Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 17:56:43 -0500
From: Writer Boy <writerboy69@hotmail.com>
Subject: jc's hitchhiker - part 68

Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:

1) If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or
you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You
shouldn't be here.

2) I don't know any of the celebrities in this story, and this story in no
way is meant to imply anything about their sexualities, personalities, or
anything else.  This is a work of pure fiction.

Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I've
enjoyed hearing from all of you.

This season would not have happened if not for a discussion I had with
Clive, who is generous enough to cohost this story on his site. Stop and
tell him hello at www.authorclive.co.uk.

Back to the story in progress!

***Jack***

"Just fill out the postcard, Jack," he cajoled. "Just fill out the
postcard, and I'll give you something to eat."

"Fuck you," I said, walking away from the button again.

I went to the sink and took another drink, bending over, fitting my mouth
around the bottom of the faucet. The water was good, and it was filling,
but it wasn't enough. My belly was sloshing every time I moved, and I knew
that we wouldn't be able to play this game much longer. I wasn't going to
be able to go without eating for another day, not with the meals that I was
already missing. I glared at the speaker plate, wondering if I should talk
to Captor again. I had begun calling him that yesterday, only in my head,
because I just needed to assign a name of some sort to him.

We were on our third day of playing this game, or at least I thought it
was.  I'd gone to sleep three times, at any rate. After the first meal of
sandwiches I had, I lay on the mattress for a while, staring at nothing
again, trying to think of something to do. He didn't turn the music back
on, and I didn't want to ask for it, because I didn't want to ask for
anything. There weren't any cracks in the walls to count, as everything was
freshly painted over, and there weren't any marks on the ceiling. The floor
was plain concrete, and was more or less featureless. After a while I began
to count the holes in the speaker grate, the little black circles from
which music, or the disguised voice, would come.  Eventually my eyes
drifted closed, but just as I fell asleep I heard his voice again.

"He's not coming for you, Jack," the voice said, startling me awake. "He's
not going to come save you, or find you. You're all alone."

I stared up at the camera, wondering if I should give him the finger again.
Instead I got up, went to the sink, and brushed my teeth. When I was
finished, I felt the lump on my forehead again, wishing I had a mirror, but
then I decided that I really didn't want to see how bad it was. Walking
back to the mattress, I stripped down to my undershirt and boxers, folding
my clothes neatly and setting them down in the corner. I walked over to the
speaker and pushed the button.

"Thanks for waking me," I said brightly. "I forgot to brush my teeth. I'm
going to sleep now, so could we maybe do something about the light?"

I didn't really know if it was night or not, because I had no windows, but
I knew I was tired, and needed rest. That seemed as good a reason as any to
go to sleep.

"No," he answered simply. I guessed he wanted the lights on so he could
keep watching.  Clearly the camera didn't have infrared. Was that a clue?
It didn't have sound, either, or at least didn't seem to. I realized that I
had no idea how much any of that would cost, so that really wasn't a clue
that would help me.

"And for the record, Josh knows I wouldn't leave him," I said. I should
have stayed quiet, but I was pissed off. "Whatever little note you left
him, he's going to see through it eventually. He loves me, and he knows I
love him. He'll come for me."

"No, he won't," the voice insisted. "Good night, Jack."

I walked away from the speaker and lay on the mattress, closing my eyes
again, picturing Josh, trying to imagine that he was here with me. I
reached out, throwing my arm across the empty mattress, and tried to feel
his warmth, feel his shoulder beneath my hand. I tried to smell his
cologne, and the natural smell of Josh that was always underneath, the two
of them mixed together with soap and deodorant and the thousand other
smells that make up a person, blending together into the familiar scent
that I was used to sharing a bed with. I tried to imagine the way Josh's
skin felt, the warm velvet softness, the feeling of his muscles sliding
around underneath. I tried to imagine that my hand was on his chest, tried
to feel the firm bunching of his pec, his heart beating strong underneath
as the rise and fall of his breathing pressed his skin to my hand.

Thinking of Josh, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was hungry. I hadn't eaten for the three days that I had
been sleeping, and then had only been given two sandwiches which barely
filled me. I realized that he must have drugged me again during that time,
must have snuck in to administer additional doses of whatever he'd given
me. I didn't know a lot about chloroform, but years of watching soap operas
had led me to believe that it wore off after a space of hours, not days. He
must have been watching me on the video camera, waiting to see if I began
to stir, before sneaking in to drug me again. It couldn't be a coincidence
that he stopped drugging me on the same day that Josh left, so why would he
do it?  Maybe it was someone that Josh would also suspect. Maybe it was
someone who thought Josh, or Justin, or the police, might come here, and he
wanted me unconscious so that I couldn't make noise or attract attention to
the basement. I was getting good at this, and figured that maybe all those
years of reading suspense and detective novels might pay off after all.

I got off of the mattress and stripped off my undershirt, deciding to try
to wash myself. I could have taken off my boxers, too, but didn't feel like
giving whoever this was watching me a free show. I didn't feel like giving
them that last little bit of my dignity.  Washing myself carefully with the
soap and washcloth, trying not to get too wet since he didn't give me a
towel, I figured I'd have to air dry. I ran my hand over my face after I
washed it, wishing I had a razor, and was debating trying to wash my hair
with the soap when I heard something slide through the flap under the
door. Turning around, I saw another manila envelope. I picked it up, and
then walked over to the button panel.

"Good morning," I said, opening the envelope. Inside was a blank postcard
from Seattle.  I glanced at it and shrugged. Josh and I had never been to
Seattle, so I didn't see how this was supposed to taunt me. "Can I have
some breakfast?"

"Fill out that postcard first," he answered.

"Fill it out?" I asked, wondering what new game this was. "Fill it out with
what?"

"Write a note to JC," the voice answered. "Write him a note that you're
happy without him, and hope he is, too."

"Fuck you," I said simply, walking away, dropping the postcard on the
floor.

"Don't walk away so quickly, Jack," the voice said. "We need to talk about
this."

"There's nothing to talk about," I said, turning back and holding the
button down. "I'm not filling out that card."

I couldn't fill out a postcard that said that. It would crush Josh,
especially if it came in my own handwriting. If he was even starting to
think that I hadn't left him, that this was all a huge mistake, this
postcard would change his mind, would push him away. This postcard would
seal me in this basement, would practically guarantee that Josh gave up on
me.  One note he might be able to ignore, to think his way past, but two?
No way was I filling this out.

"Do you want to eat?" the voice asked. "Fill out that postcard."

"I guess I'm not that hungry," I said, turning away.

"You will be," he promised, as I sat on the mattress.

And so the game began, the waiting game. Whenever I felt hungry, I got up
and drank more water. To fill my time, I washed my hair in the sink after
all, although it was a pain in the ass and didn't turn out well, since I
couldn't get my head under the faucet. My hair still felt stringy when I
was done, and I didn't have a comb. To fill the rest of my time, I paced
the room, counting the steps, trying to keep myself from going insane.
I've always been a person who needed something to do, who needed something
to occupy my time.  Being in here was almost like being in a sensory
deprivation tank.

After an unknown length of time, during which I'd gotten bored and sat on
the mattress again, counting the holes in the speaker grate, music began to
pour out of the speaker again, this time "Celebrity". I sat and listened to
it, rocking back and forth a little, mouthing the words, which I knew by
heart. I knew every song, every beat, every breath recorded on the
album. I'd seen it in concert, seen it on television, heard it on the
radio, and had parts of it sung to me in the shower. I could close my eyes
and see them dancing, running through all the steps, knowing which part
Lance would trip on, where Joey would be tired, and where Josh would go
back and dance by the band for a minute or two.  If this was supposed to
bother me, it wasn't. Instead, it was a comfort.

The album was on its third cycle through when it cut off.

"Ready to fill out that postcard now?" he asked.

I walked over to the speaker.

"No," I answered.

"I guess you're not hungry enough, then," he said.

"I guess not," I said, walking away from the speaker.

"You know, Jack, this means nothing," he said. "It doesn't matter if you
fill out the card or not. JC isn't coming for you."

I ignored him, got another drink from the sink, and went back to my
mattress. I might have to pee fifty times, but I wouldn't break. I would
not fill out that card. He didn't put any music on after that, leaving me
in silence for a while. After a while I fell asleep again, but he was
determined not to let me enjoy it. I was fully asleep, sprawled out on my
mattress, when music from the band's first album began blasting out of the
speaker, loud enough to wake me. I jumped up, looking around, and heard
laughter from the speaker.

"Oh, sorry Jack. Were you sleeping?" he asked. "Maybe you should get up and
fill out that postcard."

"Maybe you should kiss my ass," I muttered, rolling over to give the camera
the finger again.

"That's not a good answer, Jack," he said. "Aren't you hungry? Don't you
want something to eat?"

I heard crunching, and realized he was chewing something into the
microphone. My stomach clenched, and my mouth filled with saliva, but I
willed myself not to get up off of the mattress. I would not break.

"He's not coming for you, Jack," he said again. "He's never coming. Just
fill out the postcard."

I shook my head, and eventually fell back to sleep.

On the second day I woke up and bathed in the sink again, skipping the hair
as it was more trouble than it was worth. The postcard was still there, but
during the night he had also pushed a pen through the flap. I stared down
at it, and thought about signing the postcard, but I wasn't hungry enough
yet. He didn't talk to me at all that day, and didn't play any music,
either. I had no distractions, nothing to take my mind off of what was
going on, just the postcard, the pen, and my hunger. I paced all day,
almost continuously, until my feet were sore. Socks on concrete didn't
really have a lot of padding, so eventually I had to go sit for a
while. Walking back to the mattress, I thumbed my necklace, and thought
about the postcard.

On the third day, I woke up in pain. I wasn't having full out, doubled over
in pain cramps, but I was hungry. I felt my stomach knotting, demanding
something besides water, and I tried to think about something else, but all
my brain would do was tally up the food I wasn't getting. I had been taken
from the club, and drugged for two full days, during which I had not
eaten. Waking on the third day, I had eaten two sandwiches, but had now
gone without food for what I guessed was now my third day since then. I
wouldn't be able to keep going like this. Already I felt listless, and
dizzy. I realized dimly that I was going to break. I had to, or I was going
to die. I might actually die of starvation in someone's basement, in the
richest country in the world.

I needed to distract myself, needed to not think about the damn postcard. I
didn't want to break, didn't even want to think about it, even though I was
starting to realized I would have to. I walked over and pressed the button.

"Hello?" I asked, waiting. There was no response, so I pushed it again.
"Hello?"

What if he'd gone somewhere? What if he wasn't anywhere in the house? I
might break down right now, and fill out the damn postcard, and he wouldn't
be here to feed me. I realized then how completely at his mercy I was. I
was helpless, like a fish in a bowl. If something happened to him, if he
went to the grocery store and got hit by a bus on the way, I would die
here. If the house caught on fire, I would burn to death in the basement.
I would die, and I would never find my way back to Josh. What we had would
just be over, gone, just like that. But it would be if I filled out that
card, too.  That postcard would be a complete betrayal of everything Josh
and I had. If I filled it out, I would be sealing the fate of mine and
Josh's relationship, and I would also be choosing myself over Josh.  Then
again, if I was choosing to live, to get back to Josh someday, to be here
when Josh came to get me, I thought he might understand.

By the time he came back from wherever he'd gone, and began taunting me to
fill out the postcard again, I had passed my moment of weakness, and was
back to drinking water and dreaming that I'd be able to make it. I kept
swearing, kept being angry, but in my heart I knew it wouldn't last. I
needed to eat, and that was the bottom line. I pressed the button again,
feeling the water sloshing around inside of me, and wondering how it could
feel so liquid, but so much like a lead ball in my gut at the same time.

"What do you want on the postcard?" I asked quietly.

"What was that, Jack?" he asked, enjoying his triumph. "You're so quiet I
didn't catch it."

"What do you want me to write on the postcard?" I asked, feeling tears roll
down my cheeks. I wasn't faking it this time. I didn't want to fill out
this card, didn't want to let him mail this knowing that it would hurt
Josh, that he would be using me to hurt Josh, but I had to do it. He'd
taken all of my choices away.

"How about just that you're happy, and you hope he's happy, too?" he asked.
"Oh, and don't forget to address it, too."

"Fuck you!" I said, not holding to button down for it. I pounded the wall
with my fist, almost sobbing now. I'd be able to cry for a really long time
with all the water I'd had.  Sitting down, wiping at my eyes with one hand
while I wrote with the other, I filled out the postcard, barely able to
read it because of the tears in my eyes, and pushed it under the door. I
whispered to myself, leaning on the wall with my head down, trying to get
my tears under control. "I'm sorry, Josh. I'm so, so sorry."

Nothing happened, so I waited. Finally I hit the button again. "Hello?"

"Yes, Jack?" he answered.

"I'm hungry," I snapped, and then realized that maybe I needed to be
nice. I didn't want to be, didn't even want to talk to him, but I needed to
eat. "Could I please have some food now?"

"I don't know if I should still feed you," he said speculatively. "You were
a little difficult."

"You promised," I reminded him, trying to keep the anger out of my voice.

"One question first," he said. "What are you going to do if I don't feed
you? What are you going to do if I stop feeding you at all, and then just
wall you up in there when you starve? What are you going to do then?"

"I guess I'll die," I said simply. I might be able to answer him like it
was nothing, but inside I had gone cold again. What if he did stop feeding
me? "I'll die, but Josh and I will be together someday."

"You wish," he said.

Another plate of sandwiches, three this time, slid through the flap. I
scooped it up, running over to my mattress with them, sitting Indian style
with the plate cradled in my crossed legs. I ate the first sandwich so
quickly that it seemed as if I didn't even chew it, and I quickly followed
it with the second. By the time I got to the third, I remembered something
I'd read somewhere about how people who had been starved couldn't eat a lot
right away, or they'd throw it up, and I forced myself to slow down, to
chew carefully. It was peanut butter and jelly, again, and I thought it
tasted a little odd, but I was too hungry to give it much thought. I should
have, though.

I finished the last sandwich and got up to brush my teeth. As I stood at
the sink, rinsing out my mouth, I realized that I felt light headed. I
turned back to the mattress, and stumbled as I walked over. By the time I
reached it, my head was nodding, and I could barely keep my eyes open. The
room swam before me, and I heard his voice, thick and sludgy, oozing from
the speaker plate.

"Feeling a little sleepy, Jack?" he asked, laughing. The sandwiches were
drugged. I tried to lift myself off of the mattress, to reach out for the
speaker panel, not sure of what I was going to say, but couldn't move. The
last thing I heard before my eyes slid closed again was more of his
taunting. "JC isn't coming for you, Jack. You're all mine."

I don't know how long I slept, but when I woke up, my mouth feeling
cottony, I saw another sandwich waiting for me, sitting on another manila
folder. I went pee, feeling how stiff my body was from all these nights
spent sleeping almost on the floor, and then walked over and picked up the
sandwich and the folder. I sniffed at the sandwich, wondering if I should
eat it, but then figured I didn't have anything important to stay awake for
anyway. If this one happened to be drugged, too, maybe I should just be
happy for the sleep, since it was a pain in the ass falling asleep with
that damn light on all the time. I ate the sandwich slowly, wondering if I
was allowed to request anything besides peanut butter and jelly. After
eating, I brushed my teeth, trying to give myself enough activities to fill
my time, since I never knew if I was getting music today or not.

Thumbing my necklace, trying to draw strength from it and from Josh, trying
to feel his love for me, I carefully opened the folder, knowing nothing
good could be inside. There was a stack of photocopies in there this time,
rather than snapshots or a postcard. I carefully pulled them out, flipping
through, and saw that they were stories about Josh and I, stories about us
breaking up. I felt tears sliding down my cheeks as I read them, carefully
going through each one, trying to imagine what Josh was feeling.  No one
had actually talked to him, and he was described as being "in seclusion",
but he had released a statement. I didn't know if it was Josh's phrasing,
or if their manager or the publicity department had cleaned it up a little,
but it said very simply that Josh and I were no longer together, and he was
unsure of my current whereabouts. I knew that Captor had left a note from
me, knew that he had left my ring with it, but I had hoped that Josh would
see through that, that the other guys would see that this was completely
beyond anything that I'd do.

Now it looked like maybe Josh wouldn't be coming for me after all.

I could hope that he would snap out of it, that he would realize this was
all wrong, and then remembered the postcard. If he was doubting any of
this, trying to think any of this through again, that card would seal my
fate. He would get that, and it would completely reinforce the first
letter. I knew Josh, knew how he thought and how he would feel, and when he
saw that any hope inside him would die. Any resolve he was building to come
find me would crumble. I tried to tell myself that I'd had no choice, that
I had to fill the card out, but another voice inside me whispered that I
had thrown everything away for three sandwiches.

"No, it's not like that," I said, aware that I was talking to myself, but
just needing to hear something, anything, in this little white cell. I kept
running my thumb over the medallion of my necklace. "I had to fill that
card out. I didn't have a choice."

Nothing answered me, of course.

"Josh will come for me. He will," I said, but even to me the words sounded
hollow.

I lay on the bed, crying for a while, just holding onto my pillow and
sobbing, as I realized that Josh thought I would hurt him like
this. Somehow, Josh really believed that I would just pack up and go. I
loved him, more than anything, but somewhere out in the world, out beyond
the walls of this room, Josh thought that I was gone, that I was done with
him. Somewhere Josh was trying to convince himself not to love me. Outside,
I was losing him, and I realized that if I let myself think that, if I let
myself believe that he was lost to me, that I would lose myself, too. What
point would there be in getting out of here? What point would there be in
staying strong? I couldn't think this way. Josh would come for me, he had
to. Love would conquer all. I just had to hold out. I squeezed my necklace
tightly between my thumb and forefinger, holding onto it, onto Josh's love,
like a lifeline.

"Josh will come for me," I whispered.

I wiped my eyes and went back to looking at the articles. There might be
something in them I had missed, some clue that might help me. Remembering
how he had demanded the pictures back, I realized that I might not have a
lot of time with these, and that I needed to look them over now and get as
much as I could out of them, before they were gone. A lot of them offered
rehashes of my relationship with Josh, and quotes from our interviews, but
that wasn't really what I was looking for. I skimmed the serious articles
to see who they talked to, to see if any member of management was mentioned
by name. I didn't know what this would tell me, if anything, but I scanned
them all looking for mention of Stan. Nothing popped up. Turning away from
the serious articles, I began to look through the gossip columns, looking
for that one familiar face that I knew had to be here. At last, there he
was.

Basil's column was rather lengthy, detailing visits to hospitals and police
stations. My heart surged when I realized that Josh and Justin had been
looking for me, that they were trying to find me, at least for a few
days. Maybe they had seen through this after all.  Those hopes were dashed
just as quickly, though, when I realized that they had flown home
anyway. The note with my ring must have come to them after they did all
this.  Maybe he had panicked, seeing that they weren't giving up, and then
decided to send it.  The idea made a weird kind of sense. The note wouldn't
be in my handwriting, because he wouldn't have time to wake me and then
starve me into writing it, and I hoped Josh would see that, too. Basil's
column wasn't the only one that had the details of all their visits,
though, so I couldn't use that as proof that my captor was him. I needed
more.

I spent the day in silence, reading the folder over and over, and the next
morning, Captor demanded it back, in exchange for food. Rather than argue,
I just slid it through, and was rewarded with another sandwich. I was so
hungry, since I hadn't eaten since the one sandwich the day before, that I
ate it quickly, realizing only halfway through that it was drugged again. I
finished it quickly, and settled in on the mattress for a nice, long drug
induced coma. I could have stopped eating, but figured I needed food more
than I needed to be awake.

I lost track of a lot of days that way. I would wake up, and some days he'd
push another article through the door with my sandwich, if he gave me a
sandwich. Some days he didn't feed me at all, and when he finally did push
a sandwich through the flap, it was always just one or two, never enough to
fill me. Some days he would play music all day again, or wait until I was
asleep and start blasting it, disrupting my rest.  It was hard to keep
track of days and nights, and there was nothing in here to mark the walls
with, so I began to slowly lose track of time. I tried to guess based on my
beard growing in, but I'd never had one before, and didn't know how fast it
would or should grow. I also began to lose a lot of weight, which was
worrying me. I was only eating once a day, more or less, and only a
sandwich at that. I was drinking a lot of water, but it wasn't enough to
keep going, and there were the days when I didn't get to eat because he
apparently just randomly felt like drugging me.

I tired to figure out a pattern to the drugging, tried to anticipate it,
but there didn't seem to be one. One day I woke up from a drug sleep, my
mouth all cottony, and discovered that he had replenished the toothpaste,
toilet paper, and soap while I had been out. Another time I woke up and
discovered that all of my nails had been cut. He hadn't done a really good
job, but they were short enough to prevent me from hurting myself with
them, or from reaching through the door flap next time he brought food and
clawing him with them. I thought about that frequently, but was afraid that
he would punish me by withholding food again. I tried once to keep a
sandwich until later, but he refused to give me any more until I had eaten
that one. That little battle lasted two days, at the end of which I
promised not to try to keep them again.

Through it all, I kept my hold on Josh, kept trying to force myself to
believe in him, to believe he'd come get me, that our love would save me,
but it got harder and harder every day, and Captor just kept trying to wear
me down. One day I finally lost it with him, screaming into the radio.

"He's not coming, you know," he said.

"Yes he is," I argued stubbornly.

"No, he's not," Captor insisted. "He's moving on. He's forgotten all about
you. JC is out there, right now, getting over you, finding someone else."

"And when he does, you'll let me go, and I'll go back to him," I said,
shaking my head.  Josh would never find someone else, not to replace me.

"Maybe," Captor said absently, and I shivered. Was he thinking of not
letting me go? As the days had gone by I had convinced myself that one of
these times he drugged me I would open my eyes the next time and be
somewhere else, be outside this tiny room, but what if I just closed them,
and never opened them again?

"Josh will come save me!" I insisted, trying not to cry again as fear
numbed me.

"No, he won't," he insisted right back. "He's not coming to save you. He's
not even looking for you. You're here, and you're mine."

"Fuck you!" I screamed, holding the button down. "Josh will come for me! He
loves me, and you'll never fucking break me! Do you hear me? You'll never
fucking break me, you asshole!"

There was no answer to that, no response, and I thought that maybe he would
leave me alone. I was wrong. He decided to punish me instead. I got one
sandwich that night, but it didn't seem to be drugged, didn't have that
bitter undertone that they usually had. Maybe a half hour after I finished
eating, though, I felt a sharp cramp race through my stomach.  Staggering,
I barely made it to the toilet in time as I felt another, and another,
twisting through my intestines. He'd put laxative in the sandwich. I was on
the toilet for what seemed like hours, sweating, cramping, waiting for it
to be over. I realized dimly that if you were already weak, if you were
already half starved, diarrhea could actually be fatal.  In his zeal to
punish me, he might actually kill me.

I had to get out of here before that could happen.

Sitting on the toilet, praying for this to be over, I realized finally that
Josh wouldn't come for me. Crying, I let go of that hope, holding my head
in my hands. Josh wasn't coming to save me, wasn't out looking for me. No
one would save me, unless I did it myself. I was afraid to get off the
toilet, afraid that it wouldn't be over, and eventually fell asleep
there. When I woke up the next morning, tired and stiff, I went to sleep on
the mattress, ignoring the sandwich by the door. Instead, I ate it when I
got up.

I spent the next day or two pacing my cell, trying to figure this out. I
played scenarios over and over in my mind, but kept coming up with reasons
why they didn't work. I always needed one more thing, or needed something
to happen a certain way, or I wouldn't get out of here. He hadn't drugged
me since the laxative incident, either, and I figured I needed to do this
fast, before I got weak again. While I was thinking that, and bending down
to pick up my sandwich, I saw his flaw. This prison wasn't perfectly
constructed after all. There was something he'd overlooked, and I'd
overlooked it all this time, too. After eating, I paced my cell, looking
around, working things out in my head, and figured everything out.

The sandwich wasn't drugged, and he didn't blast music that night. When I
woke up in the morning, I was refreshed, and felt as strong as I could
under the circumstances. I got up and washed, brushing my teeth and
pretending it was a normal day. I didn't bother getting dressed anymore,
other than keeping the boxers and undershirt on, because my pants didn't
stay up now without a belt, and I couldn't hold them up and run at the same
time. I didn't know if I had the energy to run, but I could try, damn it.
Turning around, I surveyed the room, and saw that I was ready.

He wasn't perfect, and he hadn't broken me. Josh wasn't coming, but I was
getting out of here, just the same.

Reaching out, I pressed the button to speak.

***

To be continued.