“We just made love. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I did. I was massaging you, and then—”
“Enough!” I raked my fingers through my hair. “Leave my room. Leave this house.”
“I-I can’t leave tonight.”
“First thing in the goddamned morning, then. I don’t want to see your face here again.”
“But…what will I tell Marj?”
Thank God my sister was in the city tonight. “I’ll deal with Marj. You just get your ass out of this house in the morning.”
Her beautiful lips trembled, and her hair fell around her shoulders in unruly waves.
She turned and walked out of my room.
Out of my life.
Taking my only chance of happiness with her.
* * *
Hot breath singed the back of the boy’s neck. He had learned to separate his mind from his body. It was the only way to survive. But still, the breath. Always the breath, no matter how far away he was into his mind.
He had stopped fighting back. He had stopped begging them to leave him alone. It was useless. They seemed to like it when he resisted.
He was used to the pain. Tonight was bad though. The one with the tattoo went first, and he was the biggest.
The boy winced and cried out when Tattoo breached him. He hated himself for screaming. Each time he promised himself he wouldn’t scream, and then he did. Next time, he said to himself. Next time I won’t scream.
Tattoo grunted as he forced his way into the boy’s body. As much as the boy hated being penetrated, it was better than having it stuffed inside his mouth. He threw up either way, but at least with penetration he could hold off until they left. Then he would heave and empty his stomach.
“Yeah, give it to him good,” Low Voice said.
The three men always wore black ski masks, so the boy had no idea what they looked like. Just as well. He didn’t want to see their faces. This way, not knowing what they looked like, he could think of them as inhuman. Pure evil.
“You like that, don’t you, boy?” Tattoo said, pumping into him. “You like being fucked in the ass.”
The boy said nothing. The first couple of times he had screamed, “No. I don’t! Stop this! I hate this!” And he’d paid for it with a beating as well as a fucking.
“Come on, boy. Tell me you like it.”
Still, he remained silent except for a few wails and sniffs.
Until a cool metal blade touched his neck.
“You say you like it,” Low Voice said. “Say you like his big hard cock in your ass, or I’ll slit your pretty little throat.”
* * *
I like it.
I’d said the words. Like a goddamned little pussy, I’d said the words to stay alive. Alive in the hell that had become my life.
Why? Why had I bothered to stay alive?
Cold desperation paralyzed me.
The boy. He was me.