Page 60 of Chasing Secrets

“Yeah. I’d only heard rumors about it, so I didn’t really think it was real, but one morning the guards came into my room, tied my hands and feet with zip ties and put a hood over my head. They threw me into some kind of truck or van and we drove uphill for close to an hour, I think. They dumped me onto this cold tile floor. Someone started hitting me with some kind of whip or something. Whatever it was, it cut into my flesh. I pulled myself into the fetal position and screamed and begged them to stop. I must have passed out at some point because when I woke up, I was still tied up, but the hood was gone. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my own hands. I could feel the blood running down my back. I tried moving around to figure out where I was, but the movement hurt my back so bad that I threw up. I’d always been scared at The Ranch but there’d been this sense of built-in safety of sorts. We’d been mistreated there but the abuse never got physical, you know?”

I knew he wasn’t expecting an answer, yet I couldn’t help but tighten my arm around him. I had to remind myself not to pull him any closer to me.

“I don’t know how much time passed before someone came and cut the zip ties off. They left me with a tiny cup of water and a piece of bread and then they shut the door again. There were no windows, no lights, no bed, no toilet. It wasn’t more than the size of a closet. They’d leave me in there for days at a time,” Theo said, but for the first time, I heard his voice crack.

“I had to sit in my own filth,” he continued before a harsh sob escaped his throat.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” I reminded him as I pulled him flush against me. I was no longer worried about scaring him with my erection because my dick had gone soft as I’d pictured all the atrocities heaped upon the young man in my arms.

“I, um, I don’t want to go into all the details,” Theo choked out. I could feel his tears falling on my arm.

I took a risk and turned him so he was facing me and then tucked him against my body. He was shaking violently, and his body was ice cold.

“You don’t have to, baby. You can stop anytime you want.”

Theo shook his head. “No, I have to explain why… why I can’t…”

“Shhhh,” I said because I could tell he was on the verge of a panic attack. “Take a deep breath for me, okay?”

He instantly did as I asked. His trust in me would have taken me to my knees if I’d been standing. I talked him through the attack and then just focused on trying to get him warmed up by keeping him as close to me as possible as he finally continued speaking.

“I couldn’t do it. No matter what they did to me, I couldn’t admit to being something I wasn’t. It didn’t matter how many pounds I lost or how often I had to clean up my own shit and piss before being shoved back into that fucking closet. I couldn’t let them make me admit to being something I wasn’t. Father Abbott was like a man possessed. He’d spend hours reading to me from the Bible while I had to remain on my knees in front of him. It seemed like I spent years in that place, but I don’t think it was more than a few weeks. Father Abbott believed that not only had the devil influenced me to sin but that he was inside of me and that it would take extreme sacrifice on my part to banish him back to hell. I didn’t know what he meant, and I didn’t understand what was happening when they first hooked me up to the machine. There was a slide projector with wires coming out of this box and they put the wires—”

Theo began to shake his head violently. At one point he bumped my chin to the point I was sure I’d have some kind of bruise in the morning. He yanked himself free of my hold and fled to the corner of my room. I heard a thump as he hit the chair that was in the corner. By the time I got to him, he was rocking back and forth.

“Theo, listen to my voice, baby. You’re safe. I’ll never let them hurt you again,” I vowed. It took everything in me not to start throwing furniture around and punching my fists through walls. I’d suspected what he was going to tell me, but to actually hear it… I hadn’t really been prepared like I thought I would be.

His sobs had me moving closer to him. When I sat down next to him, he continued to rock back and forth.

“I couldn’t hold out,” Theo cried.

He allowed me to pull him against my side and wrap my arms around him. “The first time they made me undress and sit in the chair. They tied my hands and feet to the chair so I couldn’t get free and then attached wires to all these spots around my genitals. I kept asking what was happening, but no one would answer me. It was so humiliating… no one had ever touched me there. I was so fucking scared,” Theo said with a shake of his head.

“The lights were turned off and the slideshow started. The slides were all of naked men, some having sex, some just showing a guy touching himself. When nothing happened, my body started to react to the pictures. I thought maybe they were just trying to scare and humiliate me because they kept the projector running.”

I closed my eyes because I knew what he was going to say next. I put all my energy into holding him as tight as I could without hurting him. I needed him to know he was safe now.

“As soon as my…” Theo sucked in a breath. “There was no preparing for it,” he whispered. “There was no warning and I’d actually started to get lost in the pictures. Then it was like my body exploded. I didn’t even have time to process what had happened before it happened again. I thought my insides were being burned. The pain was…”

He fell silent and shook his head.

Tears stung the backs of my eyes as I pictured a young, innocent Theo tied to a fucking chair and being tortured in a way that was a thousand times worse than anything I’d seen in my years in the army.

“They shocked me every time the picture changed. It didn’t matter that my body wasn’t aroused or that I was trying to tell them what they wanted to hear in those few precious seconds when I could catch my breath. After a few sessions, they gave me a button. I had to press it once if I was aroused and twice if I wasn’t. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of test.” Theo let out a harsh laugh. “I wanted to tell them they were the stupidest people on the planet if they thought I’d EVER get aroused while strapped to that fucking thing.

“By then they’d started adding pictures of women in the slideshow and surprise, surprise, I didn’t get shocked whenthoseappeared. I played their game after that. I pushed the button therightnumber of times each and every time,” he murmured. He’d calmed down considerably but I could also sense him trying to emotionally distance himself from the past.

“He won. I told him what he wanted to hear even though it was a lie, but he still ended up winning,” Theo said quietly after a couple minutes of silence.

I remembered the night I’d kissed him for the first time. He’d been turned on, but it hadn’t been until I’d touched his dick that he’d freaked out. I wanted to cry as I realized I’d caused him pain.

“You still feel the shocks when you get turned on, don’t you?” I asked.

Theo took a moment to respond. “I didn’t even know it would happen until that night when you touched me. I haven’t been attracted to anyone since I left The Tower. I knew I was still gay, but I did what I’d sworn I would never do. I lied and claimed I was cured. I put on a good show for Father Abbott and my parents who finally came to see me once they’d learned I was fixed. To this day when Father Abbott or my parents call to check on me, I still lie.”

I rubbed Theo’s back to try and get some warmth into his body. He pulled back a little before saying, “I let them take the truth from me, Lincoln. And now they’ve taken you away too.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

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