Page 4 of Loving Trent (Love in the Bootheel #5)

Two

TRENT

Hours pass as I immerse myself in every single file I previously stacked on the desk.

My back aches, my ass is numb, and my stomach grumbles in displeasure.

But I don’t stop until the sun has set and I realize the house has no electricity.

Using my phone’s flashlight to cut through the darkness, I gather the important files, placing them in my bag before taking one last look around the room.

I’ll be back tomorrow. With that thought cemented in my brain, I practically run to my bike.

Hopping on, I don’t take another look around before driving down the windy road and back onto the main highway.

I booked a room at a small motel in the closest town, thirty minutes away.

A small town that I’ve been to before, but have no memory of the drive that ended at a hospital.

I might not remember how I got to the hospital, but I remember the moments that caused me to be there.

After two years here, I’m broken, and I know it.

Everything inside me is shattered into a million different pieces, and I’m never going to be able to put myself back together again.

For the first year, I held out hope that everything would stop, that I would magically be cleaned, or that someone would come to save me, but it never happened.

Nothing ever changed, and soon, that hope died a very slow, painful death.

I withdrew into myself. I wasn’t much of a talker to begin with, but I stopped making any noise to acknowledge that I heard anyone talking to me.

As time passed, I started to hate myself, just like all the counselors, teachers, and Director Tom did.

I tried to get my heart and body to do the right thing and lie for me, but they never listened.

Every Saturday, Director Tom would come and take us one by one.

He would lead us to his private home, located away from the main buildings, and bring us into his basement.

Once there, we would walk into a white, sterile room furnished with a wooden table, three seats behind it, and a hospital bed in the middle of the room.

Sitting at the table, there would be two doctors with an empty seat between them, which Director Tom would take after strapping us to the bed.

The first time I was taken down there, I was scared that the same thing that happened in the room of horrors—which is what I call the room with the single bed—would happen again.

My fears and concerns were tripled when the woman who touched me, even though I didn’t want it, was sitting at the table staring at me like she missed me.

I remembered her name after that first day in the basement, Doctor Sandy.

I tried to escape the room, but I was too small and weak to fight off Director Tom.

It didn’t help that he backhanded me across the face.

I had never been hit before, and the shock from the slap stunned me just enough that I found myself strapped to the bed.

The doctors—always female doctors—would take my pants and underwear off, leaving me naked from the waist down.

They hooked monitors up to me. One on my chest and one on my head.

They would then dim the lights and project images onto the ceiling.

The first time, I closed my eyes to keep from seeing whatever it was, but that just earned me whips across my bare legs with a belt.

The images would always be the same. Naked men, fully clothed men, two men kissing, and even two men having sex.

The doctors would sit back and watch their computers while Director Tom stared at me.

I tried hard not to let my body react to what I saw or heard, but just like that day with Doctor Sandy, I had no control over it.

My dick would swell, giving away just how much I like the images.

My pulse would race, a warm sensation would spread throughout my veins, and my hands would shake.

After what felt like hours of torture, the lights would come back on, and the images would turn off, but then the real torture would start.

They would take turns whipping me, telling me how sick, disturbed, and mentally ill I was and how I wasn’t working hard enough to change it.

I stopped crying and screaming when I realized it didn’t help.

Then, they would strap me back to the bed.

This time, they would stand beside my bed, showing me the same images and hurting me.

They said they were conditioning my brain to work right.

That getting aroused by the sight of two men together was wrong, dirty, and unnatural.

Then, the images would change to a man and a woman.

That’s when Doctor Sandy would be left alone with me.

She would start touching me, telling me that she was helping.

Once she got the results she wanted, they would leave me there for hours, hooked up to the monitors with those images.

Doctor Sandy came for me every week like clockwork.

Friday afternoon, she would walk into the dorms, curl her finger at me, and I would follow her.

I tried not to follow her once, but that only resulted in me being forced to go without food for three days.

I learned that once the door shut behind her, I could push my mind to go to different places.

It wasn’t me in that room with her, but someone else.

She wasn’t hurting me. She was hurting another little boy.

Tonight, everything feels different as I follow Sandy into the room.

Early this morning, our lessons were interrupted, and we were told to go into our dorms. We were instructed to stay inside and to keep quiet.

If anyone made a sound, we would all be locked inside and not given any food for a week.

As I sat on my bed and looked around at the four boys I shared a room with, I saw fear in their eyes, but not in mine.

I contemplated screaming just so they would withhold food from me.

All I want to do is die.

Hours passed before the doors were unlocked and we were let out.

I overheard a couple of counselors talking about local police showing up.

I had started to hope that Sandy wouldn’t show up, but here she is, undressing.

Like clockwork, I shut my brain off and float off to an alternate reality.

After she is done with me, she does something that she has never done before.

She kisses my lips and steps outside, leaving me alone.

Her parting words, “I’m going for a smoke.

Once I’m done, we can go again. You’re such a good boy. My favorite one.”

But she’s wrong.

I’m not a good boy.

I’m sick and everyone knows it.

With no thoughts running through my brain, I pick up my clothes and walk into the bathroom.

I’m never allowed to go into the bathroom alone, much less shut the door.

So that’s what I do. Leaning my back against the door, it clicks shut, and with a flick of my wrist, the sound of the lock engaging rings through the silence.

Flashes of what Doctor Sandy has made me do in this small space consume me.

Her touching me, kissing me, forcing me to get on my knees for her.

Doing things that made my stomach turn, and on multiple occasions, I had to swallow the vomit in my mouth.

She always said she was making me a man and that I wanted it because my body would always respond when she touched me.

She would explain that it took a while because I was shy.

There is a small mirror over the sink, and it holds my attention fully.

My gaze slithers across the various marks on my pale skin.

Bruises left from the punishments I was given early this week, after someone accused me of staring at the male teacher for too long.

Raised jagged scars from some of the more brutal punishments.

Tonight, there are fresh scratches down my chest and on my stomach from Sandy.

Red hot hate burns fast through me. Hate aimed at myself for not being able to be better, for not being able to change whatever is wrong inside me.

The darkness that has been following me for two years presses in. Without any strength left to fight it, I allow it to consume me fully.

My body grows lightheaded as if I had died in that moment, and I float out of my body.

Watching as the person who looks like me raises a fist and shatters the mirror.

Hands that are similar to mine, except for the black that covers them, wrap around the biggest piece of glass.

The slam of a door echoes through the space, but it seems only I hear it.

Because the altered version of myself doesn’t even twitch.

As quickly as I escaped, the sound of a fist slamming against the locked door propels me back inside my body.

The roar of my blood pumping fast is drowned out by the echoes of all the adults over the years. All their voices combine into one single demonic voice that yells at me. It tells me how sick I am, how no one will love me, how big of a disappointment I am, and how broken I’ve become.

My hand tightens around the shard of glass, and blood starts falling down it. There is no pain to accompany the cut. Another loud bang has me spinning around to see the door physically shake.

“Open the door, Trent,” Director Tom yells.

“Trent, be the good boy you are and open the door for me,” Sandy pleads.