Contrition, Appreciation, Adulation, DevotionI was prepared to write a super long A/N for this chapter, but instead, I'm just going to relay a couple of things. Firstly, I do feel bad. This chapter is not the chapter that you all are anticipating, and the way that I ended the previous chapter seemed to give the impression that things would be moving forward as far as Spencer's rescue, which they will be—on the team's end. There was no more story to tell on their end before they would start to find him. This is a promise, though, that things will start coming to a head in the next chapter.
On that note, discretion is highly advised. I don't foresee that you will like this chapter; I am nervous about even posting it. It's painful. It's difficult. It has that escalating detail that I mentioned back in chapter 1's preface. I had to tone it down multifold from its original first and second drafts, and that says a lot about its contents, because this is still a heavy chapter. I won't blame you if you don't want to continue with this work after this, honestly. It's enough that I will flank the grittiness with the following demarcation (—*—) so that should you wish to read it, it's still there, but you're welcome to avoid it. Search for the second set of asterisks and read from after that point. If you wish, you can skip this chapter in its entirety, but the latter part sets the tone for, erm, some of what the team will have to cope with once he's rescued. There will be non-graphic scenes within this section, however, that are more of a psychological attack.
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CONTRITION, APPRECIATION, ADULATION, DEVOTION
DATE UNKNOWN | LOCATION UNKNOWN
After Spencer had fostered a new understanding of his male captor, things continued with the two in their newer normal—ritualistic, just as they always were, with careful interactions. Spencer was more sure—at this point of his captivity—that he was entering a strange sort of amity with his captors, an acceptance from them, a grafting into their dynamic. He was positive of it, in fact, and the mourning that he had shared with them just a few days ago had solidified this perception.
Today, he would find that he was wrong. And the events throughout the day and for days following would prove this multifold.
It began earlier when—at the cusp of three weeks of having been free of any rape—the man had come into the room, initiated nary any interaction with him, and abruptly grabbed him at the brace, pulling his head back and pouring the beer down his throat. The partial pill came—the one that would induce a drugged state of mild euphoria.
What followed was far more detached in nature than any of his rapes—a begrudging, mandatory task that lacked his captor's full devotion or intimacy or even his violence.
It didn't make sense. Although Spencer couldn't count on anything specific that might urge his captor to rape him, he didn't understand why again, and why like this.
The man didn't use anything to ease the pain and got to the perfunctory rape after many minutes of Spencer waiting. It wasn't long at all until he became flaccid, and it wasn't much longer after that that he pulled away and then left.
In turn, these actions left his sprawled victim aching, confused, and feeling dirtier than he'd felt since any of these violations had started. Upon the absence of the kinder touches on his skin—the thumb tapping, the lingering holds, the grasping of his ankle when he would sit with him after the bathing—he felt used, felt like his captor had wished to be doing anything else than be with his victim—even when violating him.
It wasn't even a minute gone past the man leaving that the woman was at the bed, urging him to remove his clothes, untethering and retethering him, and then ushering him to bathe.
That was where he found himself now, aching as he eased himself to the bottom of the tub, and aching with an inner turmoil.
What had he done to deserve this? Why had the man left so abruptly? Had he sent his wife to clean up the mess he made or his victim, or had she been in waiting?
Would he at least return later and sit with him?
Even as the towel was gliding over his skin, he barked a laugh at this last thought, and the towel left his thigh abruptly.
You expect too much from these people.
Upon the towel returning, he shook his head.
They don't care. They don't care for you. You're going crazy if you think they do. Absolutely crazy.
When the woman was done bathing him, she led him out the tub and began to towel him dry.
You don't care for someone that's disposable to you.
Did they, though? If they—if they cared at all, would they hurt him as they did?
He felt wretched. These passing weeks had wrenched him into highs and lows, in places of growing contentment and those of self-loathing, in longings for more and in desires to be free of everything. With another hair coloring and trim just a few days before that shared mourning, he was a little less Spencer Reid and a little more whatever was this pathetic existence.
That intimate conversation with the man had reawakened a trickle of hope. Not being killed despite knowing that he should have been by this time—that promise of being kept—these had urged him to wait just a little longer on a rescue that he knew wasn't coming, to continue to cooperate, to flow and adapt.
Perhaps his mistake had been trusting people at all. These people weren't going to keep him. And no one was coming for him. This was the reality. It was disappointing and enervating to circle to the same conclusions ad nauseam. It was why he preferred being drugged and . . . and escaping what he could of this.
Then there would be no guilt, because worse than that small glimmer of hope was that that conversation had further endeared him to his captor of all things. The sorrow he felt for the two just a week before while they were mourning was genuine and continued to build a foundation of empathy.
He was led to the bed.
Maybe the rape is a reminder for me—a reminder of his complete possession of me. A reminder that whatever we discussed . . . meant nothing to him. That I'm no one, just as he said. That this is unilateral and not bilateral.
And he shook his head to perish the thought. No. No. That wasn't true. He knew it wasn't true. It just couldn't be.
But what use was it to quantify what these people were when all it did was highlight how truly messed up he was—a person who would fall into a cycle of abuse, acceptance, a need for validation, a false fantasy that things would get better?
With a hand on his shoulder, he was eased to lay prone atop a few towels spread over the bed sheets after his leg was properly shackled. And then the hands rubbed his tender posterior.
He winced and trembled, fisting the towels when her moistened fingers dipped between his buttocks, and she applied her salve where the agony burned. His hands went down to cup himself, and the tips of her fingers brushed against his own.
In the face of what he'd endured earlier, this compounded the wretchedness within.
This was what he'd noticed within the days after he'd attempted to escape—only in the occasions after he was raped—that her moistened fingers pressed in just a little deeper past the tender ring of muscles—a fingertip and then to her knuckle, two fingertips, and then two knuckles—lingered unnecessarily for five seconds then eight when she would apply her ointment. Or her fingers would trickle past his perineum and shift and curl around his scrotum.
The first time either of these happened, he thought it had been a slip; he'd hitched his breath in shock, clenching up or cupping his genitals, and then her fingers fluttered away.
Except, even after the assaults had stopped, her fingers had not.
He knew the statistics on this, that a high percentage of female offenders—the exact number of which eluded him now—suffered serious physical or sexual abuse as children.
While there was a codependency between these two captors and they were co-offending, this woman was assertive in her own right, and he knew—Spencer knew for a fact —that she was not coerced into taking part in these crimes. In the beginning he may have thought so, but time, experience, and increased intimacy taught him better. She was just as complicit. She was doing this, specifically, of her own volition. In the privacy these two would share, her hands weren't forced.
Three main classifications of female sexual offenders with a fourth rarely recognized, and this woman might fall under that small, unrecognized group, and then within the smaller percentage of offenders with adult male victims. A specific needle within a pile of needles among a factory full of needles. Not an impossibility, but a rarity.
The complete power and domination over a man gave her a warped sense of pleasure. This may have built over time with the previous victims, and it may have even started with her own son and her own husband in controlling, possessive micro-gestures that weren't necessarily sexual in nature. Even seeing her husband's dominance over their victims could increase this inclination. It was a deviance, too—not uncommon, and not an impossibility among female serial killers. And he'd slipped through every crack and ended up here in this dark crevice with two messed up people.
He'd at least thought that with this woman he would be free of this kind of assault. He had grown to find a contentment in her presence. But the onus was purely on him. In viewing her as nurturing and passive over time despite deciding in the beginning of his captivity that she was just as dangerous as her male counterpart and that he would maintain his vigilance, he had formed the image of someone who was more one-dimensional—one who lacked the negative traits that all complex humans embodied, the multitudes that all humans could contain.
He didn't want this. He never did, and he tried to rationalize again and again that this wasn't happening, but it was, and it started with the very first bath. It was only a matter of time, then, before her hands might become more exploratory or before she would increase this deviousness.
Had anything at all ever been innocent with her, or had he mistaken her touches for something kind? Had she manipulated him so adroitly that he'd not seen this? Or . . . had his compliance awoken something in her? His status as someone of considerable power brought to such a low? His sexual dysfunction? The man had said they were keeping him; he'd said she wouldn't let him go. So this was mutual.
He refused to believe that he'd misinterpreted things before. He couldn't have—not from her. And yet here it was in his face, and he gave another bitter, misplaced titter at his own denial.
When she was done, she pulled away, and—after returning—she went through the ritual of clothing him herself instead of having him do it. She then sat on the bed, rested his head on her lap, and ran her fingers through his hair along with a towel. When done, she replaced his brace with the dry one. He had obediently kept his eyes covered with the fabric. She resumed weaving her fingers through his hair with one hand.
He didn't know how, at one point, he had ever come to find comfort in her touch, and didn't know how, still, when it wasn't this, he clung onto the benign touches.
And it seemed today that she wouldn't wait any longer to be bolder, for as she slowly rubbed her hand over his side, the warm, moist fingers dipped under the t-shirt and rubbed across his skin below his navel, the tips trailing at the hem of his pants and crawling.
His tears were caught in the suede covering his eyes as his hands shook.
He was as he had feared when he'd first interacted with them: an object for their gratification. A mere object.
He thought, by this time that he was—
More—
Something like a fist closed around his chest.
Shame flooded through him. He had wanted something more from her than this. Was it wrong that he'd wished for anything good from them? To be treated as her—as their—
He was so tired of all these damned emotions. Just—so very tired. He wanted this to end. He wanted to be free of all of this—these conflicting feelings that he knew to be wrong. They were.
She stopped, and she pulled away to sit at the edge of the bed. She had him do the same, turning him to her. He winced in pain, and she wedged his pillow beneath his bottom. She tapped his hands, and he angled himself away from her, tucking his hands into his lap.
He didn't want to talk to her. He couldn't.
She tapped again with one hand while rubbing his leg. With another tap, her fingers brushed over his forehead before tucking her palm under his jaw and squeezing gently with her fingertips.
His face heated and his throat thickened.
The person that was assaulting him just minutes before was gone, replaced by this one who he—
He—
His chin quivered. Disgusting. Honestly just disgusting. Spencer Reid, you're garbage. A dog returning to its vomit.
He hated this. He hated it. In his heart, he shirked every disgusting touch from them, and yet the tender touches were longed for.
He laughed again. Damn weak. He was weak. He was. Weak and honestly pathetic.
She eventually pulled away from him and tapped his hands. Resigned, he breathed out and raised his hands.
"You keep laughing, but I can tell that you're hurting, —-— boy. I don't like seeing you like this. I love you too much to see you like this."
He tilted his head down and his breath stuttered out after a throat-bobbing swallow.
"I only want you to be happy. It will take time, but it will come once you're better and you can come back to me. Tell me what's hurting you. We always talk."
He couldn't help but snort. His nose flared as a small, dangerous thing sparked within him, and he found his hands shaking as she claimed to love him, as she sought his happiness by soothing over his hurt—that which she and her husband caused.
"If it's because of what happened earlier, don't worry. Your father loves you. I know it hurts, but it's necessary."
His brain stuttered and he couldn't help but tilt his head further in her direction.
"Bullshit," he barked out in a laugh.
The floodgates of a foreign and indignant ire were released.
He wrenched his hands away from the woman and they clenched over his lap tightly. He was unable to give way to a response at first. Blood was rushing—he could hear and feel it rushing to his head so quickly that it felt afire along with his chest. Every limb was aflame. His skin tickled, his leg bounced up and down without letup, and he couldn't stop the rush of magma flooding out of his mouth:
"Fuck you." He paused. Voice still low, he continued. He wanted to cry, but he could only laugh. "Mm? Fuck you. And fuck your rapist husband. You let him do this to me because he can't have sex with you otherwise, don't you? Or does it not happen at all?"
Again, he paused, and he was trembling. He felt a terrible trill go through him. His lip quirked to convey his disgust—with himself, with them. "Some marriages only stay together when either party permits extramarital affairs. Is that it? You let him rape men? And you play nurse afterwards? You hunted me for him, right? Is this some depraved way for you to get something out of this, too? Is there something else to this?"
The woman was drawing away from him; the knee was pulling back. The strange, hybrid mix of rage and the absolute absurdity of this all resulted in something explosive. His own voice swelled, muffled in his own head.
"I'm supposed to be your dead son. Did you let your husband rape him too? Did your husband rape your sick son? Did you tell him that it was necessary?"
His throat ached, and his eyes burned with hurt. He swallowed, tilting his head down, and his voice was but a whisper.
"Do you plan on raping me, too? Did you do it to your son? You're both of you sick, sick sons of bitches."
With another weak laugh, shaking lips, heat swelling behind his nose and eyes, and a quivering voice, he strained the words out.
"Hurry this up and kill me, please. Please, I can't do this anymore."
It was out. It was said, and there was no way for him to take the words back now that they were released.
He gripped his shaking hands into his brace and doubled over with his face pressed into his knees, trembling in unhinged, profound anger and confusion and abject misery, rocking, groaning, grounding out broken sentences through gritted teeth repeatedly:
"I hate this. I hate this. I . . . I hate you for doing this to me. I never wanted this. I never wanted to become like this. I don't want to be like this. God, god, I hate being this!"
He shouldn't have been surprised that she would retaliate but hissed when his head was pulled up. Her fingers scratched at the medical tape of his NG tube before ripping it off his skin and wrenching the tube from within him. He cried out and clasped his face, putting his hand over his nose, shivering at the feeling of having that thing taken out of him so forcefully.
And then the pressure changed as the door to his prison was shut.
He sat back in the bed, leaned against the wall, and his trembling hands braced over his mouth in anxious anticipation.
That was—
That was bad.
"Oh my god."
It was dangerous, and while he knew where the outburst had come from, he was always able to keep himself in check. He'd never erupted with such invectives, ever in his life. It wasn't at all like him. It was as he'd spoken with the man weeks ago—unleashed those words and let them out into the universe. But this time—oh, this was much worse.
He was at the end of his tether.
They could truly kill him. This was worse than when he'd rejected the woman as the mother—maybe even worse than when he'd tried to escape. These were confrontational denunciations and accusations he'd hurled—not only against his captors but towards the son he was to have represented. He maligned their whole dynamic—their whole foundation—within days of them having mourned their son.
Yes, indeed, he may have just said the very things that would bring about his death.
"Why? Why didn't you keep your damn mouth shut?"
In a burst of thought, he scrambled from the bed to the floor, got onto his knees, and reached under the bed to grasp at where the chains coiled below. He pulled their lengths out as far as he could. Calculate according to their lengths—there might be a way. There might be a way to asphyxiate himself with his own chains and let it be done and he wouldn't have to—
Oh, but Henry. Henry and—god, the visages just trickled. Henry and Jennifer and Will. If he did this, then—
"Fuck!" His hands gripped into the brace again as he nearly bent double. "Oh, god. Fuck. Fuck!"
They would surely kill him.
He sat at the edge of the bed and stared blindly at his hands. He would give them his hands to lash.
Ten and five. And five and five and—
He would take as many lashes as he needed so long as they didn't kill him.
He would take ten lashes and fifty to live. Ten and one hundred to be spared. Ten and however many more not to be put into the earth.
Or would he?
Maybe it was better if this ended and—
He'd asked for this, hadn't he? Maybe this had been a good thing.
His head kicked back, and he released something caught between a caw of a laugh and a desperate sob.
He shouldn't think this way. He shouldn't entertain the thought. But he was at his wit's end. Death just might be the sweetest relief.
Left with nothing to do, he sat on the floor with his back against the bed with his hands rub rub rubbing at his thigh. He waited for an hour. And then another. And nearly another, before the air changed.
Upon that waft of cooler air against his skin, he began to tremble in earnest, unadulterated fear.
A hand—that of the woman—tucked under his chin, while—yes, the man, too, was here. The chains tethering his wrists were removed before a shorter link of chains tethered them together.
The woman released his chin, tapped his hands, and he shakily lifted them.
Her hands tucked under his. "Go ahead and talk," she said to him. "We want to hear your voice."
It was a trick, and he wouldn't rise to it.
He was eased to his back upon the ground, the length of the chain was grabbed, and his hands were pulled beyond his head and kept there. The woman sat astride him, and his breath stuttered. When her fingers gripped his face in a vice-like grip, when metal was pressed at his lips, he let out a hum, for it wasn't the metal of a Jennings gag, but the sliver of the sharp tip of a blade pressed under his chin.
In the next seconds, but for the skimming of that blade pressing at his lips, his chin, his chest and belly, and—with the slide of her body atop his—at his palms and fingers, his mind went blank. There was no pressure beyond its brush on his flesh and above his clothes, but he whimpered in terror, held his tongue, thought of Marion, kept his lips closed.
He was going to die today. She was going to kill him.
With bracing breaths, he endeavored to calm his racing heart when she sat back up, when the blade tap tap tapped at his lips before pulling away.
He waited and waited, breaths racing as images of the other victims flashed before him—Noah, Victims B and C in the forest facing the sky, in photographs, in the mortuary—without hands or a tongue, bruised and battered.
Oh, he wasn't ready for this. He was weak. Weak.
When the metal touched his lips again, he flinched, let out a desperate whimper, trembled. But it wasn't the same. It was the gag this time, clicking against his teeth, pressing against the sides of his mouth, prying his mouth open. He mewled.
She wasted no time: the extractor was pressed against his lower right canine, and out it was plucked like a persistent weed.
He only let out an aborted cry, pained, and the woman forced his head to remain still even as he tried to turn when the blood began to fill his mouth.
Was the tooth better than his tongue?
The blade had been a warning, and he understood. She held his life in her hands in equal sum—if not in overabundance—to her husband. Marion's life, too, had been in her hands.
Next would be the salve to wash away the blood and bacteria. Except she lifted away from him, his upstretched arms were given relief as the chains were let go, and he was pulled up to his knees.
A finger—a thumb that he knew to be the man's—rubbed along his bloody lips in circles, bottom and top, and then tap tap tapped. The finger dipped in between them, stopped at the wall of his teeth.
Oh no, no. He couldn't. His heart plundered into his quivering stomach.
This was one thing he had been spared these few months.
He'd designed not to speak a single word, but with the dawning of understanding that came with the press of that thumb against his lips, his resolve crumbled. He tilted his head to the side, pivoted.
"Don't do this, please," he begged in a soft, breathless whimper. "Please." His fingers were spread out in front of him with his plea as he blindly waved them in the air. The blood leaked from his lips as he begged—begged to be spared this. He touched a shoe, pawed his way to the fabric of jeans, and grasped up onto a shirt in a firm and desperate grip, tilting his head up.
"Please, it was a mistake. It was a mistake. I meant nothing by it." He swallowed, drank down his own blood, and then he gasped out, "I'm not well. I'm not well and it's"—he swallowed again and blurted out—"it's changing my behavior. Repeated . . . repeated strangulation can cause behavioral shifts and I—I'm not like this. This isn't me. You know me. You know me. I'm sick. I'm—please. I didn't. Please, don't make me do this; I can't," he supplicated, head tilted down. "I can't. I can't."
It was the woman, for she twisted behind him, her hand laced from his lips, smearing the flowing blood from his mouth to his nose and cheeks and across his covered eyes before her hand went up, up into the brace, gripping it and whatever roots of hair she could and tilting his head back.
He couldn't stop the pleading, the shaking. He moved to cover his mouth with trembling hands. They were ripped down by the man, and upon trying to lift them again, he found that he couldn't, realized that the man just might be stepping on the length to keep his hands from moving.
And then he reasoned to himself. A pinprick-sized beam of rational light dawned over him. If this were indeed to happen, he may need something that would obliterate the upcoming memory, cover over the—he gagged in forethought and horror—the upcoming taste.
"Beer," he burst out. "Give me beer, please. Let me drink it, please, please."
No such favor was granted to him.
He was waiting tremulously for something else to touch his lips, knowing inevitably that he would be forced to do this. He clenched his jaws and tears leaked out of his eyes, soaking into the suede as a rushing wave of nausea swept through him.
"Please, don't make me do this. I can't, I can't, please, I can't. I can't. I ca—I . . . I, I, I, I—" His mind blanked as he tried to progress his thoughts. His hands flexed and gripped and rubbed mightily against the thighs of his sweatpants as far as they could as his body practically convulsed with his vibrations, as he could only vocalize the singular word that he was stuck on.
He was still on his knees, now on his haunches, teetering, and the woman, standing, pulled him to her body in a fierce embrace, her arms gripping his head against her torso as she tapped his cheek in a tender manner.
Good boy, it said, he knew, just like that touch always did.
But she then pushed his body away, holding him so tightly by his hair and the brace with both of her hands that he stood at his knees to relieve the ache. His mouth and cheek were suddenly struck. He howled, attempted to pull his hands up, but the chain locked. He couldn't protect his face. His mouth.
Maybe they might spare him an indignity, for he knew—it was a belt that stung his mouth, and then again. He screamed in agony. He couldn't turn away; the hands gripping the brace held steady. Even when he fell to his haunches, the unforgiving grasp held.
Ten and five.
It didn't get to ten or even five, but the woman shook his head.
Again, his jaw was gripped tightly by the man. With that same hand, the pad of the thumb pressed against his bruised and aching lips again, mashing them against his teeth. The digit dipped between his lips and the thumb then rubbed his teeth, pressing at the new gap before pulling away.
It was inevitable. He'd not been spared. This was still to happen. His chin shook, the hand locked under his jaw tilted his head further, and he shrank back—or tried—but they both held firm.
The musk hit him—of sweat, of flesh trapped in heat. His nose flared and he tilted his head as far as it would go with two hands gripping him in place, gagging before he locked his jaws and sealed his lips.
Bite it off.
Yes, he would bite it off, rip it from the man's body and that would end his violations. If that man's penis went near his mouth, there was no question that he would bite it off. And yet he couldn't stop the shaking of his head, the clawing fear.
One of the woman's hands left the brace, which she kept pulling back, and her hand covered his nose. He breathed through clenched teeth and waited.
And then it came, yet not as expected. A hot, wet stream splashed against his teeth and lips, leaked into his mouth, and he was mortified as his first taste of saline, bitter urine hit him, filled his mouth.
And the woman, undeterred, unfazed by the act, rubbed it all over his lips.
Spencer coughed, and then it all came up like a broken spigot. No sooner had he retched than his head was slammed into the ground where it rebounded, darkened vision flashing white. It was lifted and slammed again. She went for another attempt to thrust his head against the ground, lifting it up—but the motion was stopped before she simply let his head fall into his own vomit.
Barely able to move from the swimming and pounding ache in his head, she kept him there on the floor—head being ground into the concrete, nose and mouth mashed in the vomit—as her husband finished urinating on him, aiming at his mouth and face. He held his breath, clenched his lips until it was over, and even when it was, he held his breath longer still.
There he remained, and his leg was wrenched from him, stretching his body straight like a pinned worm as the chain was padlocked. There was no slack for him to curl his body and he was left there to stew in his vomit and in the urine.
The heat in the room was kicked high, the scents were offensive, and he moaned in discomfort and the debilitating, dizzying pounding of his head.
—
When the two returned after hours like this, the chains were released from the padlock, his ankle was untethered, he was stripped nude, and while he sought to apologize, a spray of heated water fell upon him, cleaning him of the filth. He jolted when he was rolled to his front when hands spread his buttocks and the water sprayed again.
And then he was dragged onto the bed, whereupon he was pushed face down onto the mattress.
"Please," Spencer attempted to say in a scratchy gasp, "Please stop. I'm so—I'm sorry. I won't say it again. I won't."
They didn't.
The woman pressed his head against the pillow, the bed dipped, and a great weight was atop him, across his back. His breaths wheezed in difficult puffs as she pinioned him. He couldn't expand his lungs. His hands were plucked by the man, attached to the two ends of the head frame. They wouldn't be able to move. The same was done to his ankles.
"Oh, god, please."
But she lifted his aching head before smothering his face into the pillow. Lifted and smothered. Lifted and smothered. He knew it at this moment—something—someone had stayed her hand before, or he might be dead right now with his head a mess of flesh and crushed bone and mashed grey matter.
She lifted away from him then, and he gasped out a breath in relief. That relief didn't last long.
Instead, something thin fell upon his damp backside, striking repeatedly from back to thighs. It was unbearable; he hollered and tried to twist and to curl and to protect himself from the stings, but he couldn't. Nausea swelled up and coiled around his stomach.
He knew that his voice was projecting like a wraith, for he could hear his pleas resonating from within, but he certainly felt the very moment when the muscles in his throat shifted in a way they never had before, and he knew it would be days before it would be recovered.
He was left alone again—panting and keening in pain, head pounding, trembling, the cord now wrapped loosely around his neck, beseeching their favor and forgiveness with a paper thin voice.
"Please," he would cry. "Please—it was a mistake. I'm sorry. Please."
But was this it? Was this how Noah had been tortured before he was killed? Lashed like this and garroted the days prior?
The heightened state of his dread was so great that he sought escape through sleep, from which he awakened multiple times in terror as he was assaulted by horrifying dreams—of hands tightening around his throat, of his eyes being plucked, of Henry being here, of his tongue being removed, of being hacked limb from limb.
—*—
He was torn from the shoddy rest at the sensation of the bed dipping.
They were both on it. His face was tilted up and back by the man until he thought his neck might snap, heard the internal crick crick crick as the joints popped while fingers pressed at his lips. Tablets were pushed into his mouth before the mouth of a bottle was pressed against his lips. It wasn't beer, but water. And then another tablet was pressed at his lips, and then another, and another. He coughed and sputtered with more water but swallowed it all down. He couldn't know what all these were.
And then the woman sat astride his sore upper back again.
"Please," he panted out. Her weight left him struggling to breathe, his lungs unable to expand fully.
Caged within her tightening legs, he flinched when her hands patted his face, her palm peeling away and his skin stretching beneath it, sticky with sweat. The flitting fingers rubbed against his forehead before trailing down to his neck, kneading the column of flesh in both hands. His moan trailed into a whine.
"Please don't do this," he begged. "I won't say it again. I won't. Please, don't do this. You'll kill me. You'll kill me if you do this."
Pat pat.
Her fingers fell away, but in the next moment the cord that had been wrapped about his neck began to tighten. Understanding, he braced, fingers tightening. It constricted around his neck until he couldn't breathe, until his head nearly burst as his limbs shook, twisting and pulling futilely to dislodge her, to release himself. Just when he thought he would certainly die, she released her tight hold of the garrote, and she let him breathe.
"Please, no—no more," he gasped in sobs, throat burning, using whatever voice he knew he had. "Please, please, stop."
She didn't.
She repeated it a second time and then a third—
"You'll kill me. This—will kill me. Please, pl—"
—and again and again until he could no longer count, and his face was covered in his own spittle and mucus as he kept gasping and wheezing for air during her onslaught.
Between the phases of being able to breathe or passing out and while being garroted, she pitched back and forth atop him—her pelvis undulated, her legs twisted, writhed, clutched at his sides and—
Upon reawakening, the sheets below him were soaked from his voided bladder. But he could breathe. His gasps scratched out; his coughs were aborted. He moaned and wheezed while his head pulsed, while his body was racked in shivers. A fog settled above him.
The weight was still atop him, shifting, repositioning in the same manner that everything was phasing in and out of his senses. But after a lapse of cognition, his tethered ankles were now free, and he tried to turn, to bend his legs; he tried to grip his toes into the sheets to shift, curl into himself. Her weight was as good as the waist restraint, pinning him down to the bed. He couldn't move.
Two knees pressed against his inner thighs.
He wept. He sobbed. They're not done. They're not done, they're not done, they're not done. This is still—
The man's legs shimmied and wedged between his own before folding down, gripping him—wrenching him back as the woman's weight unpinned him for a moment—until his hips were resting on the thighs. And back she came to sit on him, straddling him. The swell of the man's phallus rested above his cleft. Hot and moistened smaller hands—those of the woman—skimmed above his skin, massaging his buttocks, kneading.
Her thumbs dipped past his sore muscles where he'd been lashed, spreading him in the seconds before the tip of the penis nudged at him and just waited.
She's giving me to him. It was the only clear thought he could make. I'm her offering. Oh, god. I'm—I'm her—
Spencer's throat rumbled and vibrated as the man then tore his way into him until they were flush. Neither the woman nor her hands ever left. Instead, as her husband assaulted him violently, she pitched again above him—rocking, bucking as her hands moved atop him, stealing his breath as her weight crushed him.
Sickened, horrified, and overwhelmed, Spencer retched as an uncomfortable heat pooled toward his groin from the intense stimulation. He was only able to survive the unrelenting torture for mere seconds more before every muscle in his body slackened and he finally, blessedly, blacked out.
—
With a jerk and a heaving gasp of air, Spencer was encased in an unfilled tub, his fingers reaching to his neck to release himself from the strangling. No such thing was happening to him. The four hands touching him weren't near his neck, but massaged and washed him tenderly, as if the great injustice that had just been done to him had been the workings of his own horrid imagination and not at their doing. The pain, though, was real. Everything was rough, and his head pounded.
They worked him thoroughly: they kneaded, rubbed, soothed, massaged, cleaned with gentle, loving attention.
He gagged again, unable to vomit, and his chest burned while his stomach cramped. But they knew what they were doing as they worked at his flesh, as the hands stroked and prodded and dipped and pinched and squeezed. He trembled throughout it all until the trembling was twitching; he twitched throughout it all until the twitching was spasmodic—until the spasms stopped and he was overcome with that near coma-inducing, blissful comfort coiling deeply within him and pulsing through every limb.
Eventually, there was the same intense, building urge to urinate that needed to be gratified, and he sobbed from the painful fire in the undertow of something that was transgressively pleasurable. His breath came out in stutters, dragging in scratchily, and he thought he might vomit from the sheer intensity of it all.
Warm water was merely sprayed upon his twitching torso, his legs, his sensitive groin.
When he could think clearly, which wasn't clear at all, he curled within the tub, let out a single, rasping cry.
He couldn't do this anymore. He truly couldn't.
He wanted to forget who he was. He wanted to be nothing. He wanted to forget this existence whenever he could.
And he especially didn't want to be found.
If he were, then he would have to heal, to rip off this bandage and relive this horror, dig into every corner of himself to hollow, carve out, and reveal just how disturbed and broken he truly was in order to become whole again. But he knew he wouldn't be able to. He hadn't been whole for many years—may never have been—and so he just wanted to break apart, to burn up, or disintegrate into fine dust and particles and float into the blessed nothingness so he could become a part of this universe, where he knew she was.
His boneless body was dragged to and then set prone on the new, clean sheets of his mattress.
They continued.
He was tended by the woman and the man: every wound and aching muscle was massaged with oil or given ointment—again, the woman's fingers dipped with her ointment and pressed beyond the aching muscles, and he trembled and bore down and fought not to retch at the pressure. But the hands returned to his skin, and twenty fingers worked and worked and flitted over him. He moaned and wept and rolled his hips in agony, curling into himself when his bladder pinched and his urine poured out in unfulfilling droplets, seeping into the towel below him. It truly hurt.
He wasn't clothed before being restrained. Instead, he was turned to face the room due north, a weight dipped the bed down, and his head was pillowed in the woman's lap. Overcome with a need to hide his nakedness and protect himself, he curled his legs to his chest. There was no loose hand above his ankle.
His body vibrated, and his head vacillated between sensations of light and airy or heavy and pounding as dizziness continued to swim around him.
Of all the cruel punishments he'd received to this point, nothing could compare to the absolute degradation and depravity he had been subjected to in the recent hours.
This had been meted out in deliberate waves, doled out not just for his vocalization, but for that condemnation he'd said against them and their son. The reminder that his life was in their hands, the oral torture and humiliation, the whipping, and then the sexual punishment—debasing him, becoming aroused by his suffering, being presented as nothing more than a bestowal from one to the other and making clear where he fell in their dynamic—these were all in direct retaliation against everything he'd said.
Had he not been more to them?
The woman slipped away from him and grasped his hands as he was pulled up to sitting. He teetered as the full pain in his posterior threaded up his back and in his stomach. The man was his anchor, keeping him upright, a hand clamped around the back of his neck.
She sat in front of him—he could tell by the press of her knee against his. He leaned forward and his hands curled over his belly, covering his groin. She gave insistent tugs until they were freed. Dignity, it seemed, was something that he wasn't afforded.
She took his hands into hers and kissed both before intertwining her fingers in his. She kissed and she kissed; she rested the back of his loosened hands against her cheeks. Finally, she tucked her hands in his palms.
"So. Tell me. How was that? What do you say?" she asked pleasantly, for she drew the smiling U into his bare thigh. The muscles there twitched.
They still want to hear me. He had no voice left with which to say anything. He knew this. Still, his only choice was to obey, so he unstuck his tongue.
Before a word could come out, she squeezed his tender face gently, put her finger on his achy lips, and then tucked her hands back under his.
"No. Tell me the correct way."
He breathed out. His hands shook. "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry . . . who?"
He sucked in a breath and his chin quivered. "Sorry, mother."
She tapped his leg to acknowledge his splendid answer. "And who else?"
He trembled and swallowed painfully. This was cruelty. It was a cruelty unlike anything he had experienced before. He wished to undo all of what happened today and revert to yesterday, to a week prior. He would take all the benevolence and growing acceptance rather than this.
One hand rested on his jaw, the thumb massaging his sensitive cheek. Her fingers moved up, though, and gripped in his hair and the brace, wrenching his head down and toward his lap. He gritted his teeth and hissed, heat pooling behind his eyes as fear—that of what more they both could do—lanced through him. The hand let go, and the words were repeated after a rough tap tap.
"And—who—else?"
"Father." Before he might experience any other pangs, he corrected himself for the vagueness: "Sorry, father."
"And?"
And? What else is she . . .
"You misbehaved. We don't want to discipline you like this. We only do these things because we care for you. We correct you because we care for you. So, what do you say?"
He was aghast. Bile sat at the back of his throat. His tears soaked into the suede.
"Thank you."
It was the correct thing to say, for she tapped his leg again to acknowledge his answer.
Tap-tap. "You didn't tell me how it was. How do you feel?" Another U drawn on his thigh. "Did you enjoy that? We prepared it just for you. Did you like it?"
He was sure that he would vomit. She didn't want the truth. It was all lies. That's what she wanted.
"Yes."
Tap-tap. "Yes what?"
"Yes. Yes, I liked it." His body began to sway and teeter as memory clawed at him.
'You do what we say. You take what we give. All the time. You don't complain.'
His leg was tapped again—praised for such a splendid answer. Her hands tucked under his. "Good. There will be more."
That assertion sent his heart and head pounding.
"And what else?"
What else? What else was she looking for? He waited for her to explicate. She didn't. What else had he said that—
'I hate you for doing this to me!'
His breath came out shakily and he whimpered out a close-lipped gag, tucking his head and shaking it. He couldn't.
The hand returned to his hair, and the fingers gripped. He hummed—or tried to—at the pricking sensation, bringing a shaking hand up to hers. Her other hand clenched around his face and his stomach pinched as his breathing sped.
She pulled away; her hands tucked under his shaking hands. "And? We do this because we love you. Don't you love us?"
He nodded a trembling, curled fist. "Yes."
Tap tap. "Tell us."
He tilted his head. His nostrils flared. His fingers shook. But lifting a hand, he said it.
"I love you."
When he didn't fear them, when their hands weren't cruel and didn't debase him, there had been truth in this last declaration. Or at least there had been for a brief period. The warmth and kindness was something he couldn't deny. It was preferable. If it returned—that magnanimous kindness and affection—would these words ring true? Or would it never be the same?
Nevertheless, it was the first time he made the declaration. He felt like he was teetering between two worlds. A niggling in the back of his head, an itch in his brain that demanded it be scratched. It told him to resist this, told him there was a remnant of elsewhere, of before, of otherness. He wanted to shut it away and continue to flow—elsewhere and otherness were unattainable.
It was the correct thing to say, though, for she once again tapped his leg in acknowledgement. He sighed out in relief.
Fingers brushed through his hair, and his hands were taken, fingertips kissed again and again. Her lips moved to his knuckles, the heels of his hands, his inner wrist above the restraints. She brought his hand below her clavicle, resting it on her clothed left breast to feel her heartbeat before she brought it back up to her lips and kissed his hand again.
His hands trembled. His body was not his own.
And yet he found his heart clamoring in his chest because there was something missing from her adulation, and from the man. Something just wasn't right. It was before him, but he couldn't see it, so the fear remained.
Where there was fear, where there was pain, he sought escape.
—
He was on his right side, the cuff was back around his ankle, and he was left alone, still nude. He tried to purge his inundated mind of all the coalescing thoughts until it blanked, and it wasn't black, or grey, but that comforting white.
He saw her.
There Maeve was before him in a warm glow. She held her hands out to him, like she'd done for these past months. This time, unlike all the others, he pressed his hand forward, didn't pull away from her, he stood, and didn't resist as she took both of his hands and wrapped them around her. They two just stepped in slow circles. She fit so well against him.
He would get lost in the fantasy. And when he did, she—a ghost—materialized in full, while the others waxed but mostly waned as fading remnants.
—
Spencer didn't have to find that escape on his own, though. Before long, he was re-intubated, and for several days he was kept in a relaxed and mild drugged state in which his reality was gently fractured between awareness, a euphoric calm, or a dissociative blur. He couldn't know if any lapses of consciousness were from the drugs or from a concussion.
Still nude, he couldn't leave the bed but could shift and sit up and turn. There was no sheet to cover his shame and debasement. When he was taken to the toilet, he was dragged upon the ground by the brace on his head until he could scramble up to stand and walk.
Windows of clarity pushed at the edges of his mind beyond the gentle rainfall as the hours passed, and he was ever more aware of what was being done to him—of what he was suffering—and he went back to counting the seconds and minutes until he couldn't.
As promised, the punishment continued. It was the wrath and fury meted out by the woman that panged him most, for her assaults were long, cruel, excruciating, and vulgar; her fingers wrenched at, crushed, and slapped at him, leaving him in incomprehensible agony. If it wasn't by her hands, then it was by a foreign object that she expressed her absolute mastery and possession of him. No ounce of kindness was spared during this.
Spencer's voice—crackling in its healing—would fizzle away, breaking during his piercing cries and bellowing screams of pain and pleas of clemency.
In frequent pauses during her violence, she would ask him if he liked it, and he would tell her that he did; asked if it felt good, and he would tell her that it did; asked if he wanted more, and he would tell her that he did. Denials and a bitten tongue prolonged and amplified her torment.
Afterwards—and only afterwards—he was raped by her husband to top off what she had started—an additional reminder that he was owned by the two. No beer or additional drugs were given to him.
She would stay.
She would stay, and her hands lingered wherever she wished over his exposed skin while her husband abused him.
Being so exposed and unprotected during these misdeeds caused utter shame and disgust to penetrate and overpower every thought and sensation. It made all the previous assaults in comparison bearable, longed for.
When they were done with him, she would then garrote him with the electrical cord. He passed out every time. He couldn't know if it was once or multiple times that he was asphyxiated.
And then he was always bathed afterwards by them both. Together, the two massaged and soothed him and gave him ointment in the tub and on the bed, their fingers working at him until he was melting and mewling and trembling and weeping in the tub or on the towels beneath him upon the bed, or both.
—*—
For the first few days, while Spencer laid naked on the bed after being cleaned and massaged, the woman would draw the words out of him—
'What do you say? We did this to correct your bad behavior.'
'We do this because we care for you.'
'Did you enjoy all of that; how do you feel?'
'Don't you love us?'
—and the man would bear him up so he didn't tip over.
To this, Spencer's weak, shaking hands would move with muscle memory: I'm sorry and Thank you and I liked it and I love you.
Less than a handful of days in, she didn't even need to ask anything of him, and he needed no prompting once he was brought to the bed: he would apologize to them, he would thank them, he would profess to enjoy it all, he would tell them that he loved them.
Mere minutes later, that cool pump passed through his tubing, and not long after, that gentle, rhapsodic loopiness would wash through him—the one that put him in a painless fog that brushed upon tendrils of white for hours.
As it began, the feelings produced by the mixture of drugs were pleasant and wonderful.
But as the days dragged on, he began seeing vivid, terrifying things before him. They were horrific and violent, and what was worse was that he was often the one enacting many of those horrors in the things he saw to memory-ghosts of the people he once cherished—using his own sidearm, his own fists or hands, using a shaft of wood, using a knife.
He wept and he wept.
—
If he was right, it all finally stopped after a week or more. The fog that settled was prevalent, but the baths gave him a vague idea.
He was wrecked inside and out—ruined and tenderized and not quite human anymore. He had no voice with which to speak due to the screaming and the garroting; his hands seemed like separate entities that acted and spoke of their own volition by rote; his head was constantly pounding and he had dizzy spells; his entire backside was raw, like one giant bruise where the belt or cord often fell; he couldn't sit properly without leaning to one side and curling a hand to his belly to relieve the ache in his anus or groin.
He didn't want this from them. They only did this out of necessity for his uncouth behavior.
And it was by its end that Spencer understood what had been so wrong on that first day—after he was bathed and seated on the bed and made to express how contrite he was, how he appreciated all they'd done for him, how he esteemed their treatment, how he loved them.
Something had been amiss. But then she said it with warm, moistened hands that curled underneath his:
"Very good boy. Very, very good boy. My —-— boy."
They were the simplest words. But he'd missed them. Oh, he was elated to receive such praise from her.
He was awash, in this moment, with that wonderful high that didn't come from any foreign drug but was a byproduct of his own inner chemistry, and everything was correct. He wanted—he needed, craved this commendation. He would do anything for it and not the violence he'd endured.
The chains were lengthened, and the clothes—the privilege of decorum—were returned to him.
The man wasn't quick to leave on this day, though, and Spencer received a reminder and a directive with a tap tap.
"I've been watching Henry and his parents."
Those phantom forms drifted before him. He didn't know what to feel upon their emergence. But the response was automated.
"I'll behave." His hands moved with a slow, frustrating languor, like he was still wading through a thick fog. "I will. I haven't tried anything."
The sentiment was a foreign sensation. Perhaps it might catch on soon.
A clap on his arm.
"You won't ever speak to my wife again the way you spoke to her, will you? I told you many times that you should watch what you say about her, didn't I?"
Spencer nodded.
"Answer me."
"Yes. Yes, you did."
"I told you that you would regret it, didn't I?"
"Yes. I—I'm sorry."
"And I told you not to speak of my son, either."
"You did. Yes, yes, you did. It was a mistake."
"I thought you were smarter than this. Aren't you supposed to be smart?"
Something pierced into Spencer's chest, and he shrank under the imagined gaze of the man. He was foolish. Foolish and selfish. The man wasn't wrong at all.
"It seems you don't care about the boy and his parents."
His body teetered.
"Do you?"
His fingers gripped at the man's hands, squeezed with his indecision.
Henry—especially Henry—was innocent in this. And despite the things he saw in the passing days, he didn't truly wish violence or any harm upon anyone. So he could try. He could. He did care. The fear for their lives, it was real.
He nodded and his hands moved. "I do. I do. You don't have to do anything."
"I don't like repeating myself. I don't want to do this. You're making me do this."
A numb chill swelled in his belly. "Please don't do anything. Please. It's my fault. It won't happen again. There won't be another repetition. I swear it. Please. It wasn't smart of me."
A hand clapped on his leg, and with it came a mixture of relief and of fear.
"It wasn't. There won't be another warning. This is the last. The boy will be ours, and I won't stop with just him and his parents; so pay attention."
He did.
"I will go after Diana."
A visage that had begun to be enveloped by voids pulsed before his eyes—full, realized.
Spencer hummed a long and unsteady, terrified note, voice scratchy and thin from all of the abuse his throat had endured. "Please. Please. Don't do this, please. Please don't hurt them. My—my—"
He found he couldn't use it. He couldn't use the word. Not with her.
"She's sick. Please, please, don't hurt her. None of them. Please, I'll comply. I'll comply with whatever you want. I'll cooperate. None of these things—none of them will ever happen again. You can do whatever you want with me."
Like a viper clamping on its prey, a hand tightened on his face, and that spike of pure dread rushed through him. He brought his hand up, touching the wrist. He didn't know what he said wrong. The hand let go, and he was given a rough tap tap.
"I think you're mistaken. I already do whatever I want to you. And I'll continue to do so. Don't think anything different. What you say has no effect on what I do. It never has. Never."
Spencer's jaw clenched. No. A lie. That was a lie! They understood each other. This man was lying.
"So pay attention: you mess up like this again, and I'll go after all of them—Henry, his parents, Diana. And when I'm done with them, we'll finish what we started with the remaining agents who worked with you when we took you."
Remaining agents—
Oh, god. She was dead. This was confirmation. Alex was dead. She was—she was dead. They would kill the others.
"I know of every single one of them. You understand? There won't be another chance."
Yes, it was catching up to him now, a fuller measure of horror. He swallowed painfully. "I understand. I understand."
"You don't deserve this favor."
"I don't. I don't. I'm sorry. Please. Thank you." He shouldn't leave it there. This man was being generous, and he didn't deserve it. It came far easier than he thought it might:
"I love you."
When a hand clapped on his shoulder, moved to cup his jaw, and squeezed with affection, he nearly melted into it.
And so he knew. He knew. He had deserved this punishment. He had to be better. He'd brought it all upon himself, and his actions put other lives on the line.
The man was right; he didn't even have to mull over it: it wasn't smart at all, and it was selfish. If he'd been better than good, if he'd kept his mouth shut, he wouldn't have received such a punishment, and no one's life would be in danger.
If he'd been better than good, then he wouldn't have angered them. Was there a point, anymore, in quantifying what they were and where he fell? It was so simple from the beginning. All he had to do was accept who they'd wanted him to be. He should have never fought against that crash at all. He should have continued to flow.
With them, there were no untruths, only the basic understanding: behave, and all would go well with him. But he also knew, now—they might keep him, yes, but in their eyes, neither he nor anyone who came before him would ever perfectly replace their son. The closest thing to that might be if they were to bear another child from their own loins.
But he knew what he could be if he allowed himself to melt into water. If he just folded further into himself—let the weight and pressure crush his bones, reshape him, release him. Then he would find that it was never a weight at all, that there was never any confinement, just a transformation into something that bore a close resemblance to that which they yearned.
And he was inclined and eager to give this to them—to make them see him in this light—in whatever capacity.
—
For the days following, Spencer had familiar feelings of lethargy, trembling, hallucinating, disorientation, extreme moodiness, nausea, and an inability to sleep—feelings that he thought were over five years behind him. He was being weaned off the drugs. The added dizziness and head pounding were debilitating.
He didn't want to feel it like this. He would rather they stay, rather that they just kept on with these in his system.
"Please, don't take it away."
He asked her for it, begged her for it, and she told him that she would do what was best for him. For this, he accepted and was grateful. He trusted that whatever she did was with his best intentions in mind.
The horrific, violent hallucinations circled back.
She soothed him, toweling his sweat away, rubbing his back and kissing his knuckles, holding him tightly whenever she was available to do so.
He welcomed it, apologized for causing her trouble, thanked her for caring for him, told her that he liked her attention, told her that he loved her.
He lifted the weight of mother and father from his tongue, and he became water.
—
Mere days after the drugs were beyond his system, Spencer's hair was recolored and trimmed. Less himself, more this.
The dizziness had never left, but was a lingering, constant assault. Coupled with it, he began to hear an awful ringing in his right ear and knew that it was tenacious.
No. Tinnitus.
And with it came a piercing ache that pulsed from his ear to the rest of his head. It all left him nauseated for hours, and he lay upon the bed, curled on his side, groaning and crying, moaning and humming it away. Food didn't stay down at all, and his stomach cramped from the numerous times he vomited.
He lost control of his bladder at times, although he was sure these weren't comorbid. He didn't know if it was an infection, a result of the strangling, or if it was an STI or STD.
Everything pulsed at him for days, sometimes keeping him indolent for hours at a time. He thought many times that despite whatever assurance the father had given him, they might kill him to put him out of his misery or so that they could be done with him and move on to someone less sick. So he pleaded with them to make him better.
Their patience with him was enduring. He couldn't keep his balance, and therefore couldn't walk well. He was unable to do anything for himself: he was carefully assisted to the toilet and back to the bed, held steadily while he sat at the toilet to prevent him from tipping over; on his bath days he was unclothed, helped to and from the tub, then reclothed; he was soothed, massaged, and ointments were spread over him.
He apologized for troubling them, thanked them for helping him, and he told them that he loved them.
—
After many days crawling into another week or more, the constant migraine and the dizziness went away, but he found that sometimes he still became unbalanced, and that the ringing ebbed and flowed.
At some point, he realized that he couldn't hear the ventilation fan quite as well after his baths when they would replace the buds in his ears, and he had to tilt his head and concentrate to hear its whisper.
Sometimes he would stand and he couldn't shut off his brain, which supplied him with the visual feedback that the layout he'd come to conceptualize with his mind's eye was tilting at varying angles, side to side, back to front, diagonally, and so he would tip to the side, or his legs would entangle themselves as he would stumble or clop one in front of him like an ungainly foal when walking to and from the sink or toilet or tub.
Proper balance relied on three things: eyesight, the vernacular system, and proprioception.
Not vernacular. Not vernacular. It wasn't the right word, and it took a few times before he got the right one: vestibular.
Sometimes when he awakened, he had to ease himself up, adjust to the tilting, and he would have to move in slower, more diligent movements, or stand as still as he could in the middle of walking to stop a sudden wave of dizziness. He would grasp the mother or father or lean against the wall or brace his hand against the mattress for better balance, or either of them would have to wrap an arm around him to keep him upright so he wouldn't tumble forward or sideways or collapse.
These weren't in persistent, predictable droves; they just ebbed and flowed.
—
One day, when Spencer stared blindly out the room, he wondered how much damage had been done to him, to his brain. There were so many signs that he just wasn't the same anymore—that he was sick. So sick. Foggy.
Due to a concussion. Or mild cyclical hypoxia.
Not cyclical. Not at all cyclical. He would need to develop some type of system to overcome this thing—this frustrating using-wrong-words thing. What he wanted was at the tip of his brain.
When letterforms flashed within the void before him, he shook them away. They were all jumbled, nonsense, and they wouldn't stay still or remain the same letter in each grid-block. It was dizzying.
This was bad. This was another sign. He began to systematically run through a catalogue of basic information and mentally sound out the individual letters in his mind, and it was distressing.
Of or related to the cerebrum or the brain. You know this.
The word just wouldn't come forth, and he knew—he knew— that it was closely related to cerebrum.
He tried to envision it again, but the letters began spinning on individual axes two-dimensionally, switching into hexadecimal code, which he hadn't at all intended, and he couldn't make sense of it, for it was sporadic and unpatterned.
His head ticked upon the distinguishable whiff of the mother's floral scent, but it was—oh, just rotten. Rotten flowers. And she'd surprised him; he hadn't sensed the air shift to signal someone's arrival, and he waited for her to come to him.
She never did.
He tapped his hand and waited for her to return the gesture upon his hand or leg. When she didn't, he pulsed his hand forward to catch her before him, but his hand fell upon nothing but open air.
A great sense of dread overcame him that he couldn't quite—
His hands braced against the foot frame when that sinking dread gripped him and pulled him down. He was falling. But floating upwards. Falling, but floating.
Strange, very strange— unsettling, new. It was a constant, downward crash.
Am I dying? Am I about to die?
He had the sudden urge to cry out for help but if he did—
Oh, but if—
Fluttering—
—he—
—levitating—
—did—
—yet plundering.
Dying. Dying—dying—I'm dying. There was no doubt. This was a feeling unlike anything he had ever experienced. And he was cold. Wet. Clammy. His hands were clammy. And he—
His trembling hands touched his eyes and his heart drummed, his breaths—coming long and drawn but thin—escalated. He knew what this was, but he couldn't wrap his mind around it for a moment. His fingers grasped around the brace but then his right hand involuntarily tucked under his chin, tapping again and again in a repetitive, jerking motion and he knew—he knew—to fall, to just let the crash come, to lay down on his side and—
—
Sensation returned to Spencer. His head pounded, every muscle in his body was sore, and he was bone tired. He'd voided his bladder again and had also soiled himself this time. He couldn't remember doing any of this. The urine was still warm on his pants, so he couldn't have lost touch too long ago.
His mind was sluggish, and what he saw in front of his eyes were drooping, dripping, dragging forms and letters, surreal, Dalí-like. The lizards were back, and they were green, fully formed, but watery, unable to walk, unable to crawl, twitching, trying to move, much like himself.
He knew what this all was.
He'd just had a seizure. The strange sensations he felt just before the loss of consciousness, the confusion, the floral scent— her smell, but not quite hers—and now the intense malaise and aching muscles all told him that it was likely tonic-clonic.
This is the post . . . post influx—no. No. Post idyll . . . No. Post . . . two syllables. Starts with I. I should—
He would need to get rid of his clothes.
I need to . . . Tired. I'm tired. After.
He needed to close his eyes for just a little while and rest. He couldn't move if he wanted to; his limbs were heavy. Best that he didn't, though, so that he didn't make more of a mess.
So, so tired. His eyes fluttered once.
—
When he reawakened, he was still wet and soiled, but now he was shivering, for his urine had cooled significantly. He had the energy to push himself up. He had enough energy to remove as much of his clothing as he was able to and then used his teeth to gnaw at the fabrics and rub them on the floor with the chain, pressing on them until there were holes sizable enough to tear them all away. He wiped himself front and back and in-between with the fabrics as best he could with shaking hands and aborted breaths.
You'll be punished for this. You will. This is offensive. Unclean.
He should fold his torn clothes, then, yes. He would fold his ripped, soiled clothes best as possible, and he would fold his bedsheets too. He pulled off the sheets, folded them, and put the soiled fabrics together in a neat pile. The lethargy kept the motions slow.
Good. Good. Good—keep going.
Fold and tuck.
If it's neat they won't—if it's neat, then—they might not—
He couldn't stop his quivering. They would punish him. They would. He knew they would, and the fear of what it could entail crippled him, made his carefully moving, shaking, blind hands fold and tuck and fold and tuck with a delicacy that he dared to hope they would cherish.
He didn't know why he messed up so much when they were good to him. They were.
He finished.
The only thing he was able to salvage from the mess was his pillow, so he took it, put it on the floor, curled up on the concrete, and slept more after resting his head upon it.
—
Upon reawakening later, he waited, mind a little clearer, and he thought.
His brain had short circuited. It'd had enough. Hopefully this was a reset and not a permanent malfunction.
Seizures weren't uncommon with repeated strangulation. They also weren't uncommon with drug overdoses. Or with cerebral trauma or hypoxia.
Cerebral!
Reset indeed. Late post-traumatic seizure. He sat, waited, waded beyond the light fog.
Not much longer did the pressure change, and that small gust of air made every pore on his naked skin swell.
Ten lashes and five.
He knew it was to come.
A hand fell upon him, gripping the brace and pulling his head up, drawing his blind gaze upward. Leather and grease cut through the pungency of his own feces and urine. His whole body vibrated.
"There's no punishment needed," he reasoned with trembling hands, breaths pushing out of him in painful wheezes.
The rough hand tapped his, and he curled his fingers before the father tucked hands under his.
"What happened?"
"I think I had a seizure. I'm sorry. Please, there's no need for—"
The father clapped his bare shoulder.
He nearly collapsed in relief. It was a touch of acceptance, forgiveness, benevolence.
Tap tap. "You need a bath," he was told, and he nodded fervently in agreement.
"Please," he said. "Please. Thank you."
He was allowed to bathe himself under that watchful eye and with assisting hands, there were new sheets on the bed, and he was given a new set of clothes.
—
It had been many days since the end of his torturous punishment—going on three weeks. Since then, the father's interactions with him only stretched as far as they necessitated. Distant. Routine. He understood why. He'd been sick often—sicker than customary. But things were now ebbing. The fog was slow to lift, but it was indeed lifting.
It was a mere two days after the seizure, then—when Spencer was as well enough as he could be—that the father resumed raping him. It wasn't painful and he wasn't torn into; the hands weren't cruel but tapped, lingered, splayed, slid. He wasn't slapped afterwards or beaten; the fingers that kneaded his neck weren't harsh.
He reasoned with himself that after all this time, he'd withheld something from the father that was owed him, deprived him of a right. It was all careless of him. So afterwards, he apologized to him, thanked him, he told him that he liked it despite the dull ache, and he told him that he loved him.
When a hand cupped his face, he tilted into it.
After he bathed, after he was helped to the bed and helped with his clothes, the bed dipped with the man's weight. The hand clasped above his cuffed ankle.
It was the first time in far too long. It was a sign. All was right. All was restored between him and the father as he sat there, as his thumb tapped and his hand gripped. Spencer laid on the bed, chest swelling, tearful with a poignant victory.
ONWARD
The days blurred into each other. The cruel hand of punishment was never again stretched upon Spencer to the extent of that distant memory. Of course, he knew exactly why. They only gravely punished him when he deserved it, and he learned not to try to reason on what he had done to warrant it.
Sometimes Spencer was at full wits—as full as he could be beyond a light mist—and he knew exactly what was going on around him, but he'd lost track of time by now, and didn't know if he'd been here for five months or for nine months.
Saturdays rolled by. Hair colorings and trimmings continued. Days when the tube was removed and he drank his meals before he was re-intubated continued. Days where chess was entertained continued. Days where either of them just laid curled with him for hours were more frequent. Apparently, he was nearer to coming back to the mother, and he was told this multifold.
He wished to sleep more now, but sometimes had disturbances that made it difficult to fall asleep. So he asked the mother to give him something to help him be more comfortable. She did, and the somnolence was so deep that he couldn't wake from his nightmares, or he didn't want to wake from the pleasant dreams of Maeve or of a lifetime ago, or of nothing at all.
He preferred it when it was of Maeve or nothing.
He didn't like missing a life that had come before this existence. He came, in fact, to spurn it all but for her. Here with these two—they were patient with him. So long as he behaved, he didn't have to get into any trouble at all.
In the face of a return to normalcy was a restoration. Predictability. A sense of safety.
Within the passing days were swelling proclamations or affirmations of Good job and Good boy by a simple touch or clap or with lingering hands, or of Very good boy and My — boy when hands tucked under his, and with arms pressing around him and holding him tightly and hands pressing kindly upon his cheeks or jaws. These continued in overabundance, and they were hands that Spencer would lean into more and more. He cherished the kind touches, apologized for nothing, begged for their forgiveness if he perceived that he'd done anything wrong at all, told them that he was happy here whenever the mother asked—and he did this with hands that she loved to kiss, and that he came to love having kissed, for it meant that she was pleased with him.
The mother's hands continued their newer course in firmer gestures, but she was not without her kindness or her praise or other benign expressions of adoration, such as her lacing her fingers with his or her kisses to his hands or the squeezing arms around him. These latter actions covered over how her hands would slide under his t-shirt and stroke his chest or the planes of his abdomen or how her fingertips would swirl around until one would dip into his navel or how they massaged his sacrum before sliding down his posterior and dipping into his cleft or how they would slip below the hem of the front of his pants regardless of if Spencer was raped or not.
When the father was finished with him, he thanked him and he told him that he liked it, told him that he loved him. It was comforting when the thumb tapped or the hand lingered. He often bore his neck afterwards and the fingers would slide across the column of flesh and caress it. It was rare for the digits to squeeze tightly enough for him to pass out anymore or lose his breath. Just enough that it was tolerable, pleasant, even.
He neither allowed nor resisted these things done to him. Compliance wasn't needed in the face of contentment. Rather, he accepted everything for the truth of the matter, the very principle of his existence: his body would never be his own again. He was theirs.
But no two objects touched without exerting an equal and opposite reaction. If he was theirs, then by logic they were his.
—
It was as it should be.
With a silence unbroken and behavior beyond exemplary, he was satisfied. And why shouldn't he be? They provided for him, they fed him, they tended to him, soothed him with pleasant smelling oils and lotions and ointments and aloe; he was warm; they comforted him. He was sick, and they took care of him. They loved him. Naturally, this sentiment was returned.
The nigglings had ebbed to, quiet, rare whispers.
Yes, this was his existence.
He was.
He was better than that, though.
Before he was to be tucked into the earth, he would be better than good. He would be the best.
.
.
.
I think (hope) you'll all look forward to next week's chapter.
