Chapter 22
Maya Angelou once said, “I would walk five-hundred miles, and I would walk five-hundred more,” just to find the man she loved.
It’s a sentiment I share. I would walk five-thousand miles, if that’s what Ezzy needed.
If it’s what it takes to get my boy back, I’ll walk it.
Run it. I’ll do fuckin’ cartwheels from here to Kingdome Cum, if that’s what Ezzy needs.
It feels like we’ve been locked in this psychopath’s spare room for months.
Of all the stupid, convoluted ways to keep me apart from my Ezzy, we went and got ourselves kidnapped by a rabid stalker.
As if sliding off the road and flipping our car wasn’t bad enough, some creepy motherfucker pulled us from the wreckage, only to drive us to his secluded hellhole of a home and lock us in this room.
It’s like that movie Misery, but the motherfucker is no Kathy Bates, let me tell you.
Johnny is distraught. He barely eats. He hardly looks at me.
I know he’s still feeling guilty, but I keep telling him it ain’t his fault.
Of course it’s not. Johnny couldn’t have predicted this, and even if he had, we both know our boy is safe, because he’s with family.
Not my family, but maybe that’s for the best. God knows Ezra would probably rip her limb from limb if left in the care of my ex-wife or Jaden.
Point being, our boy is safe, so everything else is secondary.
My leg is healing nicely, thank God. I was worried it wouldn’t. Fuck knows our captor don’t give a damn about our comfort or safety.
When a seemingly good Samaritan found our car flipped upside down at the bottom of a ravine, he dragged the pair of us to safety, telling us over and over that he was a registered nurse, and he was going to fix us up nicely.
During our darkest moments, the man, Harold, had been our light, claiming the road to the hospital was blocked due to a storm, but he’d take us in the morning. Yeah, well, that was a fuckin’ lie.
We learned pretty quickly that the guy has been stalking Ezra for months.
He’s been an active member on Ezra’s OnlyFans, busting nuts left and right to the sight of my sweet boy.
He has pictures of Ezra printed in black and white, nailed to the bedroom wall, hung at awkward angles that make it look like a toddler decorated in here.
It’s nice to get to see my boy just by looking up at the wall though,
We knew things were glum, but we didn’t realize just how fucked we truly are until the second week.
He would yammer for hours about Ezra, and how Ezzy spurned him by blocking his ass on OnlyFans.
He asked Johnny and me for details of our sex lives, but we both refused.
It pissed him off to the point he gave me an open-palm slap to the face, but he’s skinny as a fucking rake, so he didn’t do much damage.
All I had to do was cock an eyebrow and the fucker was gone with the goddamn wind.
He didn’t come back damn near all day, and when he finally showed his face, it was all, “Yes, Bubba,” and, “No, Johnny.” Good. A fucker’s gonna learn real quick.
The next day, Harold fitted shock collars around our necks and put us on leashes.
When he leaves the house, he reminds us that if we step foot outside the home, our heads will explode, but he’s a damn liar, because the shock collar is the same brand as the ones I bought for The Core Four a few years ago when they started getting a little too greedy with their lunch breaks.
The collars lasted all of half a day before they had all four around my neck. Ungrateful bastards. Fuck, I miss them.
We could probably escape. We definitely need to get to our boy, but my leg is broken, and Johnny banged his head really bad in the crash.
His head is better, but my leg is still in an awful state.
I can barely move it. When we make our escape attempt, I need us to have enough time to get away, and with the pain the way it is, that’s going to take a while.
Harold stole our phones, so we can’t call for help.
It’s just an all-around awful situation.
Harold lets us share a bed, so at least we still have that small comfort.
I’d be gutted if I didn’t have Johnny with me, or if I knew Johnny was gone, and I wasn’t there to keep him safe.
Johnny is curled up on his side, snoring softly, the light from our nightlight reflecting off his shining scalp, sending light fractals flickering across the room.
“Wakey, wakey, eggs and Daddy,” Harold sing-songs as he enters the room.
He’s carrying a tray with two plates of pancakes and sausage, two glasses of orange juice, and two more of those damn pills.
He claims they’re called Love Crushers, and the more of them we take, the faster Ezra will fall out of love with us.
The fuckin’ freak has a shrine dedicated to my boy.
It’s in his living room, in what could have been a beautiful window seat where one might kick back and read Whitman or Angelou in tranquil peace.
Instead, he’s got a framed black-and-white printout of Ezra’s profile picture.
Judging by the streaks down his face, I’m guessing it was low on toner at the time.
There are various other Ezra-centric items on the altar he’s constructed.
An old toothbrush. Ezra’s vintage Lisa Frank tracker keeper where he keeps all his notes about clairvoyance.
divination, and thaumaturgy. He’s even managed to find one of Ezzy’s cum balloons, and he keeps it positioned right in the center.
“Harold,” I greet the guy, nodding. “Any chance you’ll be letting us go today?”
Harold snorts a laugh, but it just makes him hack up phlegm, and he turns his head, spitting whatever was just in his throat into the corner.
“Good one.” He wipes a bit of stray spittle from his mouth.
“I can see why our little Ezra likes you so much.” The man, who appears to be in his late fifties, licks his lips like a slut, then winks at me.
He picks up one of the sausage links and waves it right in front of my face.
“Is this how big his penis looks in person?” in a breathy tone I don’t care for in the slightest.
“Harold,” I warn. “We’ve talked about this.”
Harold’s shoulders sag. “I know.”
“What was the rule?”
He huffs. “I don’t wanna say.”
“Harold,” I warn again, my voice firm. Insistent. “What’s the fuckin’ rule?”
“I’m not allowed to talk about him in a sexual manner.
I don’t get to mention his name. I can’t ask you questions about his cock as I masturbate.
He’s off limits.” His lip trembles, but then a sneer spreads across his face.
Ah, shit. Not this again. The man is a ball of emotional instability, and I’m getting really fuckin’ tired of his moodswings.
“He blocked me on OnlyFans. Did your precious fucking boy tell you that?”
“Not the OnlyFans story again,” Johnny whispers, pulling the pillow he’s clinging to closer to his chest. “We’ve heard it ninety fuckin’ times already.”
“Oh, you better believe I’m going to tell you the OnlyFans story,” Harold says. “It’s the whole reason you’re here and he’s not. When that little psychic faggot blocked me—”
“Watch your goddamn mouth,” I growl. “I don’t give a shit which letter of the alphabet you fall under, it don’t give you the right to use gay slurs in a hateful tone.
If you ever call my Ezzy the f-slur again, I’ll drag your ass across my knee and lay into it until it’s black and blue.
I’ll fuck you up. Gut you like a fuckin’ fish.
I’ll spank that ass, Harold. I’ll spank you hard, and I’ll spank you rough. ”
Harry looks like he’s going to throw up. “Ugh. No. Keep your smelly, old-man hands away from me.”
“I’m younger than you!”
He nods. “Not young enough. I like them ripe off the vine. Moist with an unknowingness of all things sex.”
I gag. I try not to, but I can’t help it. “That sounds like the siren song of a goddamn pedophile, if you ask me.”
“It’s a good thing no one is asking you,” he says, staring at a picture of Ezzy he’s got hung on the wall by the window.
It’s an old profile picture of my boy, black and white, printed on copy paper, but it’s still a touchstone.
A reason for going on. To find our boy. To get him back.
To show him he’s loved and safe. “If I knew it was both of you in the car, I would’ve let you fucking drown in that ravine.
I only stopped because I knew the license plate number by heart. ”
“How?” Johnny asks.
“And why?” I ask.
“It was in one of his videos. I zoomed in and used AI to enhance the numbers.” He turns and glares at me. “And I did it because I fucking wanted to. After I discovered it was you, I improvised.”
“Bubba?” Johnny whispers.
Harold steeples his fingers, and his left eyebrow rises to disturbing heights. “I had a bit of an epiphany, you see.”
“Yeah, Johnny Boy?” I ask.
“Is he giving one of them movie-villain speeches where the bad guy lays out his whole damn plan, even though no one fuckin’ asked?”
I nod. “I think so. In ClitMasterHarold’s defense, technically, I did ask.”
Johnny’s eyes narrow. “You opened us up to this bullshit.” I offer a shrug, because what the fuck else am I going to do about it?
Harold twinkles his fingertips, never breaking the steeple, and a sinister smile stretches across his face, making him look like the damn Joker. “I wasn’t even gay before I signed up for his profile. Did he tell you that?”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake. Land the fuckin’ plane, Harold.”
“Stupidly, I thought I could use you as leverage,” he shrieks. There’s no reason for him to scream, but the guy’s all over the damn place all the time. I’m just rolling with it.
“No one’s stopping you, bro,” I say.
He flings his hands in the air. “Stupid me for thinking your absence might bring me closer to Ezra. He's gone completely off the grid, almost like he’s happy to be rid of you.” He twists his neck and stares daggers at me. “Did you do this? What did you do to scare him off?”
“I didn’t do a goddamn thing,” I argue. “He was kidnapped, the same way you’ve kidnapped us. I realize it’s highly unlikely that all three proverbial love interests in the story of our lives would meet this fate, but what’s done is done, and here we fuckin’ are.”
Harold just rolls his eyes and hops up from the bed, skipping gayly to the other side of the bedroom, grabbing a voodoo doll.
Ezra in effigy, I guess. It looks like Ezzy.
Same swooping brown hair, even though Ezra’s is pink now.
Same big brown eyes. Same smile meant for Me and Johnny, and no one else.
Certainly not this guy and his denim jacket dreams and corduroy themes.
Ezra would laugh him out of the damn room.
“Does he talk about me? Does he whisper precious secrets, chronicling the lore of our love?” Harold asks, sounding more frantic than before.
“The fuck did you just say to me?”
“Bubba,” Johnny whispers, shaking his head, but still not looking at me. “Don’t argue or he’ll keep talking for hours.”
He’s right, of course. Playing into Harold’s twisted web of unrequested drama only makes things worse, and time after time, I allow him to bait me into a verbal bloodbath.
Part of me knows it will only ever lead to chaos, but the chaos reminds me of Ezra.
My little man is a showman, and he lives for the drama.
As creepy as this motherfucker is, Ezra would be eating this shit up. Fuck, I wish he was here.
“Has he mentioned the possibility of unblocking me on social media?” Harry asks for the nine-millionth time since he kidnapped us. “Was it the username that scared him off?”
“What was your username?” I ask, as if I don’t already know it by heart.
“ClitMasterHarold,” Harold says, reaching down and flicking the outline of his girthy penis. “I bet Ezra would like to touch my clit.”
“I bet if you ever put Ezra’s name in your mouth again, there’s going to be a problem.”
“I just want him to love me. Why won’t he love me?” He narrows his eyes when he looks at me. “It’s because I’m bisexual, isn’t it? Is he a biphobic bigot?”
“Are you a homophobic hillbilly?” I counter.
He shrugs, nodding. “I try to keep my internalized homophobia in check, but sometimes it slips out.” He licks his lips. “The same way Ezra slips out of his underwear, flashing that fucking ass like a cock-hungry faggot.”
Nope. We won’t be doing that, so I cold-cock the son of a bitch, sending him flying off the bed and sliding across the floor.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Harold says. “You really, really shouldn’t have done that.” Standing, he walks back over and leans as close as he can get. “Ezra is obsessed with Johnny’s ass. He talks about it on OnlyFans all the time. Maybe it’s time I see what the fuss is about.”
I growl at him. This low, humming sound that seems to rattle him a little. “No one touches Johnny.”
“Then bring me Ezra.”
“I already told you seventy fuckin’ times, I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know if my boy is alive.”
“He’s alive,” Johnny says fiercely, squeezing my wrist. “Our boy is okay.”
“You don’t seem to know much at all,” Harold observes, and I don’t argue back, because he’s got a point. “Look at you, losing your boy. As Daddies, Littles need to be protected. Cared for.”
“Well, Ezra’s more of a middle than a little, but he ain’t big on age play.”
“My point being,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “As his Daddy, you have one responsibility. Caring for his safety. You have completely dropped the ball. He’s God knows where, because you couldn’t keep track of the man we love!”
“The man we love?” I shout.
“If I was his Daddy, I would’ve taken him into my arms and told him everything would be alright. Some Daddy you are.”
“Sometimes you can say a whole lot more by moving your mouth a whole lot less.”
“My mouth is about to be moving a lot more. Around Johnny’s cock.”
When I notice Harry’s eyes glued to Johnny’s bulge, I know it’s now or never. I can’t risk him touching my boy in places my boy doesn’t want him to touch.
Fuck it.
I guess today’s the day a motherfucker dies.