Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2013 17:03:50 -0800 (PST) From: Seth Kirkcauldy Subject: Brother Mine 6 Brother Mine Chapter 6 copyright 2013 Seth Kirkcauldy seth-kirkcauldy@sbcglobal.net ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This story may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the author's permission. The author grants the Nifty Archive a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, and non-cancellable license to display this work. This story is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are a product of the author's imagination, or used fictitiously. This story contains erotic situations between brothers not yet of a legal age. If it is illegal for you to read this, or you just think it's yucky, please leave now. Please donate to the Nifty Archive. Part 1: Aiden He didn't mind the darkness; he had lived much of his life in it. It was where the misfits of the world lurked or hunted to escape the notice of the rest of them. The darkness was a comfortable inky blanket that he welcomed; it covered his cartoonish hair, his pasty complexion, and his gangly limbs. Everyone looked the same in the dark; so he didn't mind the darkness. He didn't mind the silence, for it was never truly silent inside his head. He was - right now - mentally singing a Linkin Park song while reciting the Preamble to the Constitution while trying to remember the city tax rate in Columbus which reminded him that Christopher Columbus was born in Italy and died in Spain and he should have written his history paper about that instead of William Shakespeare who was born and died on April 23rd although in different years, of course; Ingrid Bergman and George Washington Carver died on their birthdays too; but the point was that he didn't mind the silence. It helped him to think. He hadn't minded the pain too much, either. He had a relationship with pain that was intimate and symbiotic. He fed the pain, and the pain fed him back. He liked the way that it sliced into his mind and cut the noise. He liked that the pain was a merely an arrowhead and behind it trailed the shaft of cold, silent darkness in which he could hide. Not that his current darkness was cold; no, it was not that at all. But he needed to think about other things or else he would vomit. And if he vomited then he would die. So he thought about how proud Connor would be that he had fought. He had fought hard, like a boy who has suddenly discovered he had something to live for. They'd expected him to go down for his beatings like he had done in the past; but he had surprised them. Now he almost chuckled at the thought, and that would have been deadly. He slowed his breathing through the tiny straw. It whistled in and out, not nearly enough for his body's needs, but all he had. He kept the panic at bay and pretended he was merely on the bottom of the lake again, waiting for Connor to pull him out and dry him by the fire. Suck in. Blow out. Suck in. "Hello, faggot," Trevor had said to him hours ago when they met him on the street. "Yet somehow I'm not the one always surrounded by three boys," Aiden had replied lightly. He had learned that peaceful acquiescence would earn him nothing; he might as well get in his jabs so he could tell Connor about them later. The battle that followed was brief but violent. Aiden was no brawler, but he had resolved to make Connor proud of him and at least make his tormentors pay a price for their hate. He was sure that he put his elbow into someone's eye and bit off part of an ear, but he came away with worse wounds than he had on any previous encounters. The boys had been brutal. His tender, fractured ribs were now fully broken; and the brittle shards had likely punctured a lung. Before he fainted, he heard a strange bubbling when he tried to breathe; and he spit up a lot of blood. He was sure his left arm was broken above the wrist: the ulna, he recited reflexively. His eye was so swollen he could not see out of it, not that it mattered where he was now; and he had been kicked in the face which left him with a split lip and a missing tooth. He explored the hole with his tongue: lower lateral incisor. That was not going to improve his looks. All in all, Aiden was in agony. The pain had been welcome at first when it came as a searing blade that separated him from reality, and darkness had descended in its wake. It gave him a place to hide from some of the abuse. In fact, he was unconscious already when one of them ripped out a hank of his hair by the roots and tossed the bloody clump around to his friends. But when he became sentient once more, the pain of all he had endured took him to the very edge of what he could bear. Blow out. Suck in. Blow out. The bubbling in his lungs and the whistle through the straw was an odd music in this hell. It was all he could hear; well, except for the hogs. He could still hear them. Suck in. Blow out. Suck in. When Aiden had regained consciousness after the beating, he was no longer in the street, but seemed to be on the ground outside of the car at a farm of some sort. There was an old barn clapped together of weathered-grey wood that looked decrepit and dangerous; and outside the barn was a lagoon, a cesspool of filth that looked to have been the sewage runoff from all the pigs. There had to have been hundreds of hogs to create that much waste. Aiden couldn't see them - they were inside the barn - but he could hear their grunting and squealing, and he could smell the stench that came from their unnatural crowding. He thought he had been left alone - he could hear the boys in the pig barn - but when he tried to move, a hand clamped down on his shoulder. They'd left a soldier behind to guard him. Aiden squinted up at him with one eye; his other was swollen closed and crusted with blood. He didn't know this kid's name; Andy, or Alex, or Adolf or something. Well, yeah, maybe not Adolf. "Let me go." "Can't do that, you stupid asshole. What'd you fight back for, anyway? Now he's mad." "Pffft." Aiden thought that summed it up pretty well, but even that movement hurt his split lip and made his jaw throb. He sat quietly hoping that the pain would ebb; but the longer he sat there the more he hurt. He figured now was about his only opportunity to get away when it was just one on one; but the other boy seemed to be uninjured, so Aiden's chances were pretty poor. He started to take deep breaths, preparing himself to run, when the kid spoke to him quietly. "Is it true?" "What?" Aiden grunted. His words were no longer very intelligible. "What he told us about you being a fag? He said you admitted it." Tears started to fall down Aiden's face, but not from the question. The pain had gotten so bad that he couldn't ignore it any more, yet it wasn't bad enough to take him into the darkness again. This was when the pain was not his friend; during this dance along the edge when he couldn't fall to either side. "I'm gay. So what?" "Oh man, that's just sick. Why would you tell people that?" "I'm gay. So what?" He had learned already that these conversations did not lead to one side suddenly understanding the other. This wasn't about the mutual exchange of ideas in a quest for learning. This was condemnation dressed up as a query. "You're sick." "Really? I don't spend my days beating people up in order to feel better about having a small dick." "It ain't so small. I bet you want to see it." "You'd lose your money." "You wanna suck it?" Aiden looked back up at him, suddenly curious about that question. "You want me to suck it?" The kid looked away and scrunched up his face. He thought for a long time before he said, "I ain't gonna make you do it. This ain't right..." Aiden nodded. "When Connor hunts you down and tries to kill you, tell him I said to only beat the shit out of you." "What the fuck? You're weird." "Oh, god," Aiden actually chuckled and it made him cough up some blood. "I'm so much weirder than you will ever know. You didn't hit me, did you?" The kid looked really uncomfortable at this question. His faced screwed up again and he sort of looked like he was in pain. "I held you down, though." Aiden nodded again. "I thought you did. I forgive you for that, you know. But Connor will try to kill you." "Who the fuck is Connor?" Aiden sighed heavily and looked toward the barn. Trevor and the other two kids were headed back toward them. He'd lost his window of opportunity for escape. "That's a really good question," he sighed. "After today, I'm really afraid even he's not going to know the answer to that." "I see the faggot woke up," Trevor said as he trudged over the barnyard to where Aiden sat at the other boy's - Adam's? Aaron's? Arthur's? - feet. "You do seem rather alert," Aiden agreed. This earned him a kick in the stomach and he retched into the grass. "It's not very bright, is it? I'd heard it was pretty smart, but I guess it isn't," Trevor said coldly. Aiden didn't want to be hurt by the dehumanizing pronoun; but it stung him nonetheless. He was too smart to allow this type of psychological crap to get to him, he thought. Still, sitting on the ground in complete agony while his enemies were standing around him made him bow his head in fury and shame. He was only glad that Connor couldn't see him right now. Connor would not be proud of him in this instance. The tears were flowing freely and pathetically. He hated them. "He offered to suck my cock if I would let him go," his guard suddenly lied. Aiden looked up at him to see if he would acknowledge the betrayal at least between the two of them; but of course the other boy wouldn't meet his eyes. "Did you take the blowjob, Andrew?" Andrew! Of course. Fucking Andrew. "I ain't a fag," Andrew said. Trevor shrugged. Who knew what that meant? "He probably didn't want to suck it anyway. He wanted it up his ass. That's what they all want." "How do you know what they want?" Andrew asked. Aiden couldn't help it and snickered loudly. It earned him another hard kick which shut him up, but really? That was funny as hell; and he knew hell. "We've got a treat for the fag in the barn; bring him with you," Trevor turned toward the old enclosure and headed back the way he'd just come. "C'mon, fag," one of the other boys said and grabbed his arm and tried to yank him from the ground. The pain of his broken ribs and arm flared into white light and he curled up on the dirt gasping for air and hoping to faint again. His vision blurred to grey edges, but the fact he was already lying down kept him conscious. "What's wrong with him?" The kid asked stupidly. "Arm's broke," Andrew answered bleakly. "See how it's hanging weird? You just pulled on his broken arm." "Fuck, that's gotta hurt," the kid said. "Just follow Trevor. I'll bring him." The young genius shrugged and then loped after his friends, leaving Andrew to deal with Aiden again. He crouched down next to his beaten charge. "Can you get up on your own? If they have to help you, it's gonna hurt like hell." Aiden gritted his teeth and swallowed down his nausea. "I need to pull up with my good arm. Can you just hold out your arm for me to use?" Andrew stood back up and held out a strong arm which Aiden reached up gingerly and grasped with one hand. The stretch felt like fire along his ribs and his left arm dangled uselessly. He tried to pull himself up with just his one hand, but lacked the strength. Halfway through his pull, Andrew slipped his other hand under his armpit and helped him up. "Thanks," Aiden gasped, blinking rapidly at him. "Whatever," Andrew shrugged. "Let's go." There was a pathway of wooden planks that led to the barn door; the planks started in the mud on the edge of the cesspool and then were laid atop columns of stacked concrete blocks, forming a bridge over the rank sludge. The liquid was a thick soup of feces, urine, blood, water, and other effluvia. It thickened the air with stench and flies, making it difficult to breathe without gagging. The two boys walked carefully, foot over foot, along the bridge. Aiden was greatly hampered by his broken arm and ribs; he couldn't stretch his left arm out for balance. He almost toppled into the brown pool below him, but Andrew reached out a hand twice to steady him. Aiden felt guilty about going willingly. He knew he was heading toward more abuse; but he just didn't have any more fight left inside him. Suck in. Blow out. Suck in. His breath whistled weakly through the straw as he replayed these events in his head. Knowing what he did now, he should have fought anyway. The events in the barn had been much worse than the fight; but of course he didn't know that at the time. Blow out. Suck in. Blow out. The old barn was filled with hog pens. The pigs grunted and squealed with discontent, crowded as they were into the pens so that they were smashed on all sides by other swine. And Aiden would be screaming alongside them shortly. He did not want to relive this part of the memory, so he allowed his mind to simply skim along the surface, touching it here and there. They had tied him facedown to some wooden slats and stripped off his new jeans. They spent a long time laughing at the oversized jock he was wearing. It was Connor's; and tears of fury dropped from his eyes when it was ripped off him. They raped him then, but not in the way that Aiden had been expecting. He had already mentally prepared himself for the intrusion of their bodies into his; but Trevor had other ideas. He had been carrying around a toilet plunger as if it was a royal scepter. He had each of the boys kneel on one knee and be knighted; this was all done to a great deal of laughter while Aiden lay crying. And it was the handle of this rough, wooden scepter that Trevor used. After making Aiden kiss the tip of it, he jammed it forcefully into his rectum and sodomized him brutally. Aiden screamed out his agony until the darkness finally took him away from it all again. Blow out. Suck in. Blow out. The blood was pooling in his lungs now, he could feel the pressure of it. His lungs were aching for oxygen and he started sucking and blowing faster through the tiny straw. He knew that would lead to his death faster, but he was done with all of this now. He had borne all he was capable of carrying. Suck in. Blow out. Suck in. When Aiden regained consciousness again, he could no longer speak. The pain throughout his body was screaming too loudly for his own words to be formed above it. He could hardly see or hear anything except the pain. He was also terrified now; up to this time in the torturous afternoon he had always assumed that he would make it home to Connor at some point. But now he knew the truth of it; something the other boys may not yet have realized: they had gone too far. He was hurt too badly. The police would be involved. There would be charges and legal consequences. There was no way to avoid it this time. Unless, of course, he simply disappeared on his walk to school and was never found again. But the bullies had not realized this was the path they were stumbling down; not yet. They were still a bit away from understanding how serious the matter had become. Unfortunately, as the afternoon wound down and their adrenaline with it, it would occur to them how much trouble they were in, and they would realize what Aiden realized far before them. Blow out. Suck in. Blow out. Every atom in his body was on fire. He'd never felt pain like this before. He had never heard his mind so silent; the pain had burned all his thoughts down to just a single, terrifying one: he was never going to see Connor again. Suck in. Blow out. ... ... Suck in. After being sodomized with the wooden handle, Aiden had trouble staying conscious. He flitted back and forth between the cool, silent darkness and the hot, screaming pain. During those brief forays of wakefulness, he tracked what they were doing to him; but he couldn't do anything about it. He was tied face up on a board with his arms at his sides. Andrew had handled his broken arm and had done it gently. Aiden remembered meeting his eyes with the one from which he could still see. Andrew looked white; afraid. But then a blindfold was tied over Aiden's eyes and he saw nothing else. It was hard being on his back; the liquid collected in his lungs and made him cough. But then a piece of duct tape was put over his mouth. He started panicking at this point, but the cords they had used left him completely immobile upon the board. He had to simply swallow his terror; there was nowhere else for it to go. Oddly, they next cut a small slit in the duct tape over his mouth, right at the joining of his lips. The knife they used cut into his lip; but after all he'd endured, that seemed like such a small insult. Through the slit they pushed a plastic drinking straw, into his lips and over his tongue. This actually helped him relax somewhat. He could breathe again, if only through that small plastic lifeline. Suddenly, the board was being lifted. He was carried out of the barn. He knew it because now he could smell the tremendous stench of the pool of liquid sewage, and could hear the thunk of their feet against the wooden boards. Before he could wonder where they were taking him, they already began lowering him. He groaned in rising horror when he felt the warm, liquid sludge against his body, enveloping all of him like a putrid cocoon. His head and face were the last to submerge into the opaque filth. He felt the board lowered all the way until it settled on the bottom of what turned out to be a very shallow lagoon. He was completely submerged, but his straw still poked out of the surface where he could suck in the thick air. And so he lay there in the darkness, the silence, and the pain and thought about all the events that had brought him into this hell. And he sucked in... ... Blew out... ... Sucked in.... Part 2: Connor The late afternoon sun was causing a kaleidoscope on my windshield, shattering the light into fragments of color and flinging them around the car in a dizzying array. I knew this was the way Aiden always saw the world, in broken pieces which he could not only see but also smell and hear. I'm sure he would tell me the windshield sang a song to him about bug guts and was invented by a grandfather in Estonia who also invented the seatbelt after he was flung through it the first time. I wondered if he made that shit up. Probably not; he's scary smart. The sunlight wasn't the only thing broken in the car. There was something wrong with me; I knew it. I could simultaneously feel the paralyzing terror for my brother, wondering where he was right that moment and what he might be enduring, while at the same time acknowledge the cold rage that was settling in my limbs and preparing me to act. That part of me felt like a coiled snake: cool, calculated, reptilian, and deadly. The glare made it hard to see Coach's car, but the red of its paint stood out on the horizon. I saw the brake lights as he crested a hill, and he appeared to be turning off the road. We were in an unincorporated area outside the suburbs. We had passed a number of farms on this two lane road, and a few boarded-up roadside stands with overly optimistic signs promising fresh fruit; but they wouldn't open for another month. The lack of traffic outside the suburbs meant that I had to be careful not to be spotted by Coach; without him I didn't know where this kid lived. But, I had almost lost him twice already, and since that scared me much worse than being caught, I had closed up the distance some. When I arrived at the top of the hill where the coach had turned, I discovered a wooden sign with a cartoon pig painted on it along with the words: "Welcome to The Wallow. Support a farmer; Dine on Swine." Cute; but this snake was planning to dine on a few rats instead. I drove past the entrance and pulled off the road behind the crest of the hill where hopefully Coach would not see my car when he left. There was a tree border along the road, and the entire front yard of the Mathews' farm was also heavily wooded. I ran through these trees quickly, hoping that the house was not set too far back from the road. I was in trouble if the drive way went on for miles. But then I could already smell the distinct odor of pig manure, so it couldn't be too far away. In fact, I could hear male voices. I came around a large trunk to find I was at the edge of the trees; Coach's car was parked next to another car in front of me and a rather modern - for a rural farm - single-floor house squatted in the clearing. I could see there were no trees poking up behind the house for quite a distance; presumably the hog enterprise was located back there somewhere. I edged closer to the front of the house, remaining in the trees but trying to get close enough to listen. "...not at school today and wanted to check on you." "I've missed school lots of times, Coach; nobody ever came to check on me before." "The fact that so many of you were out today; we thought it made sense to check. Have you seen your friends today, Mr. Mathews?" "I have lots of friends, Coach," Trevor drawled. His voice crawled up my spine and I had to bite my lip to keep from yelling out my accusations. "Hey! That's quite a shiner you're getting there." "Uh, yeah. Andrew did that when we were playing some ball." "Today?" "Uh, no... I haven't seen him today," Trevor said this hesitantly as if he wasn't quite sure of his lie. "Looks brand new; it's not even done bruising yet." Trevor did not reply to the statement, so the coach continued. "You got the black eye today; your friend Andrew did it; but you haven't seen him today. Do I have those facts right, Mr. Mathews?" I peeked around the tree trunk during the long silence that followed. Trevor and the Coach were staring each other in the eye, and then Trevor smirked. "I'm okay, thanks for checking." He started to close the door. "Have you seen Aiden Cavanaugh today?" Trevor's jaw tightened and there was another long pause before he said, "Who? No... No, I don't know him. You know, my parents aren't home and I think you should probably leave now." He closed the door, leaving Coach on the porch looking at it thoughtfully. He stood there for a long while before he turned around and walked to the side of the house to peer into the back. I had to retreat into the woods when he came back to keep him from seeing me. He looked around a bit more and then got in his car and left. I exited the cloak of trees and headed toward the front door, but stopped abruptly as I passed the car that was still parked in the drive. I assumed it belonged to Trevor since he was the only one home. I peered through the dirty windows; and there, in the floor of the back seat was the proof I'd hoped to find. There lay the rationalization for the violence that was about to follow. Aiden's backpack was slightly unzipped with some contents falling out. A half-chewed purple pencil caught my eye; it lay in the floor as a silent accusation. I had promised to keep him safe. There was no longer a need to skulk. There was no longer any question about whether or not this was a rat that would be eaten today; so I ignored the icy knot that had formed in my stomach at the sight of Aiden's bag and strode directly over the porch to the door, turned the knob, and entered the house. "...yeah, I messed it up, Andrew! I'm sorry; I sort of panicked when he was asking questions about the fag. He's probably on his way over to your place now to check our stories." From the small living room I'd entered, I could hear Trevor's voice coming from deeper in the house. I'm sure there was furniture around me, and electronics, and all the consumables that our race has earned by right of our opposable thumbs; but I didn't notice any of it. I followed the invisible trail of his voice through a small hallway toward the rear of the dwelling. "I don't know!" Trevor was shouting into the mobile phone he was holding. He was standing in a large kitchen with his back to me and looking out some large glass doors to the yard and an old barn that stood in the distance. I was completely silent as I walked up behind him, but he must have seen my reflection in the glass because he whirled suddenly around, his eyes wide. "What the..." My fist connected with his nose so solidly that I felt it crunch under my knuckles. His head snapped backward and hit the door with a loud crack, leaving a spider web fracture in the glass. Blood fountained from his nose as he collapsed on the floor at my feet. I relished the feel of his flesh breaking under my fist, of his bones meeting my bones in a contest of dominance. The phone clattered to the tiles and I retrieved it and held it to my ear. "Trevor? Trevor! You there, bro?" "Trevor's kinda busy dying right now, Andrew. He made the mistake of hurting Aiden. I'll be coming to find you next, buddy. Feel free to call the cops." I hung up. I couldn't actually kill Trevor, of course. Not until I had my brother. "Where's Aiden?" I asked him coldly. "I already told the coach I don't know any..." I kicked him hard in the kidney; and it wasn't nearly as satisfying as my punch had been. When my shoe met his kidney it wasn't solid enough to fully feed my hunger for violence; but the noise he made was satisfactory, and I appeased myself with the knowledge that he'd be pissing blood for a week. He was writhing on the floor in pain, and my patience with this asshole was completely done. I wanted my brother. I kicked him swiftly in the nuts and while he howled and tried to cover and protect them, I brought my foot down right on his sac and ground down with sufficient pressure until I could actually feel that I had one of his testes trapped between my heel and the floor. He was pounding away at my leg with his fists trying to get me off his tortured ball. His face was purple. "If you hit me again, I'll squash it." "Oh God," he wheezed. He started retching off to the side. "Tell me where the fuck he is, Trevor, and maybe you'll live, yeah?" "I don't know... he... I don't..." I let more of my weight shift to my heel and I could feel that tender orb reaching the point of rupture. A high keening wail was coming from Trevor's throat; tears were streaking his face and his hands were now pounding the floor ineffectually. "Please... oh, please, God..." He couldn't hold himself still and squirmed very much like a worm on a hook. My lack of feeling any sympathy whatsoever should have disturbed me, but all I could think about was my brother. My behavior was sociopathic and dangerous; and I didn't give a fuck. "Aiden?" "I... he's... I don't know if he's still okay... down at the barn. In the lagoon." "In the lagoon?" Trevor's face was white now and he looked up at me with sweat on his brow and tears on his cheeks. "Under," he rasped and then gagged. Holy fuck, they'd killed him and thrown his body in the water. I stomped down mercilessly, brutally rupturing his testicle and then stepped on his convulsing body to let myself out of the cracked glass door while he howled and vomited on the floor. I left him behind as I jogged through the back yard toward the old, grey barn in the distance. I didn't see the "lagoon" until I got all the way up to it. It was a cesspool of swine sewage. It was green- grey with swirls of scum along the top and rivulets of brown sludge flowing from the barn into it. There were flies buzzing everywhere, hanging in the air like thick curtains. Aiden's body was in that filth? A tear splashed on my clenched fist and I looked at it in surprise; I hadn't even known I'd been crying. I was shaking with rage, barely containing my gagging from the stench. I almost turned around to go back and smash Trevor's other testicle, thinking it best to completely remove his breeding capability, but I needed to retrieve Aiden's body first. I needed to see it for myself. There was a bridge of sorts over the cesspool, simple wood planks atop stacked concrete cinder blocks; but it was difficult to determine how deep the lagoon was, the thick fluid was so dark and opaque. I trudged halfway over the plank pathway when I heard the wheezing, whistling noise piercing through the low drone of all the flies. It sounded like breathing. "Spaz?" I called. "Aiden! Are you here?" The breathing had suddenly been replaced by a humming. What the fuck? I looked all around the area and saw nothing but the barn, the cesspool, and the flies. Maybe the humming was coming from them? The one-balled asshole had said that Aiden was in the lagoon, so I turned my attention down to the dark liquid, but I could see nothing at all beneath the surface. And then I saw it; a plastic drinking straw was sticking up through a scum of brownish suds, piecing into the air like a demented periscope. The whistling, wheezing, humming noise was coming from there. For the second time that day, time expanded and contracted in a bizarre fashion. It didn't seem to run in the traditional, linear fashion I'd known before. Events swirled around me in a dizzying manner. There were cops and ambulances and doctors and parents. First, of course, I dragged Aiden from the sludge and removed his ropes, his blindfold, and the duct tape. He was crying; but I no longer was. I had him back and I was suddenly just fucking fine. The cruel duct tape had a major positive attribute; the disgusting sewage had not tainted Aiden's mouth at all. "I'm sorry, Connor. I'm so sorry..." Aiden was panting stupidly. Sorry? I kissed him to shut him up. Okay, that was not the only reason I kissed him, but it worked to shut him up, too. I wanted to kiss him brutally, to bruise his lips with mine and to bite him and claim him and show him how I was feeling to have him back again. But I kissed him gently, instead. I let our lips brush together in just a teasing touch, and poked the tip of my tongue out to see if he wanted it; he sucked it into his mouth immediately and let his own wrestle around with it. I slowly explored his warm mouth, gentling him. Calming him. He tasted mostly like blood, and when I discovered he was missing a tooth I started growling, but Aiden pulled away and looked at me with one eye - the other was swollen closed - and he gasped a bit. "Connor? I love you. I want to kiss you so bad, you don't even know... but, uh... I need to go to the hospital now..." He didn't say anything else because he fainted. I called 911 and had an ambulance and the police dispatched, and then I called Coach and told him where I was. And then I lay back on the dirt ground, covered in the muck of the pit and waited for them all to arrive. My hand was clamped onto Aiden's leg and it would stay there for the next few hours. The EMTs tried to remove me so they could do their work, but I wouldn't budge. I went wherever they took Aiden. The police tried to remove me so they could ask questions, but I answered them as best I could from right beside Aiden. The coach attempted to get me to go with him to the hospital, but I crawled in the back of the ambulance without a word and rode with Aiden. The doctors were finally successful in removing me from Aiden when they told me they couldn't treat him unless I moved. I watched them whisk him away and realized the empty pit in my stomach was suddenly back again. The nurses at the hospital asked me to go home and shower; but when they saw that wasn't going to happen, one of them took pity on me and led me to a room where I could shower and change into some clean scrubs While they worked on Aiden, I talked to the police and answered every question they asked with complete honesty. I told them what I had done to Trevor and how I had found Aiden. The coach sat beside me the entire time. My parents showed up after we had been there for a couple hours; but that wasn't really their fault. I had not called them. There was also a woman who was there, although she never introduced herself. She sat close to us and listened to everything I told the police. She had dark brown skin that was almost black, and her ebony hair was worn long and curly. It frizzed out from her head, but flowed down her back rather than up into an afro. She was thin and pretty. On any other day I might have tried to flirt with her, although she was a lot older than me; probably about thirty. On this particular day though, she hardly caught my eye; instead I kept thinking: I kissed Aiden! I kissed the fuck out of Aiden. A doctor entered the waiting area where we were all huddled for the interrogation, and as soon as I saw him I leaped up and faced him. "He's got a lot of healing to do, but he should be all right in time," he said to all of us. "Family?" Ma and Dad and I stepped closer to him while the police, Coach, and the pretty woman all fell back a bit. "He has a broken arm and broken ribs. He has abrasions on his lungs where his broken ribs scratched them, but they were not punctured. He has a large head wound where hair was ripped out of the scalp. He lost a tooth and has a lot of swelling in his jaw. He has multiple scrapes and bruises. He has a bruised kidney." He lowered his voice further, "he has a lot of bleeding in his rectum. He was raped rather brutally with some sort of tool. He said it was a wooden handle." Ma gasped and put her hand over her mouth and I sat down right where I was in the middle of the floor. Just - thunk! - my knees were no longer holding me up and my ass was on the floor. "You alright?" The doctor asked me kindly. I didn't know how to answer a question that complicated so I merely nodded. Oh, Spaz. "His current danger is infection; and it's a big danger. His time in the sewage exposed him to bacteria, parasites, all types of microbes, really; and he had multiple cuts and openings in his skin. We'll have to treat him very aggressively for infection." Dad nodded slowly, he seemed to be in shock. "Can we see him?" "Connor," the doctor said. "He wants to see Connor." Ma and Dad swung their heads down to look at me in the floor and I jumped to my feet to follow the doctor. "Take me to him," I said. *This was a difficult chapter to write; I'm sorry it took so long. It is dedicated to the memory of Matthew Shepard: It is my fervent wish that all monsters were safely ensconced in the pages of fiction. seth-kirkcauldy@sbcglobal.net