Lost Boy (7 page)

Boston, December 1st

Her lips wrap tight around me. I have to stare at the wall across from me. If I close my eyes, I see my girl's face and it makes me want it to be more than getting my cock sucked in an alley. I want to see her lips and not the brunette on the floor in front of me. I grab the back of her head, thrusting into her mouth harder. A car drives past the alley, splashing water. I focus on the noise and my thrusts. I need it done. I don’t need perfection, just completion. I hear her gag but I'm there. I push into her throat, making her eyes bug out.

My eyebrows knit together as I blast the inside of her throat. I pull back a little, making her able to moan again and suck. The noise she is making is trying to distract my peaceful exhale. I bite my lip, feeling it leave me. I shudder and reach into my pants to drop the hundred-dollar bill in there onto the ground. I step away from her, doing my pants up and walk away.

"I'm not a hooker, you fuck."

I look back, "It's for mouthwash."

She flips me the bird and picks the money up.

Regular women are easy. In the bedroom, they want to be told what to do, manhandled, and treated like a cheap slut. In the kitchen, they want you to help with the cooking and tell them the things they make are perfect. In public, they want a gentleman.

The girl struggling in her too-high heels is no different than any other girl. She would make me happy when I needed to be.

That’s not the girl for me though. I don’t like regular girls. I like one girl. The one I can't have.

My phone rings as I round the wet corner.

"Hello."

"Plan B is being put into action."

I frown, "Jane… are you sure? She seems like she's over the guy you hired."

She laughs, "I never hired him. Sebastian is incredibly wealthy. He didn’t want money. He just wanted to meet her."

I sigh, "Anyway, her grades are perfect. She went to that bar, she goes to the gym—she seems good. She's been eating out a lot and in the cafeteria. I'm satisfied with her progress. I wish it was faster, but if we don’t have to go to Plan B, I don’t want to."

I hear her sigh, "She is heartbroken and destroyed. She isn’t over him. Eli, this isn’t negotiable. She told him to leave her alone and has holed up in that dorm. You can be part of it or I can hire someone to play your part."

I swallow, shaking my head, "I'm in."

Memories flood me. My steps become stumbles. I hang up the phone and feel it fill me up. The white noise. The constant white noise.

I stagger to the doorway of a building and sit on the steps. The cold, wet stair doesn’t even bring me back.

My own treatment is there. If I close my eyes, I can see the round cement with the drawings. I can see the way she looks when she brings the girl into the room. Through the little crack, I can see the way the girl looks scared.

I didn’t know she was an actress. I thought I'd been abducted a second time.

I clawed and screamed and tried to save her, but it wasn’t real. It was a movie they made for me. It broke me. I can feel the weight of the gun in my hand.

I can feel the electricity course through my veins when I close my eyes. The wood indents where my teeth bite down on it.

Doctor Bradley took the things that hurt me the most, she made them real and dangled them in front of my face. She made me see it, feel it and be it, over and over again. She took my safety and pushed me to the point of attempting to hang myself. Only when I gave up and tried to die, did she tell me the truth.

The seventeen-year-old I was, rapidly became the child I had been when I lost her—them. Only then, would I confess to shooting my sister and being the one holding the gun. Only after they broke me, did I believe I had made up the girl in the room. The girl always touching the corners. The girl with the gun.

I shudder, clutching the cement stair. I close my eyes, trying to get them to focus again and see the real world in front of me. Nothing is fake anymore. My world is real. It's all about the girl who needs me, my girl.

I wipe the sweat from my brow and look for something to move me past the stairs. I can't get up on my own.

The selfish bastards on the street don’t move me. They don’t do anything remarkable. They just walk and talk and float through their lives. They don’t do anything that makes me feel anything. I need something special to make me come back from this.

Stuart pulls up to the curb. He nods at me, "Am I carrying you in or are you walking?"

I swallow hard and nod, "I just needed a minute." Seeing him makes me warm inside, but the words I speak nearly kill me, "Plan B starts this month."

His eyes gloss over; I know his time in the cells is flashing in his mind. Selfishly, I relish in his pain. He makes it so I'm not alone. I find my strength in his weakness and stand up. He is pale and alone in his mind for a second. I walk around to the passenger side. When I get in we're silent. We go home and pretend to be tired.

The next day Stuart leaves to get my girl and take her to Jane's office. It's her last visit before we start. I have to mess with her a little bit first. I almost admit to myself I like this part. I like having this control over her.

I dial her number and wait, "Hi." She sounds impatient. She has a lot lately.

"You need to remind her that you're still not sleeping, okay?"

Her voice cracks a little bit, "How do you know that? Maybe I am?"

I laugh bitterly, "I know you're not."

"How?" she asks softly.

"Do as you're told." I harden my tone.

"K."

She is trying to kill me, I swear it. I sigh, "That is a letter. It’s not a word. Can't you just speak like you have something of an education?"

"I'm doing fine in school."

"I know that. Nice work on the grades, by the way. I have to admit the straight A's surprised me. Between the whatevers and the k's, I figured you were doomed." I accidentally talk like I'm speaking with a friend.

"Thanks."

I sigh again, "Call me when she's done. I want to talk to you about something important." I get in the car and drive over to Jane's office. She wants to see me after she sees my girl. She wants to plot and toy with me, knowing she still has a little power over me. She was the one who stopped them from hurting me. She will always have that.

I stare up at the window to the office I know she's in. She's there, talking about her feelings and wondering when, or if, she'll ever feel normal again. She's crying and telling Jane how she can't sleep and she can't live because she doesn’t know how. She is stuck in the dirty house; in her mind, I never saved her.

I get lost, I don’t know how long it is or what day it is. I just know that she comes out of the building looking upset. She walks away from the truck and Stuart. I can see him and Michelle laughing and smiling. I sigh and dial her number.

"Why did you leave the car?" I ask when she answers. She walks faster.

"Why did you hire Stuart for a hundred thousand a year to drive me around?" I smile bitterly, it has started. Stuart has told her that to scare her. Jane must have given him his part.

I sigh and act impatient, "He has a big mouth and my business with him is private. That just cost him his pay for a month. Why did you leave the car?"

She ignores me and screams into the phone, "HOW DO YOU KNOW I LEFT THE CAR? WHERE ARE YOU? YOU FUCKING FREAK! STOP SPYING ON ME!"

I hate what we're doing to her but we need this anger to surface. If she can get mad enough we don’t need Plan B. "Are you finished?" I ask calmly.

"Yes."

"Why did you leave the car?"

She laughs, "Why did you hire a boxing UFC champ as my driver?"

I laugh by accident and hold my breath until she starts talking again. "I wanted to be alone. She made me feel dirty. I didn’t want to be with them.”

I nod and give her the answer we have discussed, "Because I am a rich man and if anyone ever knew that you were my ward, they would hurt you to get to me. I need to know you're alright. At all times. Stuart can protect you. I cannot. I am busy."

She is silent for a second, "What? Wait…who wants to hurt you and me?"

"My business." I snap.

She takes a breath and mutters, "Can you find Sebastian for me?"

"Why?" She isn’t over him like I thought she was. Jane was right.

Her voice sounds broken, "I need to tell him that I'm sorry. It's killing me inside that I made him feel so awful."

My guts burn. I almost whisper my words, "Do you love him?" Is it worse than I let myself see? Was I so busy watching her and loving her, that I failed to notice her falling in love with someone else? Not just a regular someone else either, Jane's perfect choice.

She answers me the way I would answer her, "I don’t think I'm capable of that." I hang up the phone and know Jane is right. She is me, but a girl. The two of us together would probably cause the apocalypse, but I want her more than I ever have. I want to be incapable with her and make her capable because we are stronger than anything else.

I want her to know that she isn’t alone and the lonely isn’t the only thing that can touch her.

I swallow hard, acknowledging the process is the only way to crack the shell.

December 19th

Stuart swings wide, clipping my chin. My head flies back, but I manage to come back with a strong upper cut when I catch my balance.

He staggers slightly, winking at me, "Easy, boss. Don’t want to mark my face before we even start. I need to look pretty in the beginning."

I roll my eyes, trying not to let the acid in my stomach eat me up completely.

The crazy is in his eyes. He's helped on a couple and each time he gets a crazed look in his eyes. The adrenaline and anxiety are like heroin for Stuart. He lived, his brother didn’t, he likes to suffer to make sure every cell in his body remembers it's alive. He likes to fuck hard, fight savagely, drive crazily, and gamble with his own flesh and my money.

His gaze narrows, "I see you doing it."

I shake my head, raising my hands again, "I wasn’t doing it."

His stare gets dark from the furrow in his brow, "I can fucking see it, Eli." He points a glove at me, "We're done. I hate that fucking face. Feel sorry for someone else. We lived asshole, remember that. I'm better, I don’t need your pity." He climbs over the ropes, stalking off to change, and maybe trash the dressing room.

Lance glances at me from the corner post, "You boys alright?"

I shake my head. I'm tense and scared and forget to be cool for just a second. My lips break into a grin, "We're better than alright." As long as he doesn’t look too hard into my eyes, he won't see the truth. He nods, "Shower up then, Eli."

I nod back, "Yes, sir."

I start to chew at the tape and climb over the ropes.

Stuart doesn’t talk to me again, even when I offer him gum. He takes it and looks in a different direction, never meeting my eyes. We change in silence.

Finally I speak, "I didn’t mean it."

He shrugs.

It's his way of saying that it's alright.

I slap him in the arm, "Meet you in the parking lot."

His crazed look reappears, "It's going to be the best one. I know it."

I shake my had, "I just think if we give her more time…"

"No. She's not getting better, man. She's stuck. I was stuck. She needs this. Dr. Bradley may be ‘Fifty Shades of Cray’ but she knows her shit."

I snort and nearly say something horrid, but I know he still feels grateful. I wish I could. I wish I was able to be appreciative for everything she did for me, but I can't. She made me hold the gun, she made me say it.

I sigh, "I'm going to make sure everything is ready. I'll see you after Michelle leaves."

He winks and strolls out of the room. I can see the swagger and know my sympathetic stare is still bothering him. He over does his manliness when anyone sees his weakness.

I walk up the road to Columbus Park and lean against the chain-link fence. No matter how hard I try to fight it, I remember him the first time I saw him. He was lying about his age to UFC fight and getting beat to shit on purpose. His face was a bloody pulp. It makes me sick thinking about it—the crazed look on his face and the way he looked like he was having the time of his life. Jane led me into the crowd, looking out of place amongst the greasy and filthy patrons of the underground fights. She looked like a linen napkin in comparison to them all, clean and tidy and straight and anal. She leaned into my neck, whispering over the sound of the fists pummeling the crazy-looking guy in the cage and the screams of the crowd. She breathed the words into my neck, "He's like you."

His swollen eyes found mine through the chain-link walls. I watched as a grin crossed his lips and the final blow hit. He screamed as he went back. His nose had to be broken. He dropped to the ground, suddenly looking so small. The winner held his hands in the air, jumping up and down. It was then that I saw the real Stuart. He stood up, smiling through the blood that coated his face and started the real fight. Like the Hulk in comics, he needed to be angry to really fight. He needed to fear you to beat you. He needed something to drive his fists in anger. He could scrimmage but not fight for real, without anger.

His fists fought fast and hard, not needing a break but driving forward. He was much smaller than the guy he was viciously beating but it didn’t matter. The man had believed he held the upper hand. He didn’t understand what a real fight was to Stuart. To win, he must come from behind. He must be chained to a wall, beaten and injured in ways people don’t recover from. He must see his dead brother lying next to him, still chained to the wall but getting smaller every day. He must feel every lash of the belt in the hand of the janitor who took them from the schoolyard. Only then, can he touch that part of himself and rise above the pain. Only then, is he a champion in his own heart.

Stuart didn’t wait for the shock to stop silencing the crowd. He stepped past the unconscious man, walked from the cage and down the hallway. Jane took my hand, leading me after him into the dark tunnel where the change rooms were.

We sat in awe and awkward silence as he showered and sobbed. I imagined him in there, huddled and desperate to be clean again.

I knew that feeling. I knew that filth.

She was right. He was like me.

We have been together since and we will be together until we die, hopefully on the same day, like we had promised each other all those years before.

My hands almost bleed where I grip the fence and stare out at the barren field and dirt they call a park. It feels like my insides, undeveloped and barren, but loaded with potential.

I sigh when my phone rings and see it's her.

"Hello."

I can hear Jane smiling with anticipation when she speaks, "Hello, Eli. You all ready for tonight?"

I stare at the chain-link fence and nod, "I am."

"I need you to be your usual cold and confident self. But use an Australian accent when you speak. It's a trigger for her. In hypnosis she suggested it was an issue for her. I played a recording of a woman speaking with the accent and nothing happened, but when I played the man speaking with the accent she panicked slightly. It's just another tool to break her." Her voice stops being so chipper when she speaks again, "I will need a near-sexual assault. I believe that's loomed over her head the entire time, and somewhere inside of her, I think she feels inadequate that Randy never touched her that way."

I grimace, "Jane… Jesus."

"Eli, he raped and murdered every little girl he came in contact with, apart from Emalyn and Sarah. Deep down, I believe she wonders why he never did. She no doubt wonders if something is wrong with her for him to have left her alone."

I close my eyes, "Something is wrong with you. No child would think that."

"You have no idea what a child will consider affection after years of neglect. Well, I guess that's not entirely true, is it?"

My tone goes to the dark place, "Fuck you, Jane." I hang up the phone; I can't hear any more of her hateful digs.

The Aussie accent is fine, but I will not try to hurt her further than she has already been hurt. She is a damaged girl. I shudder and turn to walk up the road to where I parked. I don’t feel cold and confident. I feel like I'm in that damned hole and I'm watching her try to find the corners of the wall where she's sitting in the dirt. I feel scared and lost. I need her hand in mine so I have a reason to not be lost again. I need her to need me too, beyond being her benefactor.

I drive to Jane's office and sit in the parking lot, adrift in thought and mental preparation. Seeing Jane's building makes me feel dirty, instantly.

Stuart pulls up in the SUV. He doesn’t look at me, he parks and stares at the building too. His treatment was the first one I participated in. I had drunk the Kool-Aid and believed the pseudo science behind it. I still believe, just not for myself. For Stuart's I was excited to watch a human being be healed by being submerged into the environment they had escaped.

I had thought because I survived mine, I could survive his.

I was wrong.

I gave up on him, walking out in tears and agony. He understood why, but I felt a type of shame I hadn’t in a long time. He wasn’t the first person I had given up on when things got hard.

Sitting here next to him, I vow silently, no matter what she needs, I won't give up on her. I failed her once.

I climb out of the car and get into the truck with Stuart. We sit in the silent vehicle for a few minutes, not needing to talk.

Finally, he speaks softly, "You have to be strong, Eli."

I nod. I can't say that I will be, I don’t know that I'll ever be strong.

"If she isn’t completely broken down, ruled and afraid, she might not crack." He turns and gives me a smile, "It was hard to watch me crack. You sure you got this?"

I hate how excited he is. I sigh, "I don’t have much choice. If she doesn’t get better, I won't either. She's my only chance at redemption."

I see his eyes fight the tears in them. For the first time he's being honest with himself. He nods, "You never walked out on me, dude. I couldn’t watch some old man…" He gags and takes a breath, "Hit you either."

My eyes water, "We don’t know what she's seen or been through. Jane thinks she knows everything. We don’t know what's in there."

Stuart shakes his head, "We're all the same. Scare the shit out of us and we comply. I don’t know about her, but me and Sam learned early on that we got beat less if we just let it ride."

My stomach curdles. I shake my head, putting my hand up. He stops himself from whatever he's about to say. He takes deep breaths. He never says Sam's name. Neither of us said their names ever. I've gotten better than him at it, but in my case, Em died in an instant. She didn’t starve in front of me slowly.

He clears his throat, "Try to stay in character for her. We have weeks before Michelle gets back."

I pat him on the arm, still not taking my eyes from the building, "See you on the other side, brother."

"Yes you will," he grins and nods, "Don't hold back either. I want the full, fiery temper."

I snort, "You're still such a sick bastard."

He licks his lips and winks. I climb out and walk up to the building. The elevator makes me shudder, but I know she has cameras. She likes to watch me be afraid or hesitate. She likes it when I'm uncomfortable. She wants to be the one I turn to in my needs. She wants me.

In a sick way, I like that. I like to watch her squirm in return. If I didn’t fucking hate every ounce of her, we would be quite the pair, taking turns being on top…being the one getting fucked.

She makes me cold and confident.

I step into the elevator, clenching my hands, imagining the feel of my girl's hands in my grip. I fold my hands behind my back, poking a finger into the corner to remind myself the corner means it isn’t the hole in the ground.

She beams at me as I step off, trying to avoid her gaze as my heartbeat is pounding from the small space.

"Still angry with me?"

I don’t satisfy her with a response.

She smiles wider, "You know I provoke you to help you in this role you're going to play. It won't be easy."

"Nothing ever is with you, Jane."

She points, "You asked for my help with this one."

I nod, "I don’t regret asking you, I just wish there was another way. I thought the treatments she was having would help her remember some of it. It's been years, Jane, and she hasn’t budged."

She shakes her head, "She won't go into the dirty house. She won't open her eyes and take a look, even in hypnosis. She is blocking it. We need to put her back there on purpose. She needs the filth and disturbing torment and instability of it all, to remember it." She crosses the room, holding herself rigidly, with her chest out.

I almost roll my eyes but I don’t. I know she expects me to look at her trim figure. She doesn’t realize I don’t care what she looks like. I don’t care that she is stunning and fit and crazy in bed. If I didn’t have to bleed or fuck it out of me, then I wouldn’t have sex. She doesn’t understand I don’t have sex or fight or cut for pleasure and joy. The joy is the silencing of the white noise. Somehow the trickle of blood or semen carries my crazy with it. It's best if I can do both, bleed and cum.

It's sick. I'm sick. I sigh and look out the window. I'll never be good enough for my girl.

I'm fucking sick. I need to remember that.

Jane passes me a pill, "Take this when we get into the truck to meet Stuart. It'll give you a good burst of asshole, combined with a nasty dose of energy."

I look at the blue pill in my hand. I don’t need it, but maybe it'll help me forget the fact I'll have to rough her up. She's going to see me hurt Stuart. She's going to see the monster I am.

I look at my watch, "Leave here in twenty?"

She nods, "I know she's like a sister to you but she needs this. She needs to be freed. The glass box she lives in is killing her. The helplessness is killing her."

I shake my head, "I don’t see her as a sister." I wish I did.