34. Chapter 34
Justin
I curl up on the couch, but it feels wrong. My hole is sore and my cock uncomfortable inside the metal cage. I latch onto those feelings and let them ground me.
What did I do wrong?
I obeyed him. I did exactly what Cameron wanted. Yet, he got angry again. For a moment, I thought he was actually going to kill me. Maybe it would have been for the best. Obviously, I’m not enough to make him happy no matter what I do.
Seconds pass by, turning into minutes. I think? Time works strangely down here. I feel like I should be doing something. Escaping, maybe? Yes, I should be doing that. Get out of here, reclaim my freedom, go back to being a person.
Except it all sounds so pointless. What good is being free when I fuck up everything I touch? Not to mention how exhausting making decisions is. Isn’t it better to just let go?
I squirm on the soft cushions, uneasy. It’s not right. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not supposed to be on the couch without Cameron.
He isn’t here to tell me what to do, but I slip off the couch anyway, the hardwood floor greeting my knees. That’s better. Not comfortable, but I’m not supposed to be comfortable. I messed up again. I don’t deserve comfort. Not from the soft couch and especially not from Cameron.
The cage sits open in front of me and I crawl inside.
Within its confines, the world at least makes sense again.
Here, I’m safe. Not as safe as being held by Cameron, but that’s not going to happen again.
He doesn’t like me anymore, and I don’t know how to fix it.
No matter what I do, he’s angry. It must be me.
Of course it’s me. It’s always been me. I’ve never been enough. Never strong enough, religious enough, smart enough. It figures that I’m not good enough for Cameron either.
I watch the ceiling through the bars of the cage. The AC rumbles to life. The fridge responds. They’re still humming. The only thing that didn’t change.
I idly wonder what’s going to happen to me now that Cameron doesn’t want me anymore. Will he kill me? He said I’m never leaving the basement alive, and he keeps his word.
I should probably be freaking out, but I’m too numb to really worry. My life never mattered. At least once I’m dead, I won’t have to feel miserable. Cameron will get a new pet, one that will make him happy. Everyone wins.
With a sigh, I curl up on my side. The water bottles are right in front of me and I have a brief thought that Cameron will be angry with me for not drinking enough again, but it’s not enough motivation for me to reach for one. He’ll be angry with me anyway, and I don’t feel like moving anymore.
***
Cameron
I take my anger out on a boxing bag and a bottle of scotch, both at the same time. Not my best idea ever, but it works to numb my emotions to a manageable level. For a while at least.
Once I’m drunk and exhausted enough to think about Justin without blowing up, I realize I didn’t lock him up. Too angry to think straight, I just left him on the couch, and he’s been free to roam the basement for hours. Sure, there’s no way he could get out or call for help, but…
Fuck! Terror slams into me as I remember all the knives I keep in the kitchenette. Justin could have spent the time trying to pry open the keypad by the door. What if he electrocuted himself?
If he’s just waiting for me behind the door with a knife in hand, I can handle him, but what if…
I don’t even finish the thought, already stumbling down the stairs. Justin wouldn’t hurt himself, would he?
No, he can’t be dead. I won’t allow it.
Fuck, why was I so reckless?
It takes my fumbling fingers two tries to correctly input the door code. It’s then that I realize I could have checked the camera feed, but I left my phone upstairs and there’s no way I’m wasting more time getting it.
I dodge and swiftly turn around as I pass through the door, ready to fend off a pissed pet with a knife, but Justin isn’t there. He isn’t on the couch either, nor in the kitchen.
“Justin?”
No response.
My heart thumps painfully as I check the bathroom, convinced I’ll find him bleeding in the bathtub.
The bathroom’s empty, too.
That gives me pause. Could Justin have gotten out? No one ever has, but then, I’ve never left anyone alone without them being locked in the cage.
Fuck. The cage. Could it…?
My breath catches in my throat when I see a familiar figure curled up on the cage’s floor. Justin’s here. His eyes are closed, but his chest moves with slow breaths. He’s okay.
I should be happy. Even when given a chance, Justin didn’t try anything stupid. He went to his cage like a good pet. That’s a good thing. This is exactly what I wanted. So why are alarm bells ringing in the back of my mind?
“Justin?”
He stirs, his eyes opening and finding mine. I nearly recoil at the emptiness in them. I broke him.
Fuck, how did it happen? I was so nice to him.
Justin pulls himself into a kneeling position, slowly, like every movement costs him too much energy.
“Yes, Sir?” His voice is as flat as it has been every time after I punished him, and I realize he hasn’t been acting.
His sudden submission wasn’t a silent rebellion.
He’s been slipping away, and I was too angry to see it, and now he’s gone.
He’s gone, like all the others before him, and it’s my fucking fault.
“Fuck!”
My knuckles, already sore from my bout with the boxing bag, split when I hit the metal bars of the cage.
I barely notice the pain and the blood trickling down my fingers.
Justin blinks, but otherwise doesn’t react to my outburst. A zombie, like all the others.
Now I’ll have to figure out how to get rid of him without Mikhail and…
No. What am I thinking? I’m not getting rid of Justin. He’s mine. Forever. There’s no way I’ll just toss him out like yesterday’s trash.
I’ll fix him.
The thought fills me with dangerous hope. I’ve never tried to fix a broken pet before, and I don’t have the first clue how to do that, but what else is there? I’m not letting Justin go.
“You hear that? I’m not letting you go.”
A faint smile tugs at the corners of Justin’s mouth.
It’s gone quickly, but it was there. I refuse to believe Justin is truly gone.
People don’t stay broken forever, do they?
There’s, like, therapy and medication and other shit like that.
I don’t know how any of that works, but I know just who to ask.
Mikhail has years of experience training slaves. Surely, he’ll know what to do.
First, though, I have to make sure my pet is safe. Crouching in front of the cage, I hand him a bottle of water. “Drink this. All of it.”
Justin doesn’t protest. While he drinks, I grab his blanket and some of the tastier snacks. I push it all into the cage before locking it. “Stay here,” I order, even though Justin doesn’t really have a choice anymore. “Eat. Drink. Rest. I’ll be back soon.” With a plan on how to fix you.
“Yes, Sir,” Justin whispers. He looks tired, like he’s been up for days and not asleep for hours. I know that part, too. The zombies always look tired, like staying awake is too exhausting for them. It hurts me to see Justin like this. I need to fix him.
Part of me wants to stay, to pull Justin out of the cage and cuddle him until he comes to his senses, but I force myself to leave. I need to talk to Mikhail first.
Just in case the police are monitoring my calls, I use a burner phone. It rings for an eternity before the call connects. Silence greets me from the other end, but I’m used to that. Mikhail is just being careful. “Mikhail?”
“Cameron. Is something wrong?”
“No. Well, no one’s after you. Other than that…” Everything is fucking wrong. “I think I broke him.”
Mikhail sighs. “The twink? Do you want me to come over to take care of him for you?”
“No! I don’t want him dead. I… I want to fix him.”
There’s a pause. I hear some muffled slurping in the background, and Mikhail’s voice is a little strained. “That’s new.”
“Well, he’s different. So what do I do?”
There’s a sharp intake of breath and… Is he moaning?
“Fucking hell, Mikhail, are you getting a blowjob right now?” I can’t believe it. I’m baring my fucking soul here asking him for help, and he’s getting his rocks off.
“Well, not anymore I’m not,” he grumbles, and this time, I hear a quiet feminine giggle. “Why are you calling me, Cameron? I’m an expert on breaking people, not fixing them.”
My hope dies a painful death. “Right. Sorry. I just thought that since you kept that girl…”
“I never really broke Grace. I just transformed her into what she was always meant to be. I thought you'd do the same with the twink.”
“Well, I fucked up!” I yell, anger getting the better of me. “Thanks for rubbing it in, asshole.”
Mikhail is used to my outbursts, so it doesn’t fase him. “All right, calm down. Tell me what happened. Maybe I can figure something out.”
“Thanks.” I quickly tell him everything that went on between Justin and me, up to the phone incident.
“So he tried to call for help?” Mikhail asks.
His question makes me hesitate. I was filled with anger in the moment, but now when I go through the memory again, something doesn’t sit right. Justin wasn’t nervous when I showed up. He wasn’t trying to hide the phone or run off with it. In fact, he offered it to me with a smile.
Oh god. He smiled. It wasn’t a now-you’re-going-to-jail smirk. It was a genuine, earnest smile that vanished the second he noticed my anger.
And the things he tried to say before I silenced him. That things weren’t what they looked like. He asked me to trust him. Jesus fucking Christ. Even after I punished him, he said he’d wanted to stay.
“Cameron?”
“I… I don’t think he was going to call anyone,” I say, something inside of me shattering. I fucked up. God, I fucked up so hard I’m not sure I can ever fix this. That smile…
“So, you succeeded in making him accept you only to screw things right up,” Mikhail says. “You know, human minds are surprisingly fragile. Sometimes even one step in the wrong direction at the wrong moment is all it takes.”
“You’re not helping!”
The asshole has the audacity to laugh. “Sorry, but that’s the truth. On the other hand, people are quite resilient. They can come back.”
“But how?”
“Listen, Cameron. What do you want? Do you want an obedient toy, a hole to stick your dick in whenever you fancy?”
“Obviously,” I reply without thinking, then pause. “Well, I want that, but also… I just want Justin the way he was before. When he talked to me and sometimes even joked and smiled and came to me for comfort.”
“You want him to be a person,” Mikhail surmises. “A pet, sure, but still a person. But for him to be a person, you’ll have to start treating him like one.”
“What? You better not be suggesting I let him go or ask for his consent or some shit like that. I fucking own him.” He’s mine. I just want him the way he was before.
Mikhail snorts. “Do I look like I ask my Doll for consent? Don’t be ridiculous.
But you have to give him something. He was loyal, and instead of rewarding him, you punished him.
Now he thinks you don’t care about him. That he’s a disposable object.
You need to give him something, and I don’t mean a blowjob.
Something he wants. Marginal enough not to put you at risk, but big enough to reinforce the fact that you see him as a person. That you care.”
I rub the bridge of my nose. The whiskey I drank earlier is making it difficult to think straight. I’m used to rewarding pets with orgasms, but Mikhail says that’s not enough. “I already gave him his blanket back. What else should I do?”
An exasperated sigh comes through the phone’s receiver. “I don’t know him, Cameron. How about you fucking ask him? I told you, I’m not an expert on fixing broken toys. Let me know if you want him dead. Otherwise, you’ll have to figure this out on your own. Just talk to him.”
“Right. Thanks.”
My mind is reeling as I end the call, and I realize I haven’t even told Mikhail about Small and all the other shit that has happened. I was so worried about Justin that I completely forgot about it.
I pace the room for so long that the split skin on my knuckles scabs over. Talk to Justin. It sounds so easy, but what am I supposed to say? Should I apologize? Will that make me look weak? What if he asks for something I can’t give him?
Worse, what if he’s too far gone to talk to me at all?