Page 17 of M.M. Scrooge
I turn away. I can’t watch anymore.
“Can’t face what you did to me? Don’t want to see the tears in my eyes? Or how about when I wince as you—”
“Stop.” I bury my face in my hands and squeeze my eyes shut, but the images are burned into the backs of my lids. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“You didn’t want to realize. But you could have. I tried to tell you.”
“You should have said no!”
“So it’s my fault? Would you have listened if I’d said no?”
Would I have? I’d like to say yes. I’m not a monster. I’d never…but he’d tried to say no, hadn’t he? When he offered to use his mouth. He’s right. I didn’t listen. Not really. Not close enough.
Caleb rips my hands away from my face. “Look at me.”
Our eyes meet, and his face blurs because my vision is watery. I can’t hold his gaze. I’m too ashamed.
“You thought you were such a catch,” Caleb spits. “That I couldn’t have done any better. That I was lucky Max Scrooge wanted anything to do with me. Lucky to take his cock. Should have been grateful for it, even.”
He’s right. I thought all those things. And worse. I thought he owed this to me for agreeing to be his boyfriend in the first place. For the clout it would buy him in the school hallways.
I’m staring at my naked knees on the orange clay, but I can still hear our younger selves. My grunting. Caleb’s little whimpers. Both of us panting.
“You’re right. Please, I’m sorry. Make it stop.”
The sounds vanish.
“Perhaps the real Caleb would accept your apology, but I’m not him,” says the man I thought was Caleb.
What? I shift my gaze to his face. A cruel mask is plastered on his familiar features.
“I’m a figment. Did you think the bogeyman would traumatize the real Caleb with seeing you again? Put him through one of his worst memories a second time?”
Apprehension settles low in my core, an uneasy knot I can’t escape. If this isn’t Caleb, then who is it? And how much trouble am I in?
“I’ll apologize to the real Caleb. Iamsorry. I was such an ass. He deserved better.”
“He did. And tonight, you’ll take your punishment, be brought low like you deserve, right, Max?”
I manage a shaky nod. I did agree to this after all, but I’m afraid of what’s to come. What will be done to me? What must I endure to make amends?
“Good boy.” Not-Caleb pats my cheek. “It won’t be so bad. Nothing you don’t deserve. Nothing you can’t handle.”
Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.
He makes a sharp gesture with the hand that isn’t palming his dick, and our surroundings disperse like so many seeds on the wind.
I shiver as a new scene forms. We aren’t hidden under the bleachers anymore, and we aren’t alone either. We’re centerfield. I’m naked as the day I was born, still kneeling.
Caleb stands over me, fully clothed, except his cock is out, stiff and flush. He jacks himself with rough strokes inches from my face.
My gaze shifts from his leaking slit to the sidelines. Students pack the bleachers. A standing-room-only size crowd. All eyes are on me. All mouths curve in cruel laughter. Their cackles fill the air. Their fingers point in my direction. Voices rise as I shrink inside myself, biting the insides of my cheeks in shame.
“Is that Max?”
“It is. It’s Max Scrooge. On his knees.”
“Look at Max now. Kneeling for Caleb.”
