The weather is perfect for a place that has no real sun, thought Jacob as he strolled by one of several gardens along the path. The thornless roses in the bushes tend to wilt easily upon touch. The baby blooms nearest to the soil were nearly obscured by barbed wires with ornamental thorns as if they had the strength to escape anywhere. The flowers lined up in gradations of red to black to red again and not a single flower disarrayed, save one. A white flower had managed to flourish among the carpet of darker petals. Nimble fingers plucked the rebellious bloom from the bush. After holding the delicate bloom, a pair of gentle hands brought the blossom to open lips and devoured the flower whole. Another pair of hands stroked his head, touched his lips, and felt the tender throat that swallowed the bloom. Then the hands firmly pulled a chain and the boy with the nimble fingers followed a much older man into a disappearing section of the garden.

Before Jacob knew what to think of what he saw, he felt a tugging at his own hands. Jacob's hands were feeling the chain move to Kirin's breathing. The back of his silk clothes lightly waved in the slight breeze. Jacob came to garden of rose paths to relax but it was not the fragrant flowers swaying with petals falling in the light rush of air that calmed him; it was watching the wind blow through Kirin so that the silk uncreased and amplified through the airy spaces between his body and his clothes.

Kirin turned to look at Jacob, who looked back at him as if he were in a daze. "Is master unsatisfied?"

"Unsatisfied?" Jacob repeated to himself. "Do you mean, 'Am I bored?'" Kirin nodded. Jacob turned around in a circle to get a quick look at this world. "I just got here. Being bored might take a while." Kirin gave him a simple smile and returned to looking at the roses.

"Master is very different," Kirin remarked, not turning his head to face Jacob.

"What makes you say that?"

"I am sorry to have offended master to have said that."

"I didn't say that."

"I am still sorry."

"Don't be." Jacob wanted to look at Kirin in the face and without thinking, he stretched his arm and pulled on the chain, yanking Kirin's body by the neck toward him. Kirin bit his lip hard to stifle his cough and Jacob gasped. Jacob dropped the chain and it clanged against the path.

"Oh my god, Kirin, I'm so sorry-- I just wanted to get your attention and-- I must have been out of my mind and--"

Kirin lightly raised his hand towards him. "Do not be sorry," he said with a raspy voice he was trying diligently to hide. "I am used to it." Jacob was scolding himself inside his head for mindlessly mimicking what some other man did with another boy. But still, thought Jacob, there’s something about this place that doesn’t make you want to think too hard.

"Is there anywhere that you want to go?" Jacob asked him, trying to make feeble amends.

"Only where master wants to go," Kirin answered.

"If I gave you a choice, where would you want to go?"

"Where master would want to go."

"Yes, but what if I wasn't here?"

"Then I would be where master would be."

"Stop that!"

"Yes, master."

Jacob took a deep breath and started again. "In this place, not caring where I want to go, if you had a choice, and you were alone, where would you go?"

"I would go where--"

"And I command you not to say, 'Where I would be…'"

Understanding the command, Kirin gestured with his head. Kirin did not answer right away. He looked at the roses, then at the sky, than to the ground, then to people who walked by, boys in hand with their masters. Not holding each other, but holding hands as the masters often do when they lead the boys as they walked in and out of the rose-lined paths. A long minute passed before Kirin said anything.

"Home."

The response was so soft and unexpected that Jacob did not hear it. "What was that?"

"I would go back to my room."

Jacob could have sworn he said something else. "Didn't you just say, 'Home?'"

stuffed Jacob's mouth from saying anything else. Suddenly, Jacob has grown tired of roses.

"I wonder if this world does have everything," Jacob thought aloud.

"No one has complained for lack of anything," answered Kirin.

Jacob watched as some of the young boys ran through the park towards the same direction, seeming to pull their masters with them. They were carrying balloons, eating sticky food, and laughing all along the way. Jacob half expected to hear whirring machines that…

"Then, is there an amusement park around here? You know, something with rides."

"Yes there is, master."

"Show me, then."

"Yes, master." Kirin bent and picked up the chain from the path and presented it to Jacob. His hand reached for it very slowly. When Jacob took the chain, he held it limply in his hand. He nodded to Kirin. Kirin began to lead the way.

As they walked through the long stretch of path in the field of roses, Jacob saw all the other young boys walking ahead of their masters. All of them had chains and collars and seemed to be responsive to their masters' orders. It doesn’t feel so unusual now, Jacob silently acknowledged to himself. Jacob had a firm grip on the chain and Kirin was not straining at all.

As Jacob walked towards the end of the path, he saw a portion of flowers that seemed to be wilting awfully fast. The bushes were shaking in jarring movements, while the other thickets were motionless. Noises other than the rustling of leaves were coming from that direction. At times it sounded like an inward hiss of breath, a near voiceless gasp, or a guttural resonance that could not stay welled up inside. Like a muffled animal caught in thorns.

Curiosity invited Jacob deeper into the bushes. After turning his head from walking past the spot, Jacob stopped his steps completely. Kirin did not stop milling down the path until the chain went completely taut, reminding him his tracks were tethered by a master whose attentions were attracted somewhere else.

Into the bushes where the petals were either wilted or fallen, he saw a tangle of limbs that stretched and flayed about in several directions. A mound of flesh writhed on the ground and two mouths moved about the skin; one devouring fingers, toes, and other probing parts, the other lapping up the pulpy traces of skin in the most discreet of places. Four eyes, two noses, twenty-two fingers, hair here and there and sometimes in unexpected places. The flesh was rocking and moving and shrieking and grunting with its two mouths. Patches of old skin and new skin intertwine, unstitched together and roaming freely. It was sweating by itself, touching itself, and paying attention to nothing but itself. A chain kept the body from leaving the garden. A very long chain.

Jacob slowly backed away to disturb nothing. An explosion of white petals spurted unexpectedly from a mouth before he could no longer see it.

As Jacob continued to step backwards, he bumped into Kirin who was standing directly behind him, watching Jacob peer over the bushes toward the noise. When the chain rattled, Jacob instantly knew Kirin was behind him. Kirin saw the tangled flesh over Jacob's shoulder too and respectfully backed away.

"Is master ready to go?"

"Go where?" asked Jacob, woken from distraction.

"I was leading master to the rides, as master requested." Kirin said all his words innocently enough. But the flesh in the garden reminded him of Kirin’s first words. And why Kirin was here.

Jacob grabbed him by the arm before he started to walk. "There isn't going to be anything weird there, is there?" Jacob did not know how else to put it.

Kirin looked innocently puzzled. "Weird, master?"

"Well…" uttered Jacob trying to see if he could put it another way.

"Master can return back to the room if master desires." Jacob was sure Kirin almost said that nervously. Jacob was startled for a moment when he saw Kirin covering himself with one hand, cupping one part of himself as though he were naked. Kirin looked a little flushed. Jacob remembered the pupils of his eyes being large and wanting.

"To the rides, Kirin. Take me to the rides." Kirin bowed his head and walked forward. His lips stopped quivering.