Page 4 of Stabby Little

He owned a home that was three times larger than anyone else's in the neighborhood. One that Portuguese investment bankers sold him at a steal after their chief executive officer was busted for insider trading.

That didn't stop him from showing me kindness.

That didn't stop him from taking time out of his undoubtedly busy schedule to let me know I was safe.

That didn't stop him from telling my father off for screaming at me or sending me to a local children's psychologist so I could talk about my problems and provide a space where I was free and unthreatened and could be myself.

Don't let these memories fool you. He abandoned you.

That's the fucking bitch of it.

Grant swore to keep me safe, to protect me from my Dad. He promised to never let that man lay a hand on me.

What Grant didn't foresee was that the danger that seeped into my life like a crimson stain on a pristine white bedsheet was far worse than anything my father could've done.

Sex trafficking.

Locked in a warehouse for seven years.

Forced to eat shit food that deprived me of nutrients and prevented me from growing to my full height.

Lived in a fucking cage crawling with spiders and rats.

Forced to fuck guards in a closet to survive.

Forced to be the Daddy protector figure to my friends who would've died without me.

If I hadn't done these things, I wouldn't have made it out.

I would've been a statistic like the rest of the boys.

The unlucky ones.

The ones who didn't stay strong enough to escape before I found an air vent that led out of the fucking place.

The ones in Room A who organized a mutiny only to wind up locked in their cages for six months without the ability to see the sun.

Grant had no way of knowing this was my fate. He had no way of knowing this is what happened to the sweet, innocent, smiling boy who visited his house after school and loved eating dino nuggets and fries.

He had no way of knowing the boy whose knee he helped patch up that one fateful day—the most powerful memory I have—would end up servicing sick bastards like Gordon.

Block this shit out of your head. It'll only lead to pain.

And yet sometimes, in the warehouse, when I was alone in my fucking cage with no one to save me, no one to break the chain they kept around my neck, these memories of Grant flashed through my mind.

He read meGoodnight MoonandWhere The Wild Things Are, books my mother never bothered to read.

He had a constellation map he pulled out so we could spot the horses and scorpions and monkeys in the stars.

He had a miniature chef's hat he allowed me to wear when I helped him in the kitchen which was my favorite thing.

But the best memory, the one I've never been able to forget, is when I scraped my knee on the sidewalk outside his house one day.

I was scared he'd yell at me, scared he'd treat me like my father.

Grant sat me on his kitchen counter and patched up my knee.

“Clamp your teeth together. This will burn."

---