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Chapter One
Theshellingwasinthe distance, far from where I was, so I kept working on the Humvee. I watched a line of oil run from the hole in the pan, then it hit.
The sound was everywhere like the world had been nuked, but it was a simple bomb, made by the rebels that used US troops for target practice. They saw the stalled convoy, lined up in the middle of the dusty road, the first two trucks having hit rocks and busting holes in the undercarriages, so they knew they had easy victims.
There was a blinding light, then almost complete darkness and screams…
That was the worst, the sound of bloody screams, coming from somewhere in that darkness. Some of them were human, some the screeching of metal twisting, and still others sounded like demons, coming for my soul.
Some of the darkness lifted, but through the smoke, I saw things that made me wish for the darkness again. I saw blood and body parts. Half faces where the other half had been blown away.
A piece of shrapnel hit my leg, but I didn’t feel it until one of my buddies pointed it out as they ran around the area, ducking behind the other vehicle, to find survivors from the front of the convoy.
There were none.
Farther back in the convoy, men and women were shouting, all calling out for others they knew in the other trucks. Thick smoke was blowing with the sand in a cloud, making it hard to breathe.
My buddy got me behind one truck and called over a medic to quickly patch my leg, the wound gushing blood. That was probably why I got dizzy, but I didn’t know that then.
It played out like it was in slow motion, and felt as if it lasted days, but in reality, it was two hours of sitting there, waiting for support to come in and collect all of us. All I could do when they were getting me away from it was watch them check the bodies for signs of life.
I woke with sweat pouring down my face, and the pillow and sheets were drenched too. Harvey lay sleeping peacefully; thanks to theXanaxandAmbienhe took in the evenings to relax.
The sheet stuck to my sweaty skin when I tried to ease it off me, and when I was finally free of it, I crept over the warm tile to the bathroom, where I shut the door and leaned against it, catching my breath.
I hated the dreams, but they wouldn’t stop coming. If I had to speak to one more therapist, I’d scream. If I could find someone that had lived through it, that understood, it might help, but they sat there with their casual cardigans and little recorders, and I could barely get out what I felt.
Harvey was no help. I figured maybe, just maybe, he was making things worse. No, I had to stop lying, at least to myself. He was a big roadblock for me and my headspace. Every time I thought the day was going well, he’d come home and trash it. There was nothing I could do right, and he’d lost all affection for me he’d ever had. Not that I was some cuddler, clinging to him, but a kiss now and then might be nice, more than a peck on the cheek or forehead.
I pushed off the door and padded to the mirror. The place was grand, nice as anything I could have imagined, having grown up in a small house in a smaller town. The mirror was nine feet across, and under it lay three vessel sinks, one larger in the middle, the two on either side half the size.
There were white marble counters, and the faucets brushed brass. Harvey loved his brushed brass.
The rest of the bathroom was the same, cold and beautiful. Dark fixtures on white marble, a shower with three huge heads of the same brushed brass, a tub, one that could fit three grown men inside of it, also white, perfect. And who cleaned everything? Me. No maid was hired, like all the other residents of the building. No, he didn’t need to hire a maid when he had one for free.
My name is Elijah James. My mother, the one that ran out on me when I was five, leaving me with her mother, supposedly named me after the father I’ve never met. James, well, that was her last name, my grandmother’s last name too, so all I had was a first name to hint at my paternity.
In the mirror, I saw a man, Eli, as most called me, the same Eli I’d seen every day. Only the man in the mirror was pale, eyes with dark circles under them. I barely recognized myself.
Around my neck was the chain that held my dog tags, proclaiming my name, blood type, B+, and other information needed if someone was to find my dead body on the field of battle. I don’t know why I still wore them, three years after returning home, but I couldn’t bring myself to take them off and put them away as so many of my buddies had.
They lay on my chest, and I saw how thin I was getting. Back in the army, I was cut and ripped like a gym rat on steroids, but since moving in with Harvey, the weight was shedding just like my self-esteem.
I’m not a fucking crybaby. I know I got myself into the relationship. I was lonely and fucked up from the war, but I had suspected all along that Harvey wanted a trophy boy to show off to his rich friends. That was me, the trophy, hot, or I had been.
My dark eyes were a few shades deeper brown than my hair, which I kept shaved on the sides and long on top, usually in a short ponytail. I shaved the sides because I still felt like I was in battle, every day fighting the same fights. The long hair on top was my streak of rebellion. I had a history of that.
So why, being rebellious, had I ended up being completely controlled by some dumpy fucker who had money and not much in the way of looks or personality? It was the kink, maybe. He’d been kinky, and I liked kink. Nothing else in my life had ever taken me out of my head like getting dirty with a man. Pain, humiliation, all of it. Drugs hadn’t done it. Booze only made me sick. No, it was all kink.
Not that we did that anymore. What Harvey did was reel me into being with him with promises of dirty play for the rest of our lives. No more searching the dark backrooms of kink bars for a playmate for the night. No, he was there, willing to take me to the places I wanted to go.
Until he gained control. That’s when everything stopped. Where I wanted someone to at least attempt to control me in bed, and sure, out of bed too, he just wanted someone to do his dishes, make his meals, and go with him to events, dressed in a tux or two grand worth of suit. No friends of my own, no job, nothing to occupy my time except to pick up his clothes from the cleaners and grocery shop with the credit card that had a tiny limit.
A limit he closely monitored.
I’d traveled around after I came home from Afghanistan. My best buddy, Burke, and I got on our beloved bikes and rode through the country. I spent my savings on that, and on Grandma, before she passed a year later. I had nothing left, no money of my own. My bike, that’s it, and that is what I planned to use to leave if I ever got the guts.
As I stared into my eyes that morning, the complete picture I saw in the mirror was pitiful. Thin and pale, even my ink looked like it was fading. I used to love getting ink, sitting in that chair, having someone put marks on me. It felt like part of my cherished kink.
