“Stop. Pick her up. Don’t be a lazy bastard, Greg,” Lance said. “We have to…” he looked at me “…tie up some things.”
***
The tying up was me.
I was stripped of my clothes except for my underwear and bra, and it wasn’t an easy task. I fought the bastard Greg with everything I had. Even with my hands tied, I managed a sweet-ass kick to his solar plexus, which left him gasping for air, then I spit in his face. He cuffed me across the head, and it hurt like hell, but it was worth it to watch my saliva hit him in the eye.
Lance stood by and watched, merely looking amused at my pointless struggle. Alexa vanished somewhere inside the run-down house.
Was this where Ream and Haven spent two years of their youth?
We had bypassed a filthy kitchen with dishes piled high in the sink and what looked like tomato sauce splattered all over the smoke-stained white walls. We’d gone down a set of wooden stairs and into a dark, dusty basement. Shudders tiptoed over my body as the ominous feeling grew like a drum quietly beating then thumping louder and louder. God, this had to be where Ream was taken every Friday and Saturday night. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the terror a young boy must have endured walking down here.
Greg opened a door then dumped me on the cement floor. I was about to scramble away when he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me across the rough surface. I frantically grabbed at his wrists, trying to relieve the pressure on my scalp, then pushed back with my feet.
“Stop. I can walk. You bastard. Stop.”
He let me go briefly and I looked around, my heart pounding faster and faster as I took in the canopy bed with the sheer white curtain pulled back. Then I noticed the chains attached to the bedposts and the stone wall with the array of contraptions. There was something that reminded me of a vaulting beam gymnasts used in the corner. It had a red pad on top and then padded cuffs attached to the foot of it.
Fear skipped across my body like pebbles being thrown at me. It was painful to breathe, my lungs gasping for air as I realized that this … this place was where Ream had come every Friday and Saturday night.
He’d said downstairs. In the basement.
Ream. No. No. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like as a fourteen your old boy coming down here. To have to … “Oh God.” I violently shuddered and then crawled over to the bin beside the bed and vomited.
“Fuck,” Greg muttered. “Stupid bitch.” He waited until my stomach stopped heaving and then hauled me up and threw me on the bed.
I tried to scramble off the other side, but he snagged my ankle, yanked me back, then put a cold metal clamp around it that was attached to a bedpost.
“No. Fuck no,” I screamed as I tugged and yanked on it to get free while Greg grabbed my wrists and untied them. As soon as they were free I pulled frantically on the manacles around my ankles. He grabbed a wrist and repeated the process until I was laying spread eagle on my back, heaving and writhing, chains clanking against the bedposts as I fought their hold.
“I’d save your strength. Your first client should be here within the hour, and he enjoys a good tussle.” Greg laughed and then I heard the door slam shut.
There was no point in screaming. But I did anyway. There was no point in trying to escape the manacles—but I did anyway. And I did until I was bleeding and my throat was so raw that when I screamed I had a coughing attack.
No one came.
And I lay shivering on the bed, dried blood on my wrists and ankles from fighting the manacles. I constantly listened for footsteps, for the door opening, and perpetual fear that I was soon going to be raped.
But the door never opened for hours.
Then it did.
***
“What did I tell you?”
He was mad again. I made him mad because I tried to get away.
I couldn’t help it. I hated him so much. It hurt so badly. The women never hurt me; they took care of me. It didn’t hurt. He hurt me.
I had to protect her.
“Please, Uncle Ben. I didn’t mean to.” I never had an Uncle. Don’t even know if I had any relatives. Ben insisted I call him that. He liked it.
He stared at me long and hard, his eyes glaring at me but lust filled. I wanted to run and vomit. My stomach cramped.
“Be a good boy then. Turn over and let me do this.”
I closed my eyes and took my mind to somewhere nice like the park where Haven and I went after school the other day. It was fun. I laughed, so did Haven.
I put my face in the pillow, my fingers clenching around the material.
Then I went far away.
I couldn’t see who was approaching the bed as the chains were too tight for me to sit up. My lips stuck together from the dryness, and it felt as if my eyelids had weights glued onto them. I’d been terrified to fall asleep, but my body fought me, the mental and physical exhaustion trying to make me slip into darkness.
When the girl came into view holding a water bottle, I just about begged. But I didn’t have to; she cracked the plastic lid and then held it between my lips and tipped the bottle.
The cool liquid easily slid down my throat, and I sucked it back so fast that the bottle started crackling as the air left it. She pulled it away and I yanked upward on the chains trying to get it back.
She merely waited until the bottle’s shape came back and then placed it to my lips again. I chugged it back until I sucked it dry. The girl pulled it away and then stared down at me. I stared back wondering if she was a prostitute. If she was, then she’d have a lot of business because she was stunning. Soft features, frail and subtle to match her eyes that were the oddest color—gray with a hint of pale green speckled within the depths. They were the same shape as Ream’s, drooping slightly but vivid and with so much expression. I recognized the torment like I had in Ream.