The warehouse seemed like an odd place for there to be a photo shoot. It was gray and nondescript with boarded up and broken windows. It seemed almost like a haunted house against the smoggy-black sky and the yellow light of the streetlights. Spot Conlon stubbed out his cigarette and started to walk into the door. He hated this. He hated this modeling thing more than anything. Especially the shady jobs like this one which was all he could get these days. He was too young-looking for adult shoots and too adult-looking for child shoots. This shoot was a bit different from the others. This was a new agency that he was forced to join.
One look inside and he knew this would be nothing like the ads he posed for when he was little. Naked boys with their arms bound to each other posed on crates and tarps. Two boys barely older than him were photographing them and a fat, greasy man with gold rings on every one of his fingers seemed to be in charge. The center of all of the shoots was two boys with their wrists bound and bound by the waist to each other looking out blankly at the camera. One was a pale, curly-haired boy with blue eyes and the other with straight hair that fell to the middle of his neck and brown eyes with the kind of mouth that curled up a little on the edges. Their eyes had a dead, not-there look to them. Spot knew the look and knew he had it too. The other models did as well. The blue eyes of the blonde model combing his hair held the look…at least one did. His right eye was clear but the left one was clouded and glazed over. He was naked and getting ready to pose with a built boy with curly hair and an upturned nose. The fat man noticed Spot.
"You," he said. "You Conlon?"
"Yeah," Spot said. "Although I prefer—"
"I don't care what you prefer. Strip down, do what you have to do, and go find Race," he said before turning back to the two boys in the center. "Kelly, turn your head. You're too intense head-on!"
The straight-haired boy did as he was told and looked more at the pale boy than at the camera. Spot pulled his clothes off without any shame. He was getting a little used to these except this was the first time he would be fully naked. Still, compared to upturned-nose and the other one—Kelly, was it?—he felt tiny and underdeveloped. Not that he was going to let it show. He sat next to the blonde boy to put on makeup.
"Hi," he said, blinking at his reflection in the mirror.
He looked like an extra from Village of the Damned.
"Hey," Spot replied, putting on base.
"You'll get used to it," he said cryptically, groping with his left hand for an unlit cigarette.
The built boy pulled him up. "No time, Kid."
The blonde boy nodded and went off with him. Spot finished his makeup and stood, looking for the aforementioned "Race". He spotted the only boy sitting by himself and figured it was him. He walked by two bespectacled boys bound at the wrists and ankles and stretched over throw pillows. The blonde half of that shoot looked at him and Spot thought he saw almost a pleading look in his blue eyes.
"Hi," Race said to him.
He didn't look very much like a model. He was short and pale with a thick thatch of dark hair but there was something about his face that made you want to look at him.
"You Race?" Spot asked, sitting next to him.
"Yeah. Name's really Anthony but everyone calls me Racetrack," he said as the fat guy walked towards them, dragging the paler of the two camera boys with him. "Heya Weasel."
The fat man rolled his eyes and held up two, leopard print chords. Then he and Race were bound to each other around the upper legs and around their necks so their backs were pressed up against each other. Then they turned their heads so their cheeks pressed together so they looked at the camera. The camera boy was sneering from behind the enormous camera but when he moved it, Spot saw the same haunted look that the models had. Had he once had to lay naked and bound on the ground while someone took his picture? He cast a look at Racetrack although he could only see the side of his face. He wondered if he felt anything when someone snapped his picture like Spot had in the beginning. When there was something to look forward to—like seeing his picture in a magazine. Now it was nothing. Just another thing where he was going to be put in some strange smut mag with the other boys.
After the shoot, the boy he had first seen—Kelly—and the pale boy came up to him.
"Hiya," he said.
"Hi," Spot replied. "Kelly, right?"
"Jack," he corrected. "And this is David. Wanna come out with us?"
Spot shrugged. He had nothing better to do. The paler boy, David evidently, popped some pills in his mouth and swallowed them with a swig of a bottle of water.
"You alright?" he asked, not really caring if he was.
David shrugged. "Are any of us?"
With that cryptic comment, he walked ahead. Near the front of the warehouse were picture that made what the rest of the boys were doing look like hopscotch. There was a girl in them too.
"David's sister, Sarah," Jack said. David didn't even look at the pictures. "She used to do the hardcore stuff with the brothers."
He pointed to the two camera boys.
"Used to?" Spot queried. "She quit?"
"She died," Jack said. "Heroin. It was for a shoot. She was supposed to be Sleeping Beauty who, instead of pricking her finger, pricked her arm on a heroin needle. She put in too much and died. It was an accident."
His eyes skirted quickly over to David's with that last comment. David shrugged again and started to walk away. Jack followed him. Spot figured they were hiding something. Not that he cared. He just decided to follow them anyway. Despite the pill-popping and mystique, they didn't seem that bad.
The club was where all of the male models seemed to be. At least, the ones from the bondage shoot today. No one was dancing, everyone just sat around, drinking. David popped another pill into his mouth and rested his head on Jack's shoulder. Jack put his arm around him and tried to reach for the bottle of pills but David gripped it tighter, his eyes suddenly wild as if he couldn't live without them.
"Where are you from, Spot?" the blonde boy—Kid or something—from the shoot asked.
"Brooklyn," Spot answered. "You all from Manhattan?"
"Pretty much," he replied. "Want me ta introduce you to the others?"
Spot shrugged, once again, not really caring.
"Wells, I'm Kid Blink…that's my stage name," he smiled widely which, for a moment, shattered the creepy-child image. "You know Jack and David…"
He then proceeded to fire off a barrage of other boys' names, mostly stage names or something—like Spot's own name—that obviously couldn't have been written on their birth certificates.
"Are a lot of the shoots like that?" Spot asked nonchalantly. He wasn't one to show that he was nervous.
"No," Jack answered.
Spot sighed inwardly in relief. However, he kept a look of bored indifference on face and nodded.
"Most are worse," David added darkly.