Page 3 of Loving Trent
Once I have control over my body and emotions, I open my eyes and take the first step inside. Shutting the door is out of the question, not just because the room is stifling already with a strong mold smell, but because I need to know I’m not trapped. There is a layer of dirt covering every surface. Sweat rolls down my back, and a shiver races through me thanks to the lingering feeling of that memory. Continuing to walk, I don’t stop until I’m in front of the bed. The bed of my nightmares. I wasn’t the only kid who faced what happened here. I swear in the silence around me, there are echoes of long-forgotten screams. The pleading for it to stop. The begging of someone… anyone to come rescue us.
In here, with no one around, I allow the broken thirteen-year-old version of myself that still lives inside me to come out. I allow him to feel his emotions. My eyes fill with tears, and I don’t hold them back like I usually would. No, I allow them to run freely down my face and onto my hands. I know what people see when they look at me. They believe me to be a hard, uncaring, emotionless asshole, and that’s just the way I like it. But that’s all an act. A mask that I have to put on every morning before getting out of bed. It’s the only way I survive day-to-day life. I don’t like showing my true self, but no one is here to see me break down.
Only the ghost of my innocence is here to witness the fact that I’m still that thirteen-year-old boy who just wants someone to love me for who I am.
I’m not sure if that will ever change. If there will ever be someone who will finally earn my trust enough to let them in… all the way in. I’ve destined myself to be alone for the rest of my life, and just like the mask, I have to fight myself every morning to be okay with that reality. Because I don’t believe that there is anyone who could love the broken little boy that resides deep inside my chest.
Shaking my head to rid it of the dark, bottomless, and strong vortex that is trying to consume me, I stand up and walk out the door. After six months of searching long into the night to find this place again, I’m not about to sit in a room crying. Not when I need to find something that will lead me to the elusive people I’m searching for. I head down the path back to camp with the sound of the forest as my company. I never did go into the woods, so I’m not sure what lives in them, but I hear the telltale signs of life just beyond the tree line. I just hope that whatever animals live there are doing it peacefully. This place needs some peace after the horrors it held for so long. I don’t stop walking until I’m staring up at the red brick house.
Unlike the other buildings, the house has clear signs of abandonment. The once pristine red brick is now muted in color, and there are cracks in some of them. The wooden porch that used to have a swing attached to its roof and two rocking chairs is now empty. The wood is rotten in multiple places, and I’m a little wary of its ability to hold my weight. All the windows have been busted out by Mother Nature or people who have stumbled across this place. I cross my fingers that if it were people, they left enough of the inside alone to not make my life harder. My contact said that the owners left in a hurry, and I’m hoping that in their hurry, they left something behind that will be of great service to me.
Shifting the pack on my back higher, I step onto the porch and kick the door open. I could have easily just opened the damn thing, but that’s not what I felt like doing. The inside is… Simply put, destroyed. It’s clear that this has been used as a place for parties. Littered across every available surface is trash, mainly consisting of beer bottles and cigarette butts. Although there are a few empty condom wrappers, a stained mattress, and other things in the mess. Deciding to save the basement for last, I go in search of the office.
Over my two years here, I was never allowed anywhere in the main house. I was always brought into the basement through the outside entrance. But finding the office is easy, up the stairs and the first door on the right. The door is open, and just like downstairs, it’s a mess in here. There is minimal furniture left behind. A dark oak desk is in the middle of the room, and the back wall is full of filing cabinets. All the drawers are standing open, and it’s easy to see that someone has gone through the files. There are papers everywhere, but at least they are still here.
I dump my bag on the desk and stroll to the first filing cabinet on the left side. I close the top drawer and see that the label has only a year written on it. I find the following year when I look at the label on the drawer right below it. It doesn’t take me long to find the year I got here. I start looking through the files until I find the one with my name on it. Snatching it up, I turn around and place it on the desk, but don’t stop my search. It takes multiple trips to get the files stacked on the desk. I move on to searching the desk, knowing that the actual information I’m looking for won’t be kept with the files on the children that lived here.
All the drawers on the desk are open except for the bottom left one. Reaching down, I pull the butterfly knife from my boot and work on breaking the lock. I’m sure my information guy could have found this information more quickly and efficiently than I, but I wanted to do it myself. I had to do this myself. Inside the drawer are more files, which I remove and put on top of the desk. Once all of them are out, I make sure that there isn’t a hidden compartment. When I find nothing, I pull out the chair, sit down, and pull the bottom file from under the stack. My file, and then I start to read.
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’mnever 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 onmy 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 behindher, 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 swallowthe 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.
