Page 213 of Wrath

“Riley grabbed my hand, and I remember thinking I’d doanything to keep her safe.” I wipe my eyes again, thinking about Riley. How young and innocent she was. Big, hazel eyes and pale blond hair. She was just a kid.

I have to rub my eyes again, and I feel Josh lean toward me. I look at the swatch of couch between us.

“Finally, we saw this big, white building. It was three stories, and it looked like a hotel or…I guess a hospital. But it wasn’t.” Mills’ eyes widen slightly as I look up at him.

“It had been a prison,” I rasp. “The whole place…had been a prison. Decades before. It had big gates and…” I shake my head, looking at the couch again. Miller shifts like maybe he wants to come closer, but I straighten my shoulders and keep going.

“I knew as we were walking in that it was bad news.” Chills pop out on my arms. My throat tightens and stings so bad, thinking of how stupid I was. “Sometimes…in my dreams, we run away and see the chain-link fence with barbed wire on the top.” I glance up at him. “It’s really there.”

I swallow. Set my eyes down on his couch. I shouldn’t look up.

“There were three floors,” I say, tracing the edge of a cushion. “Clinic on the first floor. Girls on second. And the boys on third.”

My eyes flicker up to his on instinct, but I know that if I look at him, I’ll start to lose it more, so I look back down at the couch.

“This part’s bad.” My voice sounds raspy and weak, even though I try to keep it neutral. “What you should remember is that it’s over now.” I look him in the eye again for half a second, to be sure my point is made. “It was bad,” I say. “But now it’s over.”

Josh nods, his face looking graver now, as if he’s bracing.

I blow a breath out, hunch my shoulders, and try to pick out the strands of color in his couch. The little blue threads. Little gray ones.

“We all had our own rooms. And what they mostly did wastry to turn my dick straight.” I shut my eyes, cupping my hand over them. “There was a lot of straight porn. They had female nurses for the guys, and they would come and jerk us off and just to help things, we’d get drugs, like ‘party drugs’ to make us come and make us like it. So we maybe felt more straight?” My eyes flicker up to his, and I jerk them back down. “I don’t know. Fortunately—unfortunately?—it didn’t work for me. When they showed gay porn, if you got hard, in your IV you would get what I called barf juice. So your stomach would hurt, and you’d feel pretty sick, and then you wouldn’t get a boner.”

I rub my throbbing forehead again. I wonder what his face looks like, but I’m not brave enough to look.

“It was all fucked up and twisted,” I say, my voice sounding tired and raspy. “They thought if they had those nurses jerk us off enough, we’d all go straight. I don’t know if it worked for the other guys, but I think no, because eventually there were a lot of us down on the first floor. Meaning” —I glance up, not really seeing him—“in the later part of the day, we would be taken down there for more…treatment. And it was never only just me being taken down there.”

My eyes slide to Josh’s face, and it looks stricken. I can tell he’s trying to look neutral, which makes me almost laugh. But I don’t. I rub my palm over my knee and press my lips together for a second.

“Sometimes they would get you pretty high on stuff, and when they took you back to your room from the ‘clinic’ they would run IVs and stuff to cool you down or give you fluids. So, the rooms themselves were like a hospital room, almost.”

I look up at him, feeling brave for just this one breath, and his eyes are red. His face is pale.Because he’s normal. This stuffwouldbe a shock.

“Remember, I’m out now,” I say, at the same time he croaks, “You were scared of hospitals.”

I lift a shoulder, holding his eyes for a second—I see thatthey’re filled with tears—but then I have to look back down. “So…”Deep breath. “That went on for a while. For me, I think like a month? And they’d just…jerk you off. A bunch of women nurses. And the stuff they gave us—I think it was a mix of different stuff—it really did give you a boner. Sometimes it would hit hard, and I’d come from someone jerking me. Or using their mouth.”

I can’t resist a masochistic glance at Josh’s face, which I find slack with shock.

“Yeah, I know. It’s rape, but these people didn’t see it that way. They got paid well, so I think the place attracted sadists who could do whatever they wanted, off the grid. All the program wanted was to deliver a straight kid to its parents. They really thought they could re-program us. That was the point of the first part, in the cabins. They made sure one of the two partners was bi, if possible. And then they’d try to bond us with survival stuff. Remove your partner from you in the clinic phase, and you’d get lonely, scared and all. And then before you left, they’d tell you that the two of you would—” I look back up, waving my hand. “You know.”

Josh looks stricken.

“Fuck.” I say it loud and crisp. “If you could fuck, then you were cured. Cause everybody knows to be a functional adult, you need to keep your dick hard for sex with someone you don’t actually want, right?” I frown at his shocked face, feeling numb and frozen. “I’m being too glib?”

“No.” It’s a soft whisper.

“Have you heard enough, Josh? It’s a good time for a break. You wanna pour a drink?” I ask him.

“No,” he murmurs.

I bite the inside of my cheek—hard enough to taste blood. “No one wants to hear this shit. Even I wouldn’t. So it’s okay if you want me to stop. I could explain my memory problems in just a few sentences if—”

“No, Ez.” He scoots closer, so his knees are almost touching mine and I can feel the heat of him. “Keep going.” His face is soft and gentle. Even his voice is so soft, as if he’s speaking to a wounded animal. “Can I touch you?” he whispers. “Do you want me not to?”

I can barely choke out, “Not to.” I close my eyes, and he says, “Sorry.”

My eyes sting and throb, but moisture doesn’t come. “I’m telling you,” I say, holding my head. “The next part is not good.”

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