Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:
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If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.
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I don't know any of the celebrities in this story, and this story in no way is meant to imply anything about their sexualities, personalities, or anything else. This is a work of pure fiction.
Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I've enjoyed hearing from all of you.
This season would not have happened if not for a discussion I had with Clive, who is generous enough to cohost this story on his site. Stop and tell him hello at www.authorclive.co.uk.
Back to the story in progress!
Jack
"Just fill out the postcard, Jack," he cajoled. "Just fill out the postcard, and I'll give you something to eat."
"Fuck you," I said, walking away from the button again.
I went to the sink and took another drink, bending over, fitting my mouth around the bottom of the faucet. The water was good, and it was filling, but it wasn't enough. My belly was sloshing every time I moved, and I knew that we wouldn't be able to play this game much longer. I wasn't going to be able to go without eating for another day, not with the meals that I was already missing. I glared at the speaker plate, wondering if I should talk to Captor again. I had begun calling him that yesterday, only in my head, because I just needed to assign a name of some sort to him.
We were on our third day of playing this game, or at least I thought it was. I'd gone to sleep three times, at any rate. After the first meal of sandwiches I had, I lay on the mattress for a while, staring at nothing again, trying to think of something to do. He didn't turn the music back on, and I didn't want to ask for it, because I didn't want to ask for anything. There weren't any cracks in the walls to count, as everything was freshly painted over, and there weren't any marks on the ceiling. The floor was plain concrete, and was more or less featureless. After a while I began to count the holes in the speaker grate, the little black circles from which music, or the disguised voice, would come. Eventually my eyes drifted closed, but just as I fell asleep I heard his voice again.
"He's not coming for you, Jack," the voice said, startling me awake. "He's not going to come save you, or find you. You're all alone."
I stared up at the camera, wondering if I should give him the finger again. Instead I got up, went to the sink, and brushed my teeth. When I was finished, I felt the lump on my forehead again, wishing I had a mirror, but then I decided that I really didn't want to see how bad it was. Walking back to the mattress, I stripped down to my undershirt and boxers, folding my clothes neatly and setting them down in the corner. I walked over to the speaker and pushed the button.
"Thanks for waking me," I said brightly. "I forgot to brush my teeth. I'm going to sleep now, so could we maybe do something about the light?"
I didn't really know if it was night or not, because I had no windows, but I knew I was tired, and needed rest. That seemed as good a reason as any to go to sleep.
"No," he answered simply. I guessed he wanted the lights on so he could keep watching. Clearly the camera didn't have infrared. Was that a clue? It didn't have sound, either, or at least didn't seem to. I realized that I had no idea how much any of that would cost, so that really wasn't a clue that would help me.
"And for the record, Josh knows I wouldn't leave him," I said. I should have stayed quiet, but I was pissed off. "Whatever little note you left him, he's going to see through it eventually. He loves me, and he knows I love him. He'll come for me."
"No, he won't," the voice insisted. "Good night, Jack."
I walked away from the speaker and lay on the mattress, closing my eyes again, picturing Josh, trying to imagine that he was here with me. I reached out, throwing my arm across the empty mattress, and tried to feel his warmth, feel his shoulder beneath my hand. I tried to smell his cologne, and the natural smell of Josh that was always underneath, the two of them mixed together with soap and deodorant and the thousand other smells that make up a person, blending together into the familiar scent that I was used to sharing a bed with. I tried to imagine the way Josh's skin felt, the warm velvet softness, the feeling of his muscles sliding around underneath. I tried to imagine that my hand was on his chest, tried to feel the firm bunching of his pec, his heart beating strong underneath as the rise and fall of his breathing pressed his skin to my hand.
Thinking of Josh, I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was hungry. I hadn't eaten for the three days that I had been sleeping, and then had only been given two sandwiches which barely filled me. I realized that he must have drugged me again during that time, must have snuck in to administer additional doses of whatever he'd given me. I didn't know a lot about chloroform, but years of watching soap operas had led me to believe that it wore off after a space of hours, not days. He must have been watching me on the video camera, waiting to see if I began to stir, before sneaking in to drug me again. It couldn't be a coincidence that he stopped drugging me on the same day that Josh left, so why would he do it? Maybe it was someone that Josh would also suspect. Maybe it was someone who thought Josh, or Justin, or the police, might come here, and he wanted me unconscious so that I couldn't make noise or attract attention to the basement. I was getting good at this, and figured that maybe all those years of reading suspense and detective novels might pay off after all.
I got off of the mattress and stripped off my undershirt, deciding to try to wash myself. I could have taken off my boxers, too, but didn't feel like giving whoever this was watching me a free show. I didn't feel like giving them that last little bit of my dignity. Washing myself carefully with the soap and washcloth, trying not to get too wet since he didn't give me a towel, I figured I'd have to air dry. I ran my hand over my face after I washed it, wishing I had a razor, and was debating trying to wash my hair with the soap when I heard something slide through the flap under the door. Turning around, I saw another manila envelope. I picked it up, and then walked over to the button panel.
"Good morning," I said, opening the envelope. Inside was a blank postcard from Seattle. I glanced at it and shrugged. Josh and I had never been to Seattle, so I didn't see how this was supposed to taunt me. "Can I have some breakfast?"
"Fill out that postcard first," he answered.
"Fill it out?" I asked, wondering what new game this was. "Fill it out with what?"
"Write a note to JC," the voice answered. "Write him a note that you're happy without him, and hope he is, too."
"Fuck you," I said simply, walking away, dropping the postcard on the floor.
"Don't walk away so quickly, Jack," the voice said. "We need to talk about this."
"There's nothing to talk about," I said, turning back and holding the button down. "I'm not filling out that card."
I couldn't fill out a postcard that said that. It would crush Josh, especially if it came in my own handwriting. If he was even starting to think that I hadn't left him, that this was all a huge mistake, this postcard would change his mind, would push him away. This postcard would seal me in this basement, would practically guarantee that Josh gave up on me. One note he might be able to ignore, to think his way past, but two? No way was I filling this out.
"Do you want to eat?" the voice asked. "Fill out that postcard."
"I guess I'm not that hungry," I said, turning away.
"You will be," he promised, as I sat on the mattress.
And so the game began, the waiting game. Whenever I felt hungry, I got up and drank more water. To fill my time, I washed my hair in the sink after all, although it was a pain in the ass and didn't turn out well, since I couldn't get my head under the faucet. My hair still felt stringy when I was done, and I didn't have a comb. To fill the rest of my time, I paced the room, counting the steps, trying to keep myself from going insane. I've always been a person who needed something to do, who needed something to occupy my time. Being in here was almost like being in a sensory deprivation tank.
After an unknown length of time, during which I'd gotten bored and sat on the mattress again, counting the holes in the speaker grate, music began to pour out of the speaker again, this time "Celebrity". I sat and listened to it, rocking back and forth a little, mouthing the words, which I knew by heart. I knew every song, every beat, every breath recorded on the album. I'd seen it in concert, seen it on television, heard it on the radio, and had parts of it sung to me in the shower. I could close my eyes and see them dancing, running through all the steps, knowing which part Lance would trip on, where Joey would be tired, and where Josh would go back and dance by the band for a minute or two. If this was supposed to bother me, it wasn't. Instead, it was a comfort.
The album was on its third cycle through when it cut off.
"Ready to fill out that postcard now?" he asked.
I walked over to the speaker.
"No," I answered.
"I guess you're not hungry enough, then," he said.
"I guess not," I said, walking away from the speaker.
"You know, Jack, this means nothing," he said. "It doesn't matter if you fill out the card or not. JC isn't coming for you."
I ignored him, got another drink from the sink, and went back to my mattress. I might have to pee fifty times, but I wouldn't break. I would not fill out that card. He didn't put any music on after that, leaving me in silence for a while. After a while I fell asleep again, but he was determined not to let me enjoy it. I was fully asleep, sprawled out on my mattress, when music from the band's first album began blasting out of the speaker, loud enough to wake me. I jumped up, looking around, and heard laughter from the speaker.
"Oh, sorry Jack. Were you sleeping?" he asked. "Maybe you should get up and fill out that postcard."
"Maybe you should kiss my ass," I muttered, rolling over to give the camera the finger again.
"That's not a good answer, Jack," he said. "Aren't you hungry? Don't you want something to eat?"
I heard crunching, and realized he was chewing something into the microphone. My stomach clenched, and my mouth filled with saliva, but I willed myself not to get up off of the mattress. I would not break.
"He's not coming for you, Jack," he said again. "He's never coming. Just fill out the postcard."
I shook my head, and eventually fell back to sleep.
On the second day I woke up and bathed in the sink again, skipping the hair as it was more trouble than it was worth. The postcard was still there, but during the night he had also pushed a pen through the flap. I stared down at it, and thought about signing the postcard, but I wasn't hungry enough yet. He didn't talk to me at all that day, and didn't play any music, either. I had no distractions, nothing to take my mind off of what was going on, just the postcard, the pen, and my hunger. I paced all day, almost continuously, until my feet were sore. Socks on concrete didn't really have a lot of padding, so eventually I had to go sit for a while. Walking back to the mattress, I thumbed my necklace, and thought about the postcard.
On the third day, I woke up in pain. I wasn't having full out, doubled over in pain cramps, but I was hungry. I felt my stomach knotting, demanding something besides water, and I tried to think about something else, but all my brain would do was tally up the food I wasn't getting. I had been taken from the club, and drugged for two full days, during which I had not eaten. Waking on the third day, I had eaten two sandwiches, but had now gone without food for what I guessed was now my third day since then. I wouldn't be able to keep going like this. Already I felt listless, and dizzy. I realized dimly that I was going to break. I had to, or I was going to die. I might actually die of starvation in someone's basement, in the richest country in the world.
I needed to distract myself, needed to not think about the damn postcard. I didn't want to break, didn't even want to think about it, even though I was starting to realized I would have to. I walked over and pressed the button.
"Hello?" I asked, waiting. There was no response, so I pushed it again. "Hello?"
What if he'd gone somewhere? What if he wasn't anywhere in the house? I might break down right now, and fill out the damn postcard, and he wouldn't be here to feed me. I realized then how completely at his mercy I was. I was helpless, like a fish in a bowl. If something happened to him, if he went to the grocery store and got hit by a bus on the way, I would die here. If the house caught on fire, I would burn to death in the basement. I would die, and I would never find my way back to Josh. What we had would just be over, gone, just like that. But it would be if I filled out that card, too. That postcard would be a complete betrayal of everything Josh and I had. If I filled it out, I would be sealing the fate of mine and Josh's relationship, and I would also be choosing myself over Josh. Then again, if I was choosing to live, to get back to Josh someday, to be here when Josh came to get me, I thought he might understand.
By the time he came back from wherever he'd gone, and began taunting me to fill out the postcard again, I had passed my moment of weakness, and was back to drinking water and dreaming that I'd be able to make it. I kept swearing, kept being angry, but in my heart I knew it wouldn't last. I needed to eat, and that was the bottom line. I pressed the button again, feeling the water sloshing around inside of me, and wondering how it could feel so liquid, but so much like a lead ball in my gut at the same time.
"What do you want on the postcard?" I asked quietly.
"What was that, Jack?" he asked, enjoying his triumph. "You're so quiet I didn't catch it."
"What do you want me to write on the postcard?" I asked, feeling tears roll down my cheeks. I wasn't faking it this time. I didn't want to fill out this card, didn't want to let him mail this knowing that it would hurt Josh, that he would be using me to hurt Josh, but I had to do it. He'd taken all of my choices away.
"How about just that you're happy, and you hope he's happy, too?" he asked. "Oh, and don't forget to address it, too."
"Fuck you!" I said, not holding to button down for it. I pounded the wall with my fist, almost sobbing now. I'd be able to cry for a really long time with all the water I'd had. Sitting down, wiping at my eyes with one hand while I wrote with the other, I filled out the postcard, barely able to read it because of the tears in my eyes, and pushed it under the door. I whispered to myself, leaning on the wall with my head down, trying to get my tears under control. "I'm sorry, Josh. I'm so, so sorry."
Nothing happened, so I waited. Finally I hit the button again. "Hello?"
"Yes, Jack?" he answered.
"I'm hungry," I snapped, and then realized that maybe I needed to be nice. I didn't want to be, didn't even want to talk to him, but I needed to eat. "Could I please have some food now?"
"I don't know if I should still feed you," he said speculatively. "You were a little difficult."
"You promised," I reminded him, trying to keep the anger out of my voice.
"One question first," he said. "What are you going to do if I don't feed you? What are you going to do if I stop feeding you at all, and then just wall you up in there when you starve? What are you going to do then?"
"I guess I'll die," I said simply. I might be able to answer him like it was nothing, but inside I had gone cold again. What if he did stop feeding me? "I'll die, but Josh and I will be together someday."
"You wish," he said.
Another plate of sandwiches, three this time, slid through the flap. I scooped it up, running over to my mattress with them, sitting Indian style with the plate cradled in my crossed legs. I ate the first sandwich so quickly that it seemed as if I didn't even chew it, and I quickly followed it with the second. By the time I got to the third, I remembered something I'd read somewhere about how people who had been starved couldn't eat a lot right away, or they'd throw it up, and I forced myself to slow down, to chew carefully. It was peanut butter and jelly, again, and I thought it tasted a little odd, but I was too hungry to give it much thought. I should have, though.
I finished the last sandwich and got up to brush my teeth. As I stood at the sink, rinsing out my mouth, I realized that I felt light headed. I turned back to the mattress, and stumbled as I walked over. By the time I reached it, my head was nodding, and I could barely keep my eyes open. The room swam before me, and I heard his voice, thick and sludgy, oozing from the speaker plate.
"Feeling a little sleepy, Jack?" he asked, laughing. The sandwiches were drugged. I tried to lift myself off of the mattress, to reach out for the speaker panel, not sure of what I was going to say, but couldn't move. The last thing I heard before my eyes slid closed again was more of his taunting. "JC isn't coming for you, Jack. You're all mine."
I don't know how long I slept, but when I woke up, my mouth feeling cottony, I saw another sandwich waiting for me, sitting on another manila folder. I went pee, feeling how stiff my body was from all these nights spent sleeping almost on the floor, and then walked over and picked up the sandwich and the folder. I sniffed at the sandwich, wondering if I should eat it, but then figured I didn't have anything important to stay awake for anyway. If this one happened to be drugged, too, maybe I should just be happy for the sleep, since it was a pain in the ass falling asleep with that damn light on all the time. I ate the sandwich slowly, wondering if I was allowed to request anything besides peanut butter and jelly. After eating, I brushed my teeth, trying to give myself enough activities to fill my time, since I never knew if I was getting music today or not.
Thumbing my necklace, trying to draw strength from it and from Josh, trying to feel his love for me, I carefully opened the folder, knowing nothing good could be inside. There was a stack of photocopies in there this time, rather than snapshots or a postcard. I carefully pulled them out, flipping through, and saw that they were stories about Josh and I, stories about us breaking up. I felt tears sliding down my cheeks as I read them, carefully going through each one, trying to imagine what Josh was feeling. No one had actually talked to him, and he was described as being "in seclusion", but he had released a statement. I didn't know if it was Josh's phrasing, or if their manager or the publicity department had cleaned it up a little, but it said very simply that Josh and I were no longer together, and he was unsure of my current whereabouts. I knew that Captor had left a note from me, knew that he had left my ring with it, but I had hoped that Josh would see through that, that the other guys would see that this was completely beyond anything that I'd do.
Now it looked like maybe Josh wouldn't be coming for me after all.
I could hope that he would snap out of it, that he would realize this was all wrong, and then remembered the postcard. If he was doubting any of this, trying to think any of this through again, that card would seal my fate. He would get that, and it would completely reinforce the first letter. I knew Josh, knew how he thought and how he would feel, and when he saw that any hope inside him would die. Any resolve he was building to come find me would crumble. I tried to tell myself that I'd had no choice, that I had to fill the card out, but another voice inside me whispered that I had thrown everything away for three sandwiches.
"No, it's not like that," I said, aware that I was talking to myself, but just needing to hear something, anything, in this little white cell. I kept running my thumb over the medallion of my necklace. "I had to fill that card out. I didn't have a choice."
Nothing answered me, of course.
"Josh will come for me. He will," I said, but even to me the words sounded hollow.
I lay on the bed, crying for a while, just holding onto my pillow and sobbing, as I realized that Josh thought I would hurt him like this. Somehow, Josh really believed that I would just pack up and go. I loved him, more than anything, but somewhere out in the world, out beyond the walls of this room, Josh thought that I was gone, that I was done with him. Somewhere Josh was trying to convince himself not to love me. Outside, I was losing him, and I realized that if I let myself think that, if I let myself believe that he was lost to me, that I would lose myself, too. What point would there be in getting out of here? What point would there be in staying strong? I couldn't think this way. Josh would come for me, he had to. Love would conquer all. I just had to hold out. I squeezed my necklace tightly between my thumb and forefinger, holding onto it, onto Josh's love, like a lifeline.
"Josh will come for me," I whispered.
I wiped my eyes and went back to looking at the articles. There might be something in them I had missed, some clue that might help me. Remembering how he had demanded the pictures back, I realized that I might not have a lot of time with these, and that I needed to look them over now and get as much as I could out of them, before they were gone. A lot of them offered rehashes of my relationship with Josh, and quotes from our interviews, but that wasn't really what I was looking for. I skimmed the serious articles to see who they talked to, to see if any member of management was mentioned by name. I didn't know what this would tell me, if anything, but I scanned them all looking for mention of Stan. Nothing popped up. Turning away from the serious articles, I began to look through the gossip columns, looking for that one familiar face that I knew had to be here. At last, there he was.
Basil's column was rather lengthy, detailing visits to hospitals and police stations. My heart surged when I realized that Josh and Justin had been looking for me, that they were trying to find me, at least for a few days. Maybe they had seen through this after all. Those hopes were dashed just as quickly, though, when I realized that they had flown home anyway. The note with my ring must have come to them after they did all this. Maybe he had panicked, seeing that they weren't giving up, and then decided to send it. The idea made a weird kind of sense. The note wouldn't be in my handwriting, because he wouldn't have time to wake me and then starve me into writing it, and I hoped Josh would see that, too. Basil's column wasn't the only one that had the details of all their visits, though, so I couldn't use that as proof that my captor was him. I needed more.
I spent the day in silence, reading the folder over and over, and the next morning, Captor demanded it back, in exchange for food. Rather than argue, I just slid it through, and was rewarded with another sandwich. I was so hungry, since I hadn't eaten since the one sandwich the day before, that I ate it quickly, realizing only halfway through that it was drugged again. I finished it quickly, and settled in on the mattress for a nice, long drug induced coma. I could have stopped eating, but figured I needed food more than I needed to be awake.
I lost track of a lot of days that way. I would wake up, and some days he'd push another article through the door with my sandwich, if he gave me a sandwich. Some days he didn't feed me at all, and when he finally did push a sandwich through the flap, it was always just one or two, never enough to fill me. Some days he would play music all day again, or wait until I was asleep and start blasting it, disrupting my rest. It was hard to keep track of days and nights, and there was nothing in here to mark the walls with, so I began to slowly lose track of time. I tried to guess based on my beard growing in, but I'd never had one before, and didn't know how fast it would or should grow. I also began to lose a lot of weight, which was worrying me. I was only eating once a day, more or less, and only a sandwich at that. I was drinking a lot of water, but it wasn't enough to keep going, and there were the days when I didn't get to eat because he apparently just randomly felt like drugging me.
I tired to figure out a pattern to the drugging, tried to anticipate it, but there didn't seem to be one. One day I woke up from a drug sleep, my mouth all cottony, and discovered that he had replenished the toothpaste, toilet paper, and soap while I had been out. Another time I woke up and discovered that all of my nails had been cut. He hadn't done a really good job, but they were short enough to prevent me from hurting myself with them, or from reaching through the door flap next time he brought food and clawing him with them. I thought about that frequently, but was afraid that he would punish me by withholding food again. I tried once to keep a sandwich until later, but he refused to give me any more until I had eaten that one. That little battle lasted two days, at the end of which I promised not to try to keep them again.
Through it all, I kept my hold on Josh, kept trying to force myself to believe in him, to believe he'd come get me, that our love would save me, but it got harder and harder every day, and Captor just kept trying to wear me down. One day I finally lost it with him, screaming into the radio.
"He's not coming, you know," he said.
"Yes he is," I argued stubbornly.
"No, he's not," Captor insisted. "He's moving on. He's forgotten all about you. JC is out there, right now, getting over you, finding someone else."
"And when he does, you'll let me go, and I'll go back to him," I said, shaking my head. Josh would never find someone else, not to replace me.
"Maybe," Captor said absently, and I shivered. Was he thinking of not letting me go? As the days had gone by I had convinced myself that one of these times he drugged me I would open my eyes the next time and be somewhere else, be outside this tiny room, but what if I just closed them, and never opened them again?
"Josh will come save me!" I insisted, trying not to cry again as fear numbed me.
"No, he won't," he insisted right back. "He's not coming to save you. He's not even looking for you. You're here, and you're mine."
"Fuck you!" I screamed, holding the button down. "Josh will come for me! He loves me, and you'll never fucking break me! Do you hear me? You'll never fucking break me, you asshole!"
There was no answer to that, no response, and I thought that maybe he would leave me alone. I was wrong. He decided to punish me instead. I got one sandwich that night, but it didn't seem to be drugged, didn't have that bitter undertone that they usually had. Maybe a half hour after I finished eating, though, I felt a sharp cramp race through my stomach. Staggering, I barely made it to the toilet in time as I felt another, and another, twisting through my intestines. He'd put laxative in the sandwich. I was on the toilet for what seemed like hours, sweating, cramping, waiting for it to be over. I realized dimly that if you were already weak, if you were already half starved, diarrhea could actually be fatal. In his zeal to punish me, he might actually kill me.
I had to get out of here before that could happen.
Sitting on the toilet, praying for this to be over, I realized finally that Josh wouldn't come for me. Crying, I let go of that hope, holding my head in my hands. Josh wasn't coming to save me, wasn't out looking for me. No one would save me, unless I did it myself. I was afraid to get off the toilet, afraid that it wouldn't be over, and eventually fell asleep there. When I woke up the next morning, tired and stiff, I went to sleep on the mattress, ignoring the sandwich by the door. Instead, I ate it when I got up.
I spent the next day or two pacing my cell, trying to figure this out. I played scenarios over and over in my mind, but kept coming up with reasons why they didn't work. I always needed one more thing, or needed something to happen a certain way, or I wouldn't get out of here. He hadn't drugged me since the laxative incident, either, and I figured I needed to do this fast, before I got weak again. While I was thinking that, and bending down to pick up my sandwich, I saw his flaw. This prison wasn't perfectly constructed after all. There was something he'd overlooked, and I'd overlooked it all this time, too. After eating, I paced my cell, looking around, working things out in my head, and figured everything out.
The sandwich wasn't drugged, and he didn't blast music that night. When I woke up in the morning, I was refreshed, and felt as strong as I could under the circumstances. I got up and washed, brushing my teeth and pretending it was a normal day. I didn't bother getting dressed anymore, other than keeping the boxers and undershirt on, because my pants didn't stay up now without a belt, and I couldn't hold them up and run at the same time. I didn't know if I had the energy to run, but I could try, damn it. Turning around, I surveyed the room, and saw that I was ready.
He wasn't perfect, and he hadn't broken me. Josh wasn't coming, but I was getting out of here, just the same.
Reaching out, I pressed the button to speak.
To be continued.