🪑 Good Posture

Yasha is a contortionist boy in the city of Saint-Moscowburg. He's currently in high school, taking a history class. The teacher tells him to take a good posture and keep his knees under the desk, she points at his friend Andrzej who's sitting next to him.

"Look at Andrzej, he's doing it right!" She says.

"Me too," Yasha replies.

The teacher sighs and looks at him with disappointment on her face. "I'm sorry to say, but you are not going to get a very deep backbend like this."

"Uh, but I like twists better anyway," Yasha pouts.

She smiles and continues. "Yasha! In Ancient Greece, they would frown at this answer. Remember our museum trip, we've seen many antique sculptures of the flexible Greek boys, but it seems today's boys can't even take a good posture at school!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Yasha says and tries to bend that unruly knee all the way under his desk, cringing as his hip joint would near dislocate and he has to rotate his hipbone even more to keep himself in one piece.

"Much better! Now Jason, the ancient hero, might even consider taking you on his ship crew," she smiles.

"He was fond of bendy boys?" Yasha asks.

"No, he was one himself. But also yes, he liked other bendy boys very much and he gathered a whole ship crew of them."

Andrzej raises his hand. "A spaceship, ma'am?"

"No, a sea ship." She shakes her head.

"Oh! A submersible?"

"No, a big boat made of wood. They didn't have submersibles and spaceships yet," the teacher smiles.

"Oh, they must have had a bunch of mysterious ancient technologies?" Andrzej goes on.

"It's not known for certain," the teacher shrugs. "They might have had some things that weren't preserved to our days. Explorers still keep discovering buried artifacts, some of them are yet to be explained. Like the power of the legendary Golden One-Piece."

Yasha rolls his eyes a little, assuming that nowadays any mystery would be explained with modern technology. He tries to remember the other times the teacher brought ancient civilizations into the subject.

"Remember the time when we learned about the Etruscans? They had really advanced technology, like the use of iron golems for advanced stretching," he says.

"Yes, but not much is known about them," the teacher responds.

"I know! That's why it's so cool! You can make up anything you like, for example, I could say that the Etruscans had no bones and their automatons could bend them like dough and twist them into real human pretzels," Yasha jokes, to which the class laughs.

"YASHA!" The teacher knocks her knuckles on her desk. "This is a school, we do not make things up here."

"What? I'm just sharing an idea."

"For future lessons, you must pay attention and not disturb the class with your jokes and drolleries."

"Yes, ma'am."

The lesson continues like that, with Yasha and his friends running little gags here and there to pass the time.

Later, when Yasha is dismissed from class, he sees his friend Andrzej waiting for him in the parking lot.

"Ah, there you are. Listen, we're going to have practice in the basement of that Jelly Fish Pub tonight, you know where it is?"

"Yeah," Yasha says, "why there?"

"They say it's just a good spot. Been wanting to check if it's useful or not."

"Checking for traps and security is a good idea," Yasha jokes.

"Yeah, yeah..." Andrzej rolls his eyes. "Now let's go, we don't want to be late again. We still need to change into one-piece swimwear. The pub has a dress code."

"Oh, yes. Because Jelly Fish!" Yasha nods. "Can I dress up as a sponge, though?"

"No, but get prepped to bend like one."

The rest of the day goes by uneventfully. Before Yasha knows it, it's stage time and his head is bent all the way over backwards and shoved between his own high cut legs, along with his shoulders and a good portion of the upper torso. He smiles at the audience that is admiring how his leotard-clad body is bent.

"Is he going to be alright?" Yasha hears someone's semi-worried voice that immediately adds. "He's amazing! I love his legs..."

"Oh come on! I can't see anything! Let me take a look from the side!" Yasha hears a girl complain.

"Yeah, no way. We've all paid the price to get in here, you shouldn't be petty!" Another girl replies.

"Yeah, easy for you to say, you've got yourself the best angle! Hey, can this platform turn faster?" She turns to the owner.

The owner presses a button and the platform under Yasha starts turning around a little more noticeably.

The highlights from the basement lamps start moving over Yasha's oiled skin as if tongues of light licking his bare skin and shiny white leotard.

Yasha's well-trained body holds the extreme posture almost like a statue, while people are admiring his angelic face and physique.

"Come on guys, you're really going to let the price stop you?" Andrzej stands by the platform, grinning at the audience. He's wearing a high cut black leotard and a Venetian carnival mask with colorful feathers. "It's not some bottle of wine! This is art, a masterpiece! He's been trained since the age of seven without taking a single break! The most unbreakable boy in all Siberia! A real angel of flexibility that came down to Earth."

"He's cute but he's really going to hurt himself one day..." Some young man giggles.

"Is he, now?" Andrzej raises a brow. "Let me prove to you all that he is truly worth this price! I just need a couple of really strong guys from the audience!"

Yasha panics a little, as the audience laughs and applauds.

"He's really not going to be hurt, trust me. All you need to do is hold him still while I twist his legs right off! Ha ha ha!"

"Oh god no..." Yasha squeaks and wakes up sweating and panting on his bed. "Why did he do that..." He groans as he looks around the dark room. "I'm never going to stretch with this nightmare still fresh in my mind... Well, I guess I should stretch after all."

Yasha jumps up and runs into the bathroom, quickly relieving his stomach of its contents. He flushes the toilet and immediately looks into the mirror.

"Yasha... Be... Real..." Yasha mumbles to himself in the mirror. "You've trained long and hard. Now is the time to show off. Now go out there and take what's yours..."

He takes a deep breath and heads back out into the bedroom, where he does his regular 15-minute warm up in underwear, then looks to the dresser and starts getting changed into a high cut white leotard as he thinks about what's going to happen tonight.

"Just have to get through this night and then everything will be so much easier..."

After getting dressed and rubbing some oil into his skin, he grabs his short skirt and black hoodie from the floor.

"Always check for traps and security..." Yasha mumbles to himself, then heads for the door.