Prologue 2 #3
I think the agent must have been the real angel, because she let me use her cell phone to call the number we had found.
I mean, I could have just run off with it, since she was inside her little plastic office.
Unsurprisingly, when I called, no one picked up, but I left a message telling her grandmother that Zem was arriving on the bus and that someone needed to pick her up.
I used the last of my money to buy a bus ticket that would take me as far away from Milwaukee as possible. It wasn’t far, but it was a random direction, and I had hoped that Ricky would have a hard time finding me.
Freedom was a heady thing, not being told what to do, who to fuck, or how to spend the money I made the only way I knew how, but only two days later Ricky caught up to me in a run-down motel outside of Milwaukee.
I’d just finished sucking some guy off for twenty bucks. The guy had just left, and I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth because I hated the taste of spunk in my mouth.
I heard a crash, and the door slammed open. Ricky and Dreyven charged into the room. Ricky moved across the room and put his arm across my throat, slamming me up against the wall.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” Ricky growled. “Where’s the girl?”
Dreyven searched the room quickly and efficiently. It was just a bedroom and a bathroom – there was really nowhere she could be hiding.
“She ain’t here, Rick,” he yelled pointlessly, peeking his head out of the bathroom. His stringy black hair shining in the light.
“Where is she?” Ricky yelled, his arm crushing across my neck, making it hard to breathe.
“Gone,” I wheezed. “Gone somewhere you’ll never find her, never touch her again,” I jerked to the side, free from his grasp for the moment.
“We give you everything, Mason. A roof over your head, food to eat. And what do we ask in return? That you just be nice to some friends of mine.” I tried to duck past him, but his fingers wrapped around my wrist. I tried yanking on his arm, desperate to escape his grasp.
“But you made me look bad, Mason, so I’m going to have to make an example of you.” He spun me around, then shoved me toward the corner and Dreyven’s waiting arms. I managed to weave at the last second, so my stumble took me toward the bathroom instead of to Dreyven.
I frantically searched the room, trying to find some way, any way to escape.
Screaming wasn’t an option. This wasn’t the kind of place where someone yelling for help would really get it.
Ricky was standing near the door, and there was no way he was going to give me the chance to get past him.
The bathroom door didn’t lock. There were no other exits.
My fear made my heart race so fast I thought I was going to pass out. I hated the fact I was terrified of Ricky and Dreyven, of everything they had done to me or could again, but I refused to surrender.
“I’m never going back, Ricky,” I said, eyes darting around the room, more defiance in my tone than I felt. “Never!”
Surely there was something I could use? In desperation, I grabbed one of the wrapped glasses off the counter, throwing one, then another at them. Ricky and Dreyven dodged them far too easily. The glasses didn’t even break, just thumped on the dirty carpet. God, I sucked.
“Y’see? That’s where you’re wrong. You’re mine, Mason,” Dreyven growled as I ran out of ammo. “I own you. Your life, your soul, every hole in your body.” He leered at me and stepped forward. “You’re mine.”
In desperation I tried to rush by them, but Ricky wrapped his arms around me and dragged me in close to him.
The sour smell of his unwashed body and his greasy onion breath gagged me, but the gag turned to a gasp as his fingers tightened around my neck, slowly cutting off my air.
I clawed at his hands trying to get free.
I spared a moment as everything was going black to regret not having sharper nails.
Funny the things you thought of when you were dying…
When I woke, the pain was so bad, I thought I was going to vomit, and I felt a familiar bulk shoving its way inside my body.
I was face down on a putrid mattress, and I tried to ignore the nausea roiling through my body as Ricky’s beefy fingers ground into my hips, his thrusts forcing his considerable weight on top of me.
As my eyes opened, I spied Dreyven in a chair next to the bed, his hand stroking his obvious hard on through his pants, his squinty eyes eagerly watching as Ricky raped me.
The ever-present camera was on the dresser, and I could see the little red light that showed they were recording.
It certainly wasn’t the first time that either Dreyven or Ricky had raped me, but something inside me broke.
I wasn’t sure if it was the rage, humiliation, pain, or just the fact that I had been so close to freedom, that caused the first tears to squeeze past my screwed-shut eyelids, but now there was no stopping them.
I’d tried so hard to plan, to run, but I should have known there was no escaping Ricky and Dreyven.
All I could hope now was that I could somehow survive them.
Ricky pounded over and over into my body, not giving a fuck about the agony he was inflicting on the young man beneath him. He alternated between yanking on my hair to keep me still, or wrapping his hands around my throat, slowly choking me over and over.
The sound of my heartbeat grew louder and louder, blood pounded in my ears even as my vision grayed.
As things began to go black again, and I felt Ricky’s body thrust a final time, I groaned at the hated feeling of his seed pouring into my channel, staining my body and soul.
Because why waste a condom on something you were throwing out anyway?
I didn’t know how many more times he and Dreyven fucked me, then choked me until I passed out.
Each time I woke, dragging air into my starving lungs, my terror lost for a moment beneath the need to breathe.
At some point I must have passed out for more than just a moment, because when I became conscious, Dreyven was in the bathroom taking a piss.
I was on my back on the bed, my pants shoved down around my ankles.
Ricky’s back was to me as he fiddled with the camera, and I saw my moment.
I rolled off the bed, yanked my pants up and ran for the door.
I was caught up short by what felt like a blow to my leg, then I felt another blow hit my face.
I’d been so intent on trying to escape, I hadn’t realized that one of them had tied my ankle to the bed while I was unconscious.
The rope made me fall flat on my face and I didn’t see the kick Ricky had aimed at me that followed my fall.
The next blow I tried to dodge, and tried to run, but the knots around my ankle weren’t fucking around. I couldn’t get far.
I’d barely gotten to my feet when Ricky’s fist slammed into my stomach, driving the hard-earned air from my lungs, doubling me over. Then Dreyven came out of the bathroom and joined in the beating.
By the time they stopped, my body was just a mass of pain. My left eye was so swollen I couldn’t see out of it. l could feel blood oozing from my mouth and nose, probably from the kick to the face that left me coughing blood and spitting shattered teeth to the floor.
I was on all fours on the floor, still tied to the bed, trying to remember how to breathe. I saw Ricky sit down on the bed and then he picked up something off the table: It was a sketch I had drawn of Zem on one of those complimentary notepads hotels kept near the phone.
“You’re just like your mom, you know that, you piece of trash? She used to draw pictures, too.” He stood and tore the paper into pieces, sprinkling them on my head as they fell.
I tried to get to my feet before he moved.
“You and Navi both. You think you’re sooooo special because you can draw pictures?” he said, giving Dreyven a purposeful nod.
“No, Ricky, please…” I pleaded, knowing what he intended. He’d threatened to do it before when he had caught me drawing at the house on some old junk mail.
Dreyven grabbed my right arm and pulled it out straight beside me. Then the world turned to white hot agony and I screamed as Ricky’s foot came down on my elbow, and I heard something snap.
I did vomit then, though nothing came up but water and bile.
I didn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.
Zem and I hadn’t had any money for food.
I’d planned on using the twenty bucks from the trick to grab something to eat.
Ricky grabbed my hair and forced my head back as I moaned, his rage thick in his voice as puke dribbled down my chin onto his shirt.
“You, my little bitch, are going to earn back every cent that cunt would have made me, and more,” he growled.
He threw me onto the bed, which drew a ragged cry from me as white-hot pain shot through my arm.
Dreyven began methodically stripping me and tying the rest of my limbs to the bed.
I wasn’t sure what Ricky meant by his comments about making back the money until the first “customer” showed up at the hotel room.
“I really like the internet, y’know?” He spoke conversationally as Dreyven tightened the knots, right in front of the first guy who’d showed up. “All kinds of folks out there willing to pay for sex, and they’re not too picky about their partners.”
He was right. I don’t know how many men came to the room, but none of them seemed too concerned about the fact I was obviously broken, bleeding, and tied to the bed.
They just handed Ricky or Dreyven the cash and inflicted even more pain on me.
Eventually, after one particularly violent guy came through (no pun intended) I blessedly passed out.