Bare Yourself (Consumed)

Chapter One

Tegan

Momma kisses my cheek, then pulls back and puts both her hands on my face.

“You be a good boy, and we’ll get you something special later, okay?”

I smile and nod. “Okay, Momma.”

She always gets me special things when I’ve been good. Sometimes it’s candy, sometimes it’s ice cream, and sometimes it’s a brand-new toy.

Momma smiles back at me, but I know it’s not a real smile. Her eyes look sad and watery. She doesn’t smile very often anymore. Most of the time, she looks sad and tired. But I’ll do anything to make her smile, even if it is a fake one. She looks so pretty when she does.

She pats my cheek, then stands and walks out the door. It closes behind her, and I hear the click of the lock. As much as I love my momma’s smile, I hate the sound of the door locking even more.

I turn and face my room, ignoring the eyes staring at me. I spy my toy box, a few toys hanging out of the open lid. I want to rush over and play with my cars, but I can’t. There’s something I have to do first. Afterwards, I’ll be able to play. I look to my small desk and see my crayons and the coloring page I was working on for Momma before she came in my room. I have to wait until later to finish that, too. I hope she likes what I colored for her.

A shuffling beside me makes me turn. My bed is straight ahead of me. Momma says it’s bigger than a normal six-year-old would have. She said I was her big boy, and I needed a big bed. I hate my bed, but I would never tell her that. It would only make her sad.

“Come on, kid. Up on the bed,” the man growls beside me.

I look up at him. He reminds me of my grandpa. His hair looks like salt and pepper and his clothes look like he’s going to church. But he doesn’t have the wrinkly skin like my grandpa did. Another difference is my grandpa is nice and lets me help him build things, like the table beside our couch. This man is mean.

My bare feet squish in the thick brown carpet as I walk over to my bed. The man is right behind me. I love my momma, but I can’t wait for Daddy to get home from his business trip. When he’s home, I don’t have to do these things she wants me to do. She told me what I do has to be kept secret, even from Daddy, or something bad could happen.

The Spider-Man comforter feels cool against my hands and knees when I climb on top. I shiver when I lie down and stretch my legs out. I move my eyes away from the man when he gets on the bed beside me and starts unbuttoning his shirt. I don’t know why Momma makes me do this. I’ve told her I don’t like it. She says the men that come see me don’t have kids of their own, so she lets them borrow me for a little while.

I can tell she’s sad when she says this because there’s tears in her eyes.

I look over and see three more men sitting in chairs across the room. These men are younger than the man on the bed. One man has his shirt off, and he’s rubbing his hands over his stomach. Another man still has his shirt on, but is pulling down the zipper on his pants. The third man already has his pants pulled down and is touching himself. I turn my head away from them when they look at me.

A cool hand touches my bare stomach, and I jerk. I hate it when they touch me. I want to push his hand away, but mommy says I have to do this. I squeeze my eyes closed when the hand starts moving down my stomach. The doctors always say no one is supposed to touch me there, but Momma says it’s okay. I wish she wouldn’t let them.

I stare up at the ceiling and try to make shapes out of the small bumps as the man’s rough hand touches me. My stomach has that swirly feeling I get right before I throw up, and I try so hard to make it go away. If I throw up, it’ll make the man mad and my momma sad. I love my momma more than anything in the whole world, but right now, just like all the other times when the men come to see me, I hate her.

I try not to think about what the man is doing, so I think about other things. I think about when my daddy comes home and all the things we’ll do together. Like fishing and playing ball in the backyard. I think about things we did before as well. I remember going to the movies with my momma and daddy, then going out for ice cream afterwards. That was when Momma was happy and she smiled a lot.

What the man is doing hurts, and I try my best not to cry. I hate this part. I hate this man. And I hate my momma….

I spring awake, blinking and looking around at my surroundings, disoriented. A man and a woman walk in front of my truck with a little girl between them. Each has one of her hands, and they swing her in the air. A horn honks to my left, and someone yells out of their car window to someone walking inside a gas station.

I run my hands down my face tiredly, wiping the residual images of my dream away, then step out of my truck to grab a cup of coffee. I’m going to need it if I’m going to make the last leg of my trip home. These trips are killing me, and I don’t even know why I make them. It’s not like I care about the person I go see on these visits.

Three months ago, I got a call from the psychiatric facility my mom’s been in the last twenty years. They informed me my mom has terminal brain cancer and only has months to live. I don’t know why I feel compelled to see her, but I do. I’ve been making weekly trips for the past two months. It’s a solid eight-hour drive from my home in Atlanta to St. Louis. I could fly, but there’s no way I’ll ever step foot on an airplane. I keep my feet firmly planted on the ground.

I’ve spoken with my dad about my trips to visit Mom. He’s still very angry about what she did to me as a kid and her taking me away from him. I know it hurts him to see me visit her, but I also know he understands in his own way. I still hate the woman with every part of me. And I hate the need to see her. Every time I leave, I tell myself it’ll be the last time, but each week, I make the trip again.

The abuse she put me through went on until I was eight. Then one day, she up and packed our stuff and moved us away, without telling my dad. For the first six months after we were gone, my mom didn’t bring men to me, but then it started back up again. It was always the same. One man would touch me while other men watched. Most of the men were the same as before, even the one guy who was especially cruel. I begged her and told her that they hurt me, but she always said the same thing. I had to do this or something bad would happen.

We were gone for three years before my dad tracked us down. He knew what my mom was forcing me to do. I didn’t find out until later that one of the men who came to the house was arrested and told the police about me. He was part of a pedophile ring, and to get himself a lesser sentence, gave up names of other participating members and names of the boys he’d abused.

The day I saw my dad walk through that door of the house my mom and I were staying in, was the day my hatred for the woman who called herself my mom firmly took hold. I don’t know why I held on to the love I had for her for so long, but that was the day I let it all go, and it was replaced with loathing, even at such a young age. And it’s only festered since then.

After grabbing my coffee, I pull my truck over to the gas pumps and fill the tank. I’ve got two more hours to go before reaching the outskirts of Atlanta. I made it this far before my eyes wouldn’t stay open anymore and decided to pull in to the gas station for a short nap. When I get home, I’m sleeping for a week. Luckily, I work from home and make my own hours.

I climb in my truck and crank the radio up until I can feel the vibrations of my stereo system in my chest. Twenty-One Pilots blasts from the speakers as I cruise down the back roads to home, going five miles an hour over the speed limit. I always take the back roads when I take this trip. I like the peacefulness of having the road mostly to myself.

Thirty minutes later, I come around a curve and have to slam on the brakes.