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The question is: will he find me first?
Or die first?
“Four years,” John says as a blissfully welcome coolness fills the sudden pocket of air between us. He pulls away, giving me a grin that is meant to make me feel sick. “Four years we’ve been waiting.”
“Don’t you have something else in your life, John? You’re a pro baseball player,” I say, my voice croaking, the words coming out in halting syllables. He smells like sweat and expensive men’s aftershave with a hint of fabric softener thrown in. It’s too much. My stomach starts to tighten and release, the bile rising up my throat.
I’m going to puke. I can’t stop it.
He grabs my hair at the back of my head and wrenches my neck, twisting me almost too far, almost enough to snap my spinal cord.
Almost.
I gag and vomit on the floor by the door, but there’s not much there.
My stomach keeps heaving until I’m completely out of control, body limp and tense at the same time, my mind clawing its way out of my skull, trying to deny what’s really happening to me.
I’m a human being these monsters are about to turn into a toy.
The toy stops being fun when it’s dead.
Until then?
They’ll extract their amusement.
And I can’t stop them.
The thick black hood over my head comes as no surprise, but it has a strange scent like sweet, freshly-cut grass. The odor makes it hard for me to keep my eyes open, turning sour, like rotten fruit.
And then I’m gone.
Gone.
Drew
“Foster! Get your fucking ass up if you want out of here.” The words come to me in a dream. I can’t move. I’m cold, encased in ice, and my hands are bound. After Mark left, they gave me a pair of orange scrubs, flip-flops, a nasty sandwich, and then cuffed me.
Then my gut seizes as someone kicks me, hard, right above my cock.
All the air rushes into me, then out, like a vacuum cleaner hose is attached to my lips. I cough and gag, but know instinctively that I have to stand. I open my eyes. No Mark.
Where’s Mark?
Wait.
I look at the cop, whose arms are crossed over his chest, a clipboard in one hand, banging against the wall as he shows his impatience in a slightly kinder way than kicking me again.
Did he say “want out of here”?
“You’re free,” he spits out, jaw set, impatience an odor he should patent. The cell door opens and he stands there, looking at the ceiling like it’s the Sistine Chapel.
I have just enough wits not to ask anything, shuffling out of the room, taking a deep breath. Hallway air is still disgusting in a jail, but it’s ten times better than cell air.
We walk down the long hallway, where someone in a suit hands me a manila envelope without a single word. It’s a man with a bureaucrat’s glare. He looks like no one and everyone. The human being equivalent of a beige wall.
All the hair on my body stands up straight, the pores practically seizing.
I know his type.
