Number 5

New story! I started writing this years and years ago, and forgot about it until this year, when I finished it up.

"Fourth young man dead in woods." I must've read that article a dozen times. Another guy was found naked and hanging from a tree a couple of miles outside town in a secluded wood lot. He was about 21, good-looking according to reports, hands bound behind his back with rope, probably sexually assaulted first. Just like the guy last month, and the one before that in the next county over, and the first one. The sheriff was talking as if he had a serial killer on his hands. The first guy's car was left at a rest area out on the highway. This last guy was probably picked up hitchhiking. Everyone was getting a little scared and all the authorities urged people to keep an eye out for strangers.

Like I said, though, I memorized the article, watched all the TV coverage. And it haunted my dreams at night. I had just turned 22 and had been frequenting the rest stops or hitchhiked for tricks for a couple of years now. It could have been me the killer picked up. I stopped going to rest areas for a while. Too many police anyway.

But I kept having these hot dreams and I'd wake up with my heart pumping with fear and my dick rock hard. In my dreams, it WAS me — me the killer picked up, raped, and strung up.

After about a week of this, I knew that anything I obsessed about that much, maybe I wanted it. What the fuck — my job wasn't that good and my friends had all gone to college or moved away. So I went back to cruising rest stops. Since it had been a couple of weeks, the attention was off the killer in the press and the sheriff's office. The rest stop was quiet still. The first couple of days, nothing. The third day, I could've had a blow job in the men's room by this older guy I'd seen before there, but I turned him down.

I skipped the weekend, figuring there'd be too many tourists. I called in sick on Monday and headed back toward the highway again. I parked at the far end of the rest area 40 miles south and waited. After a half hour of flipping the radio dial, just when I was thinking I would have to leave to avoid looking like a vagrant, a van drove in and parked a few spots away from me. The driver gave me a look. A good look. He got out and went to the men's room. I waited a minute and then followed.

The run-down room was empty except for him. He was bigger than me, a little older, in boots, jeans, and a T-shirt. He stood at one of the urinals. I stood at the other one and unzipped. He stepped back and showed himself, hard. I looked and started stroking my cock.

"You wanna go?" he said. I was horny enough to do him right here but instead he stuffed his dick back in his jeans and walked out. I did the same and followed him to the van. He had the side door open. The van was carpeted and had no windows except for in front.

"A little hot for a tank top, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure is," I replied and I stripped it off nice and slow, giving the guy a show. When I was done, I stood there and let his eyes run over my smooth hard chest and muscular arms. He didn't smile, but he looked satisfied.

"You ever been tied up before?"

I swallowed and said yes. He reached into the van and pulled out a short length of rope. He walked behind me, took one wrist, and then the other. Quickly and efficiently he had my hands tied securely behind my back. He came around to face me, almost expressionless, and a chill struck my heart about the same time my cock hit maximum hardness. He nodded toward the inside of the van. I knelt on the floor and scootched in. He closed the door and then went to the driver's side. Soon we were on the highway, and I was thinking with fear and anticipation "I wonder...."

He turned down smaller and smaller roads and finally stopped on the edge of a dirt road. He got out first, then opened the side door and grabbed a cloth bag. He got me out of the van and marched me down a short path into the woods. We stopped; he dropped the bag and pushed me to my knees. He unzipped and pulled out his fat cock. In a moment he had it stuffed into my mouth and I sucked him fully hard. After a few minutes, he pulled out and had me stand up. He bent down and untied my shoes, then told me to step out of them. After that, he unbuckled my belt, undid my pants, and pushed them down to my ankles. I was naked, hands tied behind my back, and his eyes had a wild gleam. He had another rope in his hands.

"I'm going to be number 5, ain't I?"

"What makes you say that, boy?" he said in a low, even voice. "Just because you're here naked and tied up like the other ones? Just because you're hard and young like the other ones?" He walked around me as if inspecting my trembling body. "You know, pickings have been pretty slim lately. Seems like the word got out." He stopped at my back side and I could feel a hand start feeling up my ass. "Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. You took a big gamble here, didn't you boy?" All the while, he worked first one then two fingers around and into my hole.

He moved me over to a tree stump and bent me across it. He was quiet. I stayed quiet. Soon I heard him spit onto my hole and then he entered me, rough and hard, pain ripping into me and causing me to scream. He held me down while he plowed my ass, shoving my chest into the rough surface of the tree stump. This went on for a while. He was breathing heavy, and I was getting a little hard myself as I got used to his fucking.

He pulled out without cumming and walked away. I didn't move. He came back and had me stand up. This time he had the bigger rope dangling so I could see the noose tied in one end.

"Oh, shit," I said reflexively.

He dropped the noose around my neck and tightened it. Then he nodded toward the tree stump, and half-helped, half-forced me to stand on it. I stood there nervously trembling and watched him throw the rope over the tree branch above me. Then he said "Don't go anywhere," while he went to tie the far end around a nearby tree trunk.

He came back and looked at me. "Time for the real show," he said. "Time to watch your hard young naked body rope dance for me." He pulled out his cock. "Too bad you won't be able to watch. But," he said as he reached up and stroked my cock into hardness, "you'll have a good time too."

"Please don't kill me."

"You had a choice back there at the rest stop. I almost think you wanted this. Didn't you?"

I didn't answer. I only thought of the next newspaper story starring me.

He walked back to the other end of the rope. "Sweet dreams," he said, just before he pulled hard on the rope. It caused me to lose my balance and fall off the tree stump. I fell wildly and swung away from the stump, spinning and twisting in the air just far enough away that my feet couldn't find the stump again. The killer stood out of reach of my kicking legs, grinning and stroking his cock. The pain from the noose digging deep into my neck filled my head, along with the unrequited need my lungs had for air. The rope swung me around back and forth, and sometimes I could see the killer stroking his cock, getting off on my suffering.

As I swung and strangled, I realized it was getting dark. My last vision was a fuzzy view of the woods with the killer, or maybe a few killers, and some chaotic noise.... I panicked more but it was no use. I felt as if I was falling, slipping beneath the surface of a deep dark ocean....

Then I was jerking, shivering ...light slowly came back to my eyes. I heard noises that only slowly became words. "Easy there, easy," a man said just above me. I opened my eyes and everything was hazy, but I could make out a number of figures in dark clothing in the woods. Then I realized how much my neck hurt. I got up on an elbow to see as best I could. A half-dozen state police and sheriff's deputies, two of them were with the killer who was now handcuffed and about to be put in a cruiser.

Me, I was still naked with my hands tied behind me. I slumped back down. "I'm Trooper Jones. You almost became Number Five there," the officer next to me said. I swallowed a couple of times, painfully, before I said "I guess" — very hoarse and quiet. Talking hurt. Breathing was pretty sweet, though.

"You might've been kicking a little when we got here. The guy fought us, so it took a minute before we could get you down," Jones explained as he finally untied my wrists. "We're gonna have you checked out at Memorial, and then get a statement from you. Um, you have any clothes here?"

"Um," I said sheepishly, looking down at my nakedness. "Over by the van, I think." Jones sent someone to get my jeans and shoes. I realized the reason I had dirt and leaves stuck to my legs and cock. Either just before or just after I blacked out, my cock had shot off, with some of my jizz dripping down my leg. I looked up at Jones who gave me a bit of a smirk — he saw it too. I could do nothing but grin.

So I ended up helping the cops catch a serial killer, like I was some sort of decoy. I'm lucky I managed to avoid telling them I was more than a willing participant. I guess if I'm going to cruise rest stops again, I'm going to have to move to another state, because the cops know me now. That's ok for now, because these days I get a lot of mileage from lying in bed and jacking off, thinking about my almost-last day hanging in the woods.