One was still too fucking many.

I was lying over the threshold of death’s door, yet it was Chop whose eyes held no signs of life, void of anything other than his constant anger. If I didn’t want to shove a rock through his skull so badly, I might have pitied the motherfucker and his sad existence. Which was fucked up because I was the one bleeding all over the dirt at his feet.

“No more talking, boy! It’s time to SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Chop roared, slamming his hand against the wall beside my head.

I didn’t flinch. Not because I was being a badass, but because my reflexes were shot to shit. I could tell by the way his nostrils flared that my lack of reaction was taken as yet another act of defiance. He swallowed hard, like he was holding back. From where I was sitting, that was a fucking first for the sadistic bastard.

A few seconds passed where we just stared at one another. If the motherfucker wanted a contest of wills he was going to lose, because it wasn’t like I had anywhere else to be but hell, and from the looks of things I was pretty sure I was already there.

After a moment a smirk crept onto his face, deepening the wrinkles around his eyes. He seemed satisfied that I was going to do what I was told, which was basically shut up and bleed. He turned around and started walking away.

He was wrong.

“Just one more question, and it’s a serious one,” I managed to scratch out, my throat feeling as if someone with sharp nails was trying to claw their way out from the inside. Chop paused mid stride, and I could almost see the hairs on the back of his arms stand on end. I coughed. Warm, coppery fluid filled my mouth, coating my teeth. I was used to the taste at that point and knew exactly what it was before it poured past my lips and dribbled down my chin, falling onto what was left of my shirt. “Does this place have wifi?” I asked, spitting blood as I spoke. “Because if not, I’m seriously going to have to take that into consideration in my Yelp rating. I will say, though, that the torture is excellent.” I went to lift my arm and a wave of pain assaulted my ribs. I winced but kept talking, enjoying the look on Chop’s red face as he slowly turned around, cracking his knuckles and stomping his way back toward me. “However, the staff doesn’t give me that warm tingly feeling I’ve come to expect from such an establishment, not to mention they’re ugly as all fuck.”

Chop picked up the bat leaning against the wall and turned it over in his hands. He crouched down beside me and pointed at my head with the thick splintered end. “Are you done now?” he asked, white knuckling the handle.

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head, slowly, from side to side, ignoring the dizziness from earlier that again threatened to take hold. I slid my hand from my thigh to my crotch, grabbing my dick over my torn khakis. “You can also suck my cock, bitch.”

Chop’s goal in life was to hurt me, little did he know that nothing he could do to my body could match the pain in my broken heart.

If only I would have listened to her when she told me no. When she told me to stop and stay away, then I wouldn’t have felt like the torture Chop doled out was a pain only secondary to the hurt in my heart, put there by a little junkie. A pain that hit a lot harder than Chop ever could.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DRE

Sleep didn’t come easy. Or at all. I was restless, my thoughts on what had happened in the clearing. Preppy had said that he was over what happened to him as a kid, and although I was sure he believed it was the truth there was no way it was reality.

I rolled over, tugging the blanket with me, when I suddenly felt an awareness as if I wasn’t alone. In the darkness, I caught a glimpse of the reflection in the full length mirror behind the closed door and, for a second, it looked as if someone was standing over me. At first, I thought it was just the haziness of sleep lingering over my eyes that caused the shadow.

Until it moved.

I sat up with a start, preparing to scream when a large hand covered my mouth, muffling my attempt to call for help. “How many times?” Preppy asked.

I couldn’t answer him if I wanted to because his hand was still covering my mouth. He lifted it off my lips slowly, like he was waiting to see if I’d scream or not. When he was sure I wouldn’t he stood up and wandered about the room, looking over the pictures on the dresser. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Why are you here?”

Preppy stepped up to the bed, turning around a picture of Mirna holding me as a baby. “I like this one,” he said, placing it on the nightstand next to the alarm clock. He sat down next to me on the bed. “How many times, Doc? How many times did they fuck you when you didn’t want them to?”

My chest tightened as the panic set in. I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about…”

“Just tell me!” He rubbed his temples and looked more tired than I’d ever seen him look. “Please,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“I don’t really know. It didn’t start until the end, before that everything was about the H. I wasn’t awake for all of it,” I said, hating to hear the words come out of my mouth because it made it even more true.

Preppy nodded and in a move that surprised me, he reached out and took my hand linking his fingers in mine. I went to pull away, but changed my mind when he said, “Please.”

“I was just a kid when it started,” he said, in a very serious and solemn voice. “At first, I didn’t know what was happening or why, but I knew it was wrong. The fucked up part was that I began to think it was normal. That being made to suck cock was just like taking out the trash or doing your homework.”

I felt sick, wrapping my arms around my mid section.

“Tim?” I asked. Preppy gave me a small nod.

He swung his legs up on the bed, so he was sitting next to me with his back against the headboard, his hand still in mine. “By the time I was actually old enough for my dick to get hard, I began to like it.” He pinched his bottom lip and his shoulders shook in a small burst of sad laughter. “That’s the part that made me sick to my stomach. I’d throw up all the time, could barely hold anything down. I was like a walking skeleton. Told the nurse at school I had some weird disease that I looked up in an encyclopedia so she wouldn’t ask too many questions.”

I squeezed his hand and he squeezed back.