Page 42 of Deviant Illusions

? Fyodor Dostoevsky

20

KANE

Austria is cold as fuck.

The air fogs in front of my face as I step out of the luxurious cabin that Rowan is forcing me to stay in. My presence isn’t needed, but the controlling prick won’t allow me to leave. I’m tempted to hitchhike further into Europe and disappear.

The only footsteps unsettling the clean blanket of snow are mine as I walk through the undisturbed patches, adding more prints to the uniform surface. There’s something calming about being the first person to ruin the crisp blanket and I need to find something to escape to my thoughts, so I continue walking, sinking my booted feet into the deep snow.

Thick trees surround the property, the evergreen branches covered in the same soft white snow, and little flakes sprinkle down as the wind picks up. I pull my coat tighter around me and walk deeper into them. Icy patches lay under the snow, showing a path that has been traveled before me. It’s all compacted and I steady myself by pressing my hand to the neighboring tree trunks. It doesn’t take long for another cabin to come into view.

I freeze in place.

I’ve never seen anything like it. There are no windows and smoke billows from the large stone chimney. A black metal door stands out against the scenery, and I can’t make sense of the reason for no windows. It’s too big to be a smokehouse and the picturesque views would be a selling point for the property. There aren’t any new bricks showing that the windows have been covered. It’s all uniform like it was purposefully built to be a box.

The door hisses as it opens, and the steel must be at least eight inches thick. It’s like a bank vault with metal cylinders retracting. I’ve seen some fancy fucking shit in my life, but I’ve never witnessed a smokehouse that’s bigger than most family homes with a vault door.

Rowan spots me straight away as he steps out with his phone to his ear. The fucking predator. He doesn’t step onto the snow, remaining at the threshold with his creepy eyes boring into my soul, scanning it for weakness. There’s something sinister in the way he just stands there, staring at me. Despite being identical to Lennox, he’s worse somehow.

A child walks through the gap of the door. He can’t be older than six or seven years old, every part of his body covered in scars. He’s only in a pair of shorts. It’s fucking freezing and he doesn’t even have socks on.

I look from the child to Rowan. There aren’t any shared features. The kid has a darker complexion and dark eyes. But he slips his small hand into Rowan’s. Fuck, I have a cousin. A cousin who has been severely abused by the sadistic cunt. Not a slap or a punch, which would be bad enough, but deep scars that are raised, crisscrossing over his chest, arms, and thighs. Even his stomach has marks, huge pock-like burns.

My feet move automatically, sinking into the deeper patches of snow unprotected from the thicket of trees as I walk towards them. Rowan tightens his hand around the boy’s, then abruptly releases it. I’m at least ten feet away when the kid runs out intothe snow. His brown skin turns red against the harsh elements with no barrier, but he continues running towards me without any care for his bare feet. There’s no smile on his face though. He runs like a soldier reporting for duty.

I slow and force my face to soften as I smile. Before I can utter a word, he stops in front of me. He’s even smaller close up. His thin frame made him look taller when he was running, but he doesn’t even come up to my hips. My smile drops as he reaches both hands out for my belt.

Pulling my hips back, I rush out, “Hey, whoa, what are you doing?”

It doesn’t deter him as he pushes forward again with hands outstretched. His voice is strained, like he’s spent his short life smoking twenty a day as he says, “You’re new. I have to welcome you.”

I gently grab his small wrists and look at the sick fucking cunt still standing at the door, smiling as though this is fucking amusing. My naïvety made me believe human trafficking was taking advantage of people who were already living in fear, taking them to a different country under the guise of protection, only to end up exploiting them himself. But he’s worse. Human trafficking means sexual slavery, not transportation.

The boy tries to fight me. He’s fucking fighting me to be abused because he’s been beaten, tortured into thinking he has to. I don’t even want to know what the alternative would be for him, but I lower to my haunches.

“Hey,” I say softly. “You will never welcome anyone, okay?”

His face falls as he whispers, “I have to.”

“You don’t. I promise I won’t let you be alone, and I won’t let anyone touch you again. You can stay next to me.”

He nods and blankly stares through me. I don’t straighten up because like this, with the kid being my only focus, I can’t seethat motherfucker laughing. I can hear it though, and I try to block it out as I ask, “What’s your name?”

The boy looks at me then, his brows slamming together. “I don’t have one.”

I let go of his wrists and hold my hand out. “Well, my name is Kane, and if you don’t have one, that means you get to pick whatever you want. So, what would you like me to call you?”

He lifts one shoulder and quickly lets it drop. “I don’t know any of them.”

“Okay, you think about it and when you find a name, let me know. Do you want me to pick you up, so your feet don’t hurt in the snow?”

The crease between his brows deepens as he slowly backs away from me. There’s so much fear on his face that it sticks me even when he turns to look at Rowan. That cunt stops laughing and his eyes swing to me. He assesses me as I straighten, and his humor slips away. His eyes remain fixed on me as I walk towards him, yet he doesn’t say anything to the person on the other end of the phone before he ends the call.

He places his hand on my shoulder, stopping me from entering the house, and only turns his head an inch to look at me. “What did you say to scare that sweet boy?”

I step out from under his touch as I plainly say, “I asked his name.”

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