Once upon a time James was the kind of boy who slept with his mother's friends as a form of vengeance when she'd slay him using her awful undertones and immoral hypocrisy to drive him down. What even is it really? To touch someone that way? How, if it's so good, can it be a weapon?
He jolts as the van goes over another bump in the road and his eyes squeeze shut tight for the pain of his binds increases every time. He's suddenly thrown into a vision where Ms. Litel was a little much for him. He's still got the marks to prove it. How does he feel about that? How does he feel about the fact that a girl with long thick black hair is looking down at him through a mask with a blade drawn and a crazy mouth?
Her blade finds his leg and he screams.
God, the world can be so much some times. Human beings feed on each other. It's how they survive. As she's pouring salt into his open wound the vision suddenly changes and he no longer sees his dick sliding in and out of that thirty-two-year-old's slit. He's not even in their laundry room anymore. He's back in class watching that boy with the caramel skin scribble away in that journal of his listening to Abbie Rothchild whisper to him.
So many people spoke to the boy but the boy never spoke back.
"We're being followed." Said a voice in the back of the Van.
The girl torturing James couldn't here the voice. She was too busy with her delicate work. His shirt flew open and the buttons ripped apart flying every which way. She ran the tip of her blade along his left peck and trailed it down his tight muscles with a big wide smile. She sank the blade in around where his appendix might have been and when he let out a childish scream she started laughing.
He chirped, "Mom! Momma!"
"You're mama isn't here." She used to say that to him too. So how could he know.
"No one can help you now."
Then the person in the back of the van was shouting, "Mitus!"
She snapped her head in his direction, "What!"
"We're being followed." He repeated.
She looked behind her at another boy tied up. Bound, gagged, the very reason James is in their grasp. Emotional Ethan.
The van stopped.
About a block away so did the Mercedes. The bike came down beside her and stopped as well.
It was Ethan who was stepping out of the Van. Then it drove away leaving the three of them alone on an empty sidewalk somewhere in the city.
Ethan decided to approach.
"Uh-uh!" Said Jennifer A. as she reached into her car to pull out the gun her dad had placed beneath her driving seat for protection.
She concealed it out of sight and decided to wait for this boy to get a little closer.
"Ethan?" Said Carlos.
He nodded.
"Why did you take James? What's going on?" Carlos Asked.
Ethan swallowed hard and looked between the two of them, "They have someone I love. Told me if I wanted them back I had to play a game. If you want any chance of seeing James again I suggest you not kill me, Jennifer. I've been playing this game for a while and it's not easy to do when you have no one telling you what's going on."
"What is going on?" Asked Jennifer A.
Then someone stepped out of the dark ally way none of them had previously noticed. It was Lucy Stone. The girl Carlos knew was madly in love with Jo Taylor. Jo Taylor had been missing for almost a year now, "They're ready to let us play the game but we're missing a few pieces. There has to be six players."
"It's a competition? We all fight for it and only one of us gets our love? Is that it?" Asks Carlos.
Ethan looks at Carlos with a raised brow, "Love?"
"I know everything about everyone at that school... except for three people. I spend so much time crafting ideas around them that when I actually see them I'm overwhelmed by the euphoria. I want so badly to be a part of the secret that I suppose I could call my own psychosis love." Was that honesty or a stretch. I have no idea.
Jennifer A walks over to Lucy and holds her gun up, "Why were you just hiding in the ally."
"Because I found there headquarters. It's not far from here and it's that time. Once every six months, on the fourth day of the month, in the evening they take. September they took Ethan's nephew. The march before that they took my Jo. Now, on the fourth day of march, they have James. I've gotten to the first entry way after completing my steps throughout the city and collecting my amulet. So has Ethan. Now we just need one more and all six of us to stand in the entry way and we can start their game." Lucy explained, "Put the fucking gun away or we'll never even get started.
Jennifer A furrowed a brow but clicked the safety and hung the weapon from her belt.
"So when do we start?" Asked Carlos.
Lucy nods, "As soon as Kendall and Logan get here. I've texted them. They shouldn't be too long."