Case File: send me a ✈ and I will give your character a memory from mines past.
A Taste of the White Widow
There he was: fourteen years old and strung-out on god knows what in a someone’s loft just outside of London proper.
He’d taken the train there and gotten off of a stop under a bridge. The others led him through the poorly maintained tunnel, then out to the surface streets where every house was uniform and tightly packed, six or so sharing walls between them with long, narrow gardens stretched out back. The grass grew unusually high there, but then, that may have also been whatever they were sampling that day. It was dead in the cold February frost either way.
It was difficult to remember how long he’d been there, when he was going to leave, or really, what mattered. The weather was cold and dark out there; the ice covered the walks, and wild cats knocked over rubbish bins and fought with the foxes in the hedge. It didn’t matter. They were warm enough inside.
The heater hummed with the sound of crickets that didn’t exist, and burned what the group assumed were the corpses of spiders that had crawled in, but James Hakuba — he was a smart one — thought that maybe it was dust and debris from the room… stray hair, dead skin cells, that sort of thing.
They liked James. They liked that he was pliable. They liked that he was willing to try just about anything they threw at him, and that made him willing to do almost anything after that. It didn’t hurt that he was cute. The group agreed that he was on the young side, but quite attractive. In fact, some of them really, really liked that his voice was still cracking. It made it all the more interesting when he begged, they said.
Sarah brought him to the flat. She’d slept with him before, she told the others, out under the bleachers about a year ago. She’d given him his first cigarette. His first taste of what being with a woman was like. How much different it was than that dirty old priest.
“So why didn’t he join us then?”
She laughed. “He wanted to find love.”
“Did he find it?”
“Yeah. Can’t you see his broken heart?”
There were seven of them all together in Sarah’s little pack, including Sarah herself. Three boys, three girls. James made eight. They sympathized with the story of the breakup. Offered to let him into their nest with welcome arms. Promised to chase all of those nightmares away. And they did… for a little while.
The boy was young, impressionable, depressed, and rich. Really rich, and so willing. For nearly a month, they persuaded him to play. He fronted pound after pound for food, drink, toys, and so-called ‘natural remedies,’ while they served him so many, many experiences in return. It didn’t take long before he really didn’t know what he was on, or how long he’d been there… hours were lost, clothes missing, bloodied handprints appearing on the wall…
For a solid week somewhere in the thick of it, he didn’t go home or to school. They began their mornings with whatever they had, mostly bread, crisps, and coffee… then brought out the sampling for whatever it was. Cocaine was the easiest for them to get, and they’d all do hit after hit, throwing in another few things here and there. The veterans took turns getting it and various other chemical delights to sell while the others played in that blanket pit upstairs.
Hakuba liked the way they took his tie off with their teeth. How they pulled his clothing off, one button at a time. He loved that they whispered his name in his ear, nice and slow like they were about to climax, themselves. “Ha-ha-Hakuba,” the cried, and it never failed to get him completely riled. They wanted their fresh meat to be treated well so he’d stay. He’d be more compliant if they kept his aggression at bay, used his heartbreak against him.
“We’re so sorry,” the girls crooned as they took turns feeling him up, long nails dragging over his thighs, kissing at his stomach, then lower and lower still. As drunk and high as he was, he had no complaints for anything they did. And they did a lot. The men, too, teasing and touching and replaying so many memories as if they were wild fantasies. A new submissive plaything was something they’d been looking for a long time. It was ideal, to say the least. Get him off first so that he couldn’t compete, then take turns with him. ‘Love’ in all directions. “Let’s just take care of you, first.”
His wallet was their bank account, and they hit it hard. Lost in the haze, he didn’t care. It didn’t hurt nearly as much. Even when he had moments of clarity, enough to cry out John’s name in the dark, they soothed him. So many hands brushing over him, milking him, lips kissing and caressing him. Pouring more drink, getting him to go back to sleep.
Back to sleep, where the dreams came and went like the hours in an endless haze of colors and light. Shadows lurked there. They lurked everywhere. He saw faces in the windows, in the walls, the cracks in the floor. He heard screaming under the floorboards and in the creaking of the ceiling fan. “Absinthe?” they offered, and there he stood on the edge of a vast desert, cloudy sky stirring the contents of his stomach until they forced their way out.
The laughing was always good-natured. “Another toke will do you well, mate,” someone — he couldn’t tell who — whispered into his ear. It took the edge off, but the things they gave him usually did. The non-stop sexual exhaustion kept him pressed into the sheets without complaint.
No, that wasn’t quite right. He had complained. The toys hurt. He hurt. His body ached all over and he couldn’t keep anything down. More wine was the answer. Or Jaeger. Rum and cocaine. Morphine. Heroine. Meth. They pushed him down, sucked him off, drugged him, kissed him with hard liquor, and laid him down to enjoy while the others went on to each other.
It was the White Widow that he remembered so clearly. Its particular strain reminded him of those days… .just barely far enough to feel safe, but keeps you under the bridge from it. You could run, but why risk? The tension builds. Panic. Anxiety. Sometimes screaming.
He felt fire, he saw those faces in the dark, heard their voices, even though there was no one there but his supposed lovers, all unconscious from their binges. He cried and no one comforted him. They were dead.
Dead until the afternoon when they finally roused themselves, laughing and discussing their dreams and their wonderful feelings and making plans for more, with James huddled in the corner. They’d been dead all night, all morning, and he’d watched their skeletons moving in the red dawn of winter. He’d seen, in his hazy vision, the bone fingers of the trees stretch into the room and choke the life from them. He’d felt that priest touch him, take him, push him down onto the steps in front of that fireplace, hot iron poker ready to lash and tear the flesh right from his bones.
They tried to comfort him but he was numb by the time they were living again. Running fingers through their puppy’s hair, as they called him, shaking his naked shoulder, all that they could get was a small groan.
"He hasn’t been eating”
“Why wouldn’t he be eating?”
“Give him a cigarette.”
“How’s that going to help?”
“His trousers are stained…"
"Shit. With what?”
“Everythin’…"
"Bloody hell, did you really have to insist on that? I told you it was too big.”
“He’s gotta learn some time…"
"Cigarette. Water. Go on then.”
“I don’t think he’s aware.”
“Shit, did we fry the bloke?”
“James… oi James… listen to us. You’re okay.”
“This is getting boring just leave him be, let’s get out the good stuff.. that merlot was amazing."
The rest of the crew continued on while Sarah put her arm around James Hakuba, nuzzling into his shoulder and told him that he didn’t belong, did he? He wanted to be someone. “Here’s your share, baby… you were a wonderful investor.” She pushed a stack of rolled bills into his palms, which he couldn’t even take hold of. “Come on… I’ll get you home.”
Home.. sounded safe, but home ended p being the emergency room. Sarah left him there, bundled in nothing but a blanket with a wad of several thousand notes, smelling like incense, liquor, blood, and sex. She almost forgot to give his wallet back, too, but once he was safely admitted, she left.
Detox. Stomach pumped. Charcoal. Saline solution. His identity eventually made known. Marion and Baaya came straight away, holding their poor baby’s hand. What happened?
He had no answers. Everything was muddled. They rook him home and there he writhed for three agonizing days in the dark through feverish withdrawals until he emerged, resolved.
The things he’d seen were those he never wanted to experience again. The only solution, therefore, was to end it all.
