Page 2 of Pet Project

I turned eighteen a few weeks ago. I figured after he nearly put his fist through my skull, I needed to get information to the cops about what he’s got his hands in before he actually kills me.

Drugs, stolen electronics, counterfeit sneakers…

The jagoff even started to branch out into prostitution.

Last week, he brought home one of the girls from my high school. I’m pretty sure she was a junior in my study hall this past year. She just sat on the floor, leaning against the couch, eyes glazed over, drugged out of her mind. Michael got on a video conference and proceeded to take bids on her virginity, both from the people on the computer and the guys in the room with him. She didn’t even flinch while he treated her like a product instead of a person.

I tried to ignore it. Better her than me, right?

Then one of the creepy old fuckers asked how much formyvirginity. I thought my brother would tell him to fuck off. I thought he kicked me out of the room to beat the shit out of the asshole. Michaelneverlet any of his friends put their hands on me. That’s what I thought anyways.

I’m ashamed to admit it took me until two days ago when the creeper’s hands were on my ass for me to realize the truth of why I was sent out of the room. I scratched the asshole’s face up for his trouble. Apparently, that was the wrong response in my brother’s eyes.

Michael was not happy about refunding him andpaying extra for his trouble. Then he made sure my face paid in kind when it met his fist, over and over.

I’ve been on the receiving end of my brother’s fists since he got custody of me when Mama died around a decade ago. This time, however, he went harder than ever before. Since I turned eighteen, he decided not to keep the blows to places my clothing hides. Now that I’m no longer a minor, he doesn’t have to worry about Child Protective Services showing up if someone from school notices the bruising.

Even then, my brother usually makes sure the bruising is minimal to where it is mostly hidden with my skin color. This time, even with my darker skin tone, there is no mistaking that someone had been whaling on me since my left eye is still swollen.

Mama being biracial meant she wasexoticto the men who she loved. For me, it meant I got the mocha skin tone of my grandfather instead of the creamy ivory of my grandmother. My memories of them are little more than impressions at this point, but I remember the kindness in their voices… something I’ve been missing for a very long time now.

I don’t know if I ever met my father’s parents. He died when I was a toddler, and Mama was always too sad to talk about him. And my step-father wouldn’t have let her anyways.

“You alright, kid?” the shorter guy behind the bar asks me as he comes around to meet me in the doorway. “You need me to call anyone to come get you? The cops to get the guy who mugged you?”

Shit!

I forgot where I was for a second. I’m being awkward as fuck.

Before I can open my mouth to answer, I see a huge man come out of the restroom to my left. He’s easily a head taller than I am, if not more. Big man equals big pain in my experience. My body responds before I can even think about it.

When it comes to fight or flight, there is no fight in me anymore, not when it comes to people who look likehim. I’m just lucky I didn’t freeze, like I do with Michael… there’s no point in fleeing from him. He always finds a way to bring me back – even the cops have had no choice but to put me back into his hands.

My brain shuts off as I tear off across the highway, lucky there is little traffic in this deluge. The next thing I know, I’m standing outside the shithole house where my brother and his boys run their business, pushing my hand through the coarse waves of my hair.

I shouldn’t have come back. I should have found somewhere to hide out until the cops came to bust him. But my feet dragged me back here through sheer muscle memory.

Sometime in the last twenty years, all the big old houses in the area were bought up and converted into apartments. Michael somehow managed to snag one of these houses to set up his operation right before he got custody of me.

The front door is the one that hides the truth of what happens in this house. That’s the entrance that faces thestreet and the only one that any legal deliveries are made to. The second floor, accessible from just inside the front door, he’s been converting into a pseudo brothel since his favorite one got shut down and turned into some sort of dance club.

At least that’s what I think he’s doing there. I am constantly hearing sex and screaming from below my room. I’ve never been on that floor in the years we’ve lived here, and I don’t think I want to find out after glimpsing some of the things his boys moved in there.

The top floor, formerly the attic, ismyliving space. Technically, I’m listed as being down on the first floor with Michael, but he can control me better being upstairs. The only way in and out for me is the fire escape down to the back yard, but with the motion sensor cameras my brother set up back there, I can’t sneak out. Unless he sends me on an errand, I don’t get to leave without repercussions. Now that I’ve graduated high school, I don’t have enough of a reason to try most days.

I’m going to be in so much shit for today. It’s my sixth… no eighth time sneaking out in the last year, outside of going to school. I should have gone straight back to the house after visiting the station. But the urge to visit and tour the new pet play room at the local BDSM club was just too strong to resist. I’m finally old enough to get in the door, so I had to at least try. The rain had other plans for me, though.

I will never forget when some girls in my freshman algebra class put kitten ears on my head and started petting me. To everyone else in the room, it was a cutejoke. But to me, it was nirvana. In those few moments, I was able to relax in a way that I hadn’t been able to since I was seven years old. I felt like I was back in my mama’s arms. I felt safe.

I will do anything I need to in order to recapture that feeling, even facing the irate meth-head wanna be pimp stomping across the gravel toward me. Maybe I should have taken the cop up on the ride home after all?

“You’ve got a lot to answer for, boy,” Michael snarls and grabs me by the back of my neck. At six foot nine and almost four hundred pounds, he is the spitting image of his father, the man who beat my mother to death in front of me. With every touch, every gravelly word uttered, I turn back into that scared little seven-year-old boy who was forced to watch the light leaving his mama’s eyes.

Instead of taking me up to my small apartment, he drags me to the hatch for the basement. My feet are dragging through the gravel and grass as my stepbrother pulls me toward the house. Yanking open the rusty slabs of metal concealing the cellar with one hand, he throws me down the stairs with the other. My head makes good friends with quite a few of the concrete blocks on the way down to greet the slimy floor.

Looks like he never bothered to call the plumber for the leak I told him about last month.

The slam of the metal cuts off most of the light in the room as I drag my sore body up off the grime. Shivering in my wet clothes, I make my way over to the dryer in the hopes that I forgot to empty it when I was doing laundrylast time. Some dry clothing would be really welcome right about now.

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