TABOO: THE COMPLETE SERIES(27)

The tears in his eyes and the confusion made me die a little inside. We both knew what was happening. We both knew there was a chance we might never see each other again and there was nothing we could do about it. In retrospect, it wasn’t a smart move but I had been out of options.

Colton, please just listen to me. I felt something touch the small of my back and heard the clicking sound of a Taser. The pain was shocking the first time but the second time they did it, my head was reduced to static.

The shock incapacitated me and made it hard to breathe. All coherent thought left my brain and was replaced with overwhelming pain.

I let them drag me. They carted my deadweight to the dungeons where they tied me into a chair. My bare feet were on the cold surface of the floor, and they put me in ankle restraints that connected to chains bolted into the ground. My arms were similarly restrained and placed in leather cuffs.

I didn’t struggle, and I didn’t fight. Even if I wanted, the effect of the Taser was still upsetting my brain function and except for some pain in my back where they had used that Taser I felt numb.

“We gotta stop meeting like this Jake,” Mace’s voice was brash and obnoxious. I couldn’t stop being a little afraid of him. I was waiting for him to do something more than just stand there, but someone walked in just then. “Hello, Jake.” Weldon’s words fell on my ears and I was almost afraid to see his face. But those green eyes were glaring at me before I knew it. I glanced up at him and pleaded. “I had to see him.”

Weldon’s face was indecipherable. “You also had to try and break him out.”

I knew any response to that would land me in more trouble. There was no sense denying it either, that would have been pointless. So, I said nothing. What could I possibly say to him anyway? Inside, I was no longer numb. Fear had replaced that feeling the minute Weldon stepped into the picture. What happened in here the last time, the memory was still vivid. It kept me up at night. Would have been better if they killed me but I knew they wouldn’t do that. I knew they’d do something far worse. Weldon walked right up and crouched on the floor in front of me and I almost pissed my pants. He saw that his movement jolted me and it made him grin. My fear was entertainment to him.

“I’m sorry,” I didn’t think I’d break out in tears this soon but I had. The tremors came back and I was shaking uncontrollably, worse than I had when they tased me back there. Weldon raised a hand and pushed a lock of my hair away from my sweaty forehead. Then he touched the blood on my face. “Who did this?”

Was that concern in his voice?

“It was one of the guards,” I said. Weldon kept his eyes on me but his next command was for Mace. “Find out who did this.”

“Should I go now, sir?”

“No. Stay.”

“Sir.”

Weldon stood up. “You’re shaking,” he said. “Are you cold?”

“I’m sorry…”

“I asked you if you’re cold, Jake.”

“N… no… no, I’m fine.”

“Then why’re you shaking?”

I knew he was just playing with me. I had no game plan. No cards left to play. Whatever came next, I would have to live with it. Weldon grabbed my hair in a vise grip that threatened to tear my hair out. “Are you shaking because you know that you’ve betrayed me?” he growled. “Because you should have known better than to steal my keycard and try to escape?”

“Weld…”

“SHUT UP, JAKE!!!”

No words would come from my throat after that. Weldon let go of my hair and I watched him going over to the rack with all those torture implements and he picked up something that looked like a walking stick but smaller and thinner, a mixture of a cane and a baton with a bulge on top, in the shape of a tiny cube with smooth, circular curves.

I saw the look in his eyes. It wasn’t just anger, it was more than that. This was his way of taking back the control I’d taken away.

He walked up to me and placed the narrow end of the stick on my waist. “I’ve been saving this,” he said, running that thing over my crotch and then my thighs. “I got it made special. I asked the designer to make something that hurts in a way nothing else does. And though it can be argued that pretty much every weapon has its particular sting, we all know that one thing that hurts worse than anything we’ve ever experienced. Let me give you an example. There’s a bunch of toys and weapons that use electricity to cause pain in varying degrees, but everyone knows there’s nothing worse than a Taser.” He ran the stick over my chest. “Which you also happened to experience today. So, what I mean to say, Jake, is that this thing is the Taser of sticks. Do you understand what that means?”

It means I’m getting beat up by a stick you sick fuck, but I didn’t dare say it. Weldon stood behind me, placed his heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaned in. “I think it’s time to go deeper into the rabbit hole, Jake.”





TREY


The room I stepped in was tiny, cold, and decidedly worse than the one they were keeping him in before. There was a bare lightbulb in the middle that threw light on Colton in a way that made him look unhappy. I’d seen that look before, in his brother’s eyes the first time I saw him. It was what drew me to him come to think of it. I mean, I know it was more than just the look in those eyes but it was a big part of Jake’s appeal. I know most people wouldn’t agree but most people didn’t know that I happened to garner an odd nurturing instinct that I couldn’t quite understand but I knew that with Jake that instinct became stronger. Even now, he was the only thing I could think about.