Page 6 of Bend Him, Break Him
The closet door whipped open, and the cameras flashed.
Isaac’s entire body erupted in icy goosebumps and burning embarrassment, his stomach churning somersaults.
More jocks than Isaac could count rushed into the closet, calling Isaac slurs and smacking him with belts and towels and even their fists.
It was brutal and bloody, and most of the memory during those awful ten minutes of physical torment only came back as searing flashes.
Isaac didn’t wanna remember the sounds of their laughs, the wicked smiles on their faces, the loud tears he cried as they kept pelting him, kept striking him, kept demanding he beg.
When a few jocks grabbed his arms and yanked him out of the closet, Isaac froze.
Part of him was terrified, but another part was relieved to be freed from the closet before they could hurt him more.
He stood naked in the hallway, lost in the taunting words, the booming laughter, the cutting remarks, and the flashes. They were still taking pictures.
Isaac fled. Lost in a blur of tears and hyperventilating, he nearly collapsed in the crowded hallway as he bolted to the office. Of course, the jocks had timed the humiliation right as the second bell of the morning went off.
When the time came to answer questions, Isaac revealed everything.
Well, not everything. He said Colton had lured him into the custodian’s closet, but not how he’d done it.
Despite all the hate he held for Colton now, back then, a secret part of him still yearned to keep Colton’s secret.
A part of him clung to the sad, broken expression Colton made in the closet while his teammates beat Isaac relentlessly.
No one believed Isaac’s story. No one wanted to believe their star golden boy would do something so awful.
No one wanted to believe the best athletes in a decade had hazed Isaac.
Colton’s story of the team in the weight room went unchallenged.
Even their coach backed up the tale, not an ounce of hesitation when he entered the dean’s office with Isaac and his parents and confirmed he saw all the athletes working out.
He even gave a bullshit story on how he took a mental headcount of everyone there.
Oh, how furious Isaac’s parents were at that statement.
Not with the school. With Isaac. No matter what happened, his perverse desires led him down this path in some way, or so his mother muttered passive aggressively for the days that followed Isaac’s ‘incident.’ If Isaac just didn’t need to parade himself around, this would’ve never happened.
His father was more convinced Isaac was pulling some political queer stunt than he was about Isaac being lured into the custodian closet by the star pitcher.
The pictures had disappeared from the jocks’ phones—but a few nudes they’d taken still floated around Snapchat and group chats and DMs. Isaac knew those were the pictures the jocks had taken, the angles perfectly aligned with the custodian closet he’d been thrown out of.
But the administration claimed anyone could’ve taken those pictures since Isaac ran naked through the hallways.
Isaac knew, though. Isaac knew the truth. But Isaac didn’t know why Colton did it. He didn’t know why Colton betrayed him, abandoned him to the wolves, and broke him in front of everyone.
Every part of Isaac wanted to die. He hated being around people, he hated being by himself, and he hated every waking moment of his life up until winter break when he used the isolation of the holiday to plan an escape.
Running away from his problems would get him nowhere.
That’d been a lesson he learned while naked in the halls of his school.
Fleeing only delayed the pain. No, Isaac didn’t want to run from his problems; he wanted to run toward his solution.
From freshman year, he’d taken extra classes and maintained a high GPA while performing extracurricular activities, hoping to have the best senior application in his school district. He hoped his junior year marks would be enough to stand out when he decided to graduate early and apply to colleges.
It worked. Isaac got accepted to the University of Clinton, packed up everything he could fit in the ’76 station wagon he bought off some elderly woman online, and drove to college.
He’d never turned back. Isaac didn’t come home, didn’t call his parents, didn’t message his siblings, didn’t miss his family.
He simply disappeared from their lives, and they seemed okay with it.
No animosity either way. Just silence met with surrender.
They cut off his trust fund and pretended he didn’t exist.
Isaac had spent his childhood too vocal about science, too bold about politics, and too proud of his homosexuality.
While his family tolerated him, they didn’t accept him, so when he finally cut that cord, he realized they’d already severed the thread from their end, too.
No bridge to mend, so he let it burn and focused on finding a new life on his own.
“Thank you again for sharing your story,” Jazz said, reeling Isaac from his memories as she led the applause that everyone quickly joined in on. Everyone except for Isaac, who glared at Colton’s smiling face as the jock basked in the flattery of the audience.
Isaac hated Colton so much and hated the pedestal of Pride they threw him on. Yes, everyone deserved to come out on their own terms, their own time, but bigots didn’t deserve to be praised for finally owning up to the sexuality others around them were brave enough to accept before them.
It wasn’t fair.
But Isaac remembered nothing in his life had ever been fair. He cut out of the meeting early without a single word and went back to his dorm to finish grading papers. Mostly, he wanted to inspect Colton’s paper more.
If it was really plagiarized, then Colton would be automatically failed from his Comp course.
If he tanked this class, he’d be in violation of his academic probation.
If he violated his probation, he’d be kicked out of the university.
And if he was kicked out, Isaac could finally breathe easy again without the constant reminders of the man he loved to hate and hated to love.
Knowing Colton cheated was easy, proving it took more work, but Isaac had spite to motivate him, hate to fuel him, and a vindictive mind to help him search for answers.
He worked tirelessly through the night until he found the answers he was looking for and could easily out Colton’s actions.
He just couldn’t decide how he wanted to go about it.
Destroying Colton required a level of savoring.
Isaac would only get to play this hand once before he ignited Colton’s world, so he wanted to make sure he had the right seats to enjoy the flames.
Isaac composed a very formal email to Colton, requesting he meet him in the auditorium tomorrow evening. What better way to destroy Colton’s life than by presenting a farewell lecture he’d be forced to finally pay attention to?