Page 64 of Freedom
~*~
Kayla was used to seeinga guard shove a freak into or out of the barracks, especially for trying to get off without permission. True or false, it didn’t matter. What did matter is that all the other monsters had to watch the punishment for masturbation, usually at the next assembly in the bright light of day so they all could see what happened to bad little freaks. Kayla was well-practiced at keeping her eyes fixed on the scene but drifting away inside, noting the other monsters’ flinches with detached derision. Just another normal day at Freak Camp.
It wasn’t so normal, though, for it to be Lucky.
Guards and freaks alike called the shifter Lucky because everyone knew he jerked himself off on a regular basis but never got caught. Lucky got lucky with himself most nights and never got anything worse than the shit beaten out of him because none of the guards could nail him on it, and he put out enough that they didn’t want to press the issue.
“Finally caught you, Lucky boy,” Crusher said, pinning both of the shifter’s wrists above his head with one hand. He played with the bright green tag shot through his arm. The old wound bled slowly, the skin sloughing around the entry point. “You know what we’re gonna do to you, don’t you? Boil those hot hands of yours. Though it doesn’t seem like quite enough, does it? Maybe we should clean off your dirty cock too.”
The shifter was shaking against the wall, so terrified that his skin started to slip and sag.
Crusher leaned closer. “Maybe we should shred a little silver in the water so you really feel it. ’Cause you’ve been feeling it real good, haven’t you, Lucky?” He grinned. “On the other hand, you’re a shiftie, so maybe we can cut a deal. You ready to cut a deal, Lucky boy?”
Lucky nodded, hard and desperate. “Yeah. Yes, sir.”
Crusher’s breathing got heavier, his voice rougher. “You remember the Pretty Freak?”
Lucky swallowed. “Tobias the Wh—yeah. Yeah, I remember the slut.”
“Yeah.” Crusher smiled, slow. “Tobias the Whore. Think you can take his shape? Think you can bend over and make hot little noises while I fuck you? ’Cause if you can hold that boy’s sweet ass while I ride you the way I want, then I’ll forget I saw you jerking yourself. Maybe I let you jerk off while I’m inside you. Sounds like your lucky day, doesn’t it, Lucky?”
The shifter swallowed. Monsters had died getting fucked the way Crusher liked it. But Kayla guessed he knew that if he tried to say no now, Crusher would probably fuck him, then have him dipped for touching himself anyway.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can be Tobias.”
“Good.” Crusher licked his lips. “Come on, tonight’s gonna be a private little party. Follow me nice and I might not even nail you down. And close your fucking pants, Pretty Freak.”
Trembling, Lucky tightened the drawstring on his pants and followed him. Kayla watched him go.
The next day, Lucky came back to the barracks wearing some other face—neither the one he left with nor, thankfully, Tobias’s—while the rest of the monsters were outside working or loitering in the unforgiving Nevada early winter cold. When they came back inside for the night, he was huddled on his cot, an extra blanket draped over him.
He didn’t move the next day either, just lay there shaking, but managed to get up the day after and hobble into the yard. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
Kayla watched him without looking like she was watching. Crusher had made her offers, telling her that if she would just be Tobias for a night, he’d stop touching her for a year, he’d get her food and blankets without needing to suck anybody off, she’d have no interrogation for weeks and weeks if she would just pull on his Pretty Freak’s face and let him ride between her legs.
Kayla smiled when no one else could see her, a bitter, hard smile. She’d always suspected that any deal Crusher made would be worse for her than just saying no over and over again. Other guards might keep a promise, might lack the creativity to hold to their word without making her regret it, but Crusher would have no problem promising her the world and then making sure she didn’t survive the night.
Just another accident with a monster. Another crushed rib cage, another slow wound that would kill without anyone noticing until it was too late to get her to Special Research.
She settled easily into the belief that it was only her goddamned sense of survival that kept her from saying yes and that it had had nothing to do with the particular ass Crusher wanted. Tobias was gone, gone, gone—maybe dead by now, wouldn’t that be nice?—and thinking about him was just a chink in her armor, like Hawthorne had been a gaping hole in his.
“You wanna be Pretty Freak for me?” Crusher whispered in her ear. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
She just looked at him blank, hollow, stupid, like she had no idea who he was talking about, what freak he could possibly mean. She kept her mouth shut, except when the things he did made her grunt or cry involuntarily. Eventually, he got bored, convinced that the years had made her as stupid as she pretended to be, and went away.
Then, and only then, could she think about Tobias.
~*~
Jake had never thoughtthere was any chance he’d be confused for a mother hen, but he had to be honest with himself. Even when his quiet, thoughtful, nervous Tobias was being his most badass—looking people in the eye, bashing ghosts through the head, driving onto a highway for the first time—Jake worried about him. He worried about him most during hunts, when the monsters were coming hot and heavy and he thought that any second Tobias might get cut open or blasted and Jake wouldn’t get there in time. That featured in his nightmares more often than not.
That fear that Tobias would break at the first solid blow lasted until they fought the spider-yeti duo in the Appalachians.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a yeti. Jake thought that yetis lived in the Himalayas and were Buddhist or something (and Buddhists were peaceful, weren’t they?) but it certainly looked the part: massive, hairy, hunched, arms corded with muscles that would put Schwarzenegger to shame. Maybe it had eaten so many monks that the orange robes and happiness had gone to its brain.
The lair was easy to find. Most hikers in the area had left travel plans with the local rangers, which had given them a general area to search. And the yeti had left a noticeable groove in the earth leading up to its cave. After a quick recon of the area, Jake crouched and peered into the cave.
“Hey, keep an eye out. I’m gonna check it out inside.”
