stretched the length of the suite and was back-dropped by floor-to-ceiling windows and a stunning view of Las Vegas.  Pop music played over the sound system and Julian was shocked to see the song's young, famous singer milling about the crowd of about a dozen sharply dressed businessmen all of whom appeared to be in their late twenties to early forties.  Mixed within the crowd were several gruffer looking gentleman in black suits standing around in sunglasses and Julian immediately recognized two of them from the alley, standing like statues near the bar.

The sunken living room seemed oddly devoid of furniture, though indents on the carpet made it clear that whatever couches and tables had been there had only been recently moved, though there were a few end tables and floor lamps left presumably in their original positions. Across the suite was another bedroom door identical to the one Julian was standing in, only it was closed.  A short hall, perhaps leading to a kitchen, was also visible and beyond the living room was the suite’s foyer and -- Julian made sure to note -- the exit.

Feeling emboldened by the otherwise normalcy of the scene, Julian straightened himself out and took a step forward.

“I’ll be leaving now,”

Julian tried to exude confidence despite his quivering hands.

“Oh, no, no, no. You’re the entertainment!”  the white haired man shouted raising his hands.

The music was silenced and there was an audible whoosh as all of the milling business men turned at once toward Julian.  Suddenly, Julian’s confidence in the situation’s normalcy was erased.  Two of the businessmen, and two of the guards, had already taken up position in the foyer and the ones at the bar had all taken a step forward, creating a wall of suddenly hostile looking businessmen, some still holding cocktail glasses.

“What do you say, gentlemen!  Shall we begin?”  

The watching men’s applause and rhythmic foot stomping became riotous and the house lights dimmed somewhat, letting the lights of the Vegas strip fill the room.  Julian could not believe what was happening as the wall of businessmen closed around him.

SLAM!

Door to the bedroom he had awoken in was slammed shut as he backed into it in confusion and terror.

“What’s... Ooooh!”  

Julian yelped and fell to his knees as the white haired man’s fist collided with his exposed crotch, all but annihilating his still swollen nuts.

As he cradled his manhood, Julian could see the other bedroom door open and a rush of guards enter.

“No! No! Let me go!”  a terrified-looking red headed man wearing a waiter’s uniform and who looked to be no older than Julian was literally dragged out of the room.

There was a crash of glass as an ostentatious, heavy floor lamp the young man was clinging to in a desperate attempt to avoid being dragged by the guards finally gave way.  The watching crowd chuckled coldly as the young man tumbled into the sunken living room and was pinned to the ground by the heavy marble lamp.

Julian had barely recovered from the latest blow to his gonads when he felt a foot sail between his legs from behind and compress his own nursing hands further into his battered sack.

“Ooooh!”

Julian stumbled forward into the living room and before he could react the area was completely enclosed by the crowd, the guards and the few tables and lamps that hadn’t already been moved.  

“Mmmph... help me,”  

The young waiter had managed to push the heavy lamp off of him and slowly rose to his feet, looking out the window, around the room, and then -- with panic -- at Julian.

“No! No! No! No! Not again...”  

The terrified redhead made a break for a spot of the crowd that seemed to be a bit thinner but was quickly stopped by a cocktail glass to the face.

“Nice one, Justin!”  one of the watching men commented as a young pop star in the audience slammed his glass into the escaping man's face.

A hideous gash opened across the redhead's forehead and gin dripped from his stunned face.  That’s when Julian noticed that the man’s uniform was horribly tattered and dirty.  The shirt had been ripped in multiple places, the entire right sleeve gone, and one pant leg was missing below the knee.  There were blood stains - some of them looking like bite marks -- and the man’s face was bruised and swollen.  

“Well, gentleman,”

The white haired man called out to the crowd which was still hooting and cheering.

“Will our overly-rude waiter survive another round?”

The crowd erupted, some cheering, some jeering, but all of them fixated on the red head and Julian.  Julian was too stunned to make sense of what was happening...

“Fight! Come on! Fight him!”

The watching crowd was near hysterics as they circled the two young men even tighter, forcing them into the middle of the living room...

to be continued.