by Kody Boye
When the two-month line of my stay began to broach the calendar, I decided to hit Josh up about his parents’ problems while we were walking home from the burger joint a few blocks up the road. I’d started off simply enough—a Hey Josh to break the ice, then a Can I ask you something? to get things going. When he looked up and replied with a simple “yeah,” I took a deep breath, prepared myself for the awkward conversation that I knew was to come, then decided to take the club and beat the gopher over the head with it.
Your parents have problems, don’t they?
I still remember the look in his face the moment I finished the sentence. His forehead filled with lines, his mouth turned into a giant frown, the corners of his cheeks puffed forward like a chipmunk’s mouth filled with too many acorns. It scared me to see such a reaction, even though it wasn’t an obvious one, but I knew nothing bad would come of it. Josh wasn’t violent to say the least, unlike some men I’d run into, but everyone knew that asking a question about a touchy subject could go just about any way it wanted to.
After what seemed like an eternity, he finally said the three words I’d been waiting to hear: “Yeah, they do.”
With that said, I wasn’t sure how to reply. I expected him to elaborate further on the subject—to at least say his parents had marital problems or to mention some underlying issue that prevented them from living a fuller, happier life. That, however, did not come, which forced me head-on into the position of the farmer with the burning cattle rod.
What’s wrong? I’d asked.
“Nothing,” he’d replied, his normally-calm voice filled with hurt. “We’re just having money problems, that’s all.”
I expected something similar. It takes innocent things that don’t seem like such a big deal to turn good families into raging infernos, but I didn’t expect Josh to act so hurt about it. He was a good man—he worked a good job, was able to see the whole country and had decent wage. Even now, while I’m writing this, I’m still surprised at how strong his reaction was.
That doesn’t necessarily matter though. When we were more than hallway to the house, I asked if he was all right, he said he was fine, and I concluded the topic by saying I was just worried and wanted to know if something was up.
“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “Something’s up, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
–Day 42–
I didn’t find out what was up until two months later.
“Someone’s been stealing money,” Josh had said. “Mom thinks it’s the gardener.”
Usually when you think someone that’s working for you is stealing money, you do one of two things—confront them or get rid of them entirely. However, when I asked Josh about this, he simply sighed and shook his head. He said there was more going on that he wasn’t comfortable talking about in the house, but when I asked if we could go take a walk (my suggestion at the time had been to go get pizza,) he’d simply shaken his head and said he didn’t want to deal with it right now.
He didn’t want to deal with it until two weeks later, while we were walking home from our usual hangout at the burger joint.
“The reason we can’t get rid of the gardener is because he’s got some shit on Dad,” Josh had begun. “Dad’s had a bit of a rough past. He’s cheated the government out of some money and he’s afraid if we try to get rid of the gardener, he’ll stab us in the back.”
I asked Josh just how much his father had cheated the government out of. Josh said he “couldn’t count it,” which I guess translates into “he couldn’t remember because it’s such an extreme amount.”
While we continued walking, Josh with his head slightly bowed and myself with my hands in my pockets, I tried not to think about my place in the family and just what might happen if the gardener tried to get a little too close for comfort with me. No one knew who I was—I’d never been broadcast as a ‘missing child,’ at least as far as I know, and I’d never heard people talking about the kid who went missing. Back then, I assumed that Dad had just let me run off without a care in the world and didn’t bother to try and get me back because I was so close to being an adult. Now I’m not even sure if he’s alive. Even if he isn’t, that doesn’t necessarily matter, but I distracted myself from my train of thought.
The point was, at the time, that the gardener was known within Josh’s inner circle to be wrong, a bad seed planted within the perfect tropical paradise.
I asked if something was going to happen to me.
Josh plainly asked the only thing he could: “What?”
I then elaborated: Will your parents force me away because of what the gardener’s doing?
Josh said no. I wasn’t too sure. I guess what happened is pretty much clear.
–Day 43–
The tension eventually became so thick that sometimes, I swore I could cut it with a knife.
Around the three/four-month mark, after I’d pretty much established myself as Josh’s live-in boyfriend who helped cook, clean and manage the small property, things started to get bad. The fighting that happened between Josh’s parents wasn’t just hushed whispers and startled bursts of sound—they were full-out brawls. They never actually fought (Josh’s dad was too old to throw a punch and too good a man to ever lay his hands on a woman, much less his wife,) but their arguments could be heard throughout the house on choice mornings, afternoons and evenings. I was always the first to leave—To take a walk, I’d said, and clear my head. Josh, as always, would follow. He knew that the fighting was starting to get to me.
One night, he asked why I couldn’t stand listening to them argue.
I said it was because it reminded me too much of my dad.
This is going to be a first for you, John, and it’s going to be a first for me too, because I’ve never really talked about my dad in this journal. I’ve said he stopped caring about me, sure, but I never mentioned that he used to beat me during his alcoholic rampages. When Josh first questioned me about it, I was afraid to answer because the memories that were flooding back were almost too much to take. Even now, writing this, it’s hard for me to even put into words what it’s like to have your vision go red over the amount of blood in your eyes, but I’m getting to it.
The conversation went something like this:
“It reminds you of your dad?”
Yeah.
“You haven’t—“
My Dad used to beat me, Josh.
“But how is this—“
He used to rant and rave just like your parents do before he got his belt out.
My dad called these beatings ‘growing pains.’ Every time I would disobey him, he would make a tiny cut into the leather and refine the tips just enough to make them sharp. When whipped, these teeth would break apart from the main part of the belt and slice down, much like an animal when it’s biting you out of defense. He would give me the amount of lashings equal to what he thought was punishment—two for talking back, three for disobeying, four for arguing, five for crimes he felt were ‘Beyond his mechanism of control’ and ‘Disrespectful to him in the greatest degree.’
The last time he beat me, he didn’t stop at five—he only stopped when I turned to try and get him to stop and the belt slashed my forehead.
Some would probably say that seeing your child’s bleeding face would cause you to stop everything and to help that child in any way you possibly could. That wasn’t the case for my dad. When he saw the blood running down my hairline and into my face, he stood there for a moment with his eyes wide and his own blood dripping down from where he’d bit his lip before he turned and slashed the belt at the ceiling. The light bulb exploded and the room went dark, much of what usually happens when it’s eight-thirty at night and it’s pitch-black outside. The darkness didn’t deter him though—he kept slashing the belt across the kitchen, destroying everything he could. This went on for I don’t know how long before everything just stopped. Like the calm after the storm, he simply sighed, took a deep breath, then told me to go to my room.
&nb
sp; After I finished telling Josh this story, he brought me into his arms and started bawling. “I’m so sorry,” he’d sobbed. “I feel like a jerk for everything I’ve done to you.”
This might have been the point where he saw me as more than just a fuck buddy and more as someone he actually cared about. In those four months, he’d never explicitly said he’d loved me. Sure, he’d say it as we were having sex, when my legs were over his shoulders and his dick was eight-inches inside me, but he never once told me outside sex that he loved me.
At this point in our relationship, two months before I eventually left Josh and his family behind, he pushed me away from his chest and planted one gentle kiss on my lips. It was then and there that he said, “I love you.”
–Day 44–
At this point, I’m not exactly sure what I should write. The final chapter, maybe? The big finale, the last crescendo? I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out just what I should start talking about next, because seeing as how there’s two months left, there’s a few things I could write about: How Josh’s parents and their fighting started getting worse and worse, how the knocks at the door started to become more frequent, how the whispers that used to come from the living room while Josh and I were asleep started to become more frantic, more desperate, more secretive.
I don’t know.
Maybe I should just put it this way: The last two months I stayed with Josh can basically be described as purgatory, hell in the sense that I could barely stand being in that house.
What happened at the very end?
I think I’ll have to brace myself for that.
Sorry, John—let me get myself together a little more. If I can mentally prepare myself to write out what happened, it’ll be easier for me to do it without stuttering throughout the journal.
Sorry.
–Day 45–
The final chapter.
One night, while Josh and I were lying in bed, I heard his parents discussing my presence in the house. This wasn’t the casual banter they usually had—about where I came from, how long I had been with Josh and how close we seemed to be for such a short-term couple, that sort of thing. That night though, they weren’t talking about that. They were talking about something else.
“Have you noticed,” his father said, “that things seemed to get worse since Dakota arrived?”
Those words were enough to freeze me in place. When Josh suddenly paused as well, I thought maybe my skin had taken an icy chill, as his fingers drummed across my stomach, then stiffened before they fell back into place. However, he quickly fell back into an even form of breathing, much to my relief.
From that moment on, I listened to everything they said. I don’t think it’s necessary to reiterate the exact conversation, even though I do remember it to a perfect T, but hearing what they said made me realize how much of an idiot I had been for leaving my wallet out for something to find it. They knew whose it was—it had my name scrawled across it in a cowboys-and-Indians-style leather piece, so it was only natural for them to pick it up, maybe even shift through it.
What sealed my fate and what ultimately made them think I was stealing money?
The fact that I had a thousand or so dollars in my wallet.
Money was disappearing. There was a new person in the house. There was a lot of money in the new person’s wallet. Connect the dots is an easy game when you only have three possible marks to draw a line between.
The following morning, they didn’t say anything. My wallet was sitting in the exact same spot I’d left it in under the lamp on the end table. Things seemed normal, peachy even, and they both greeted me as though they held no ill will in their hearts.
That night, while Josh was sleeping and his parents had gone out for the night, I wrote a letter to Josh and said that his parents thought I was stealing money and that it was best if I left. I said to stay here, in Florida, and that if I got my life together, I might come back one day.
I didn’t end the note by saying I loved him.
Now, while writing this, I’m not sure if I should have.
I abandoned him without saying goodbye.
If I’ve ever regretted anything in my life, it was that I never told Josh goodbye.
To John—hopefully this suffices for that part of my life. The next part of the story is coming up here soon.
Shortly, my entire life story leading up to you finding me in the alley is going to come into a complete circle. Hopefully it won’t snap my head off when it does.
–Day 46–
I took to the road like a bird its wings shortly after its mother teaches it to fly. I walked down the road, toward the nearest bus stop and stuck my thumb in the air. One-hundred bucks and a trucker later, I was headed toward my next destination—obviously, here.
I didn’t initially intend to stop here. I didn’t. What I’d wanted to do was to cruise around and try to make a couple hundred more bucks before I started off again. At the time, my goal had been to accumulate enough money to open a bank account and to establish myself somewhere where I could get an ID, a job, etcetera. However, when the trucker dropped me off at the nearest gas station and said he was supposed to pick someone else up and that I’d be suspicious if I stayed along, I had little more to do than hop out of the truck and start heading into town.
You’re probably wondering, and yes, John—this is it. This is where it happens. Happened, I should say, because it isn’t happening over and over again. It happened once, and it’ll never happen again, because I’ll never allow it to happen again and because I will never walk alone at night, not anymore, not in that part of town or any suspicious part of any town.
With that being said, this is what happened the night I was beaten, raped and left for dead:
I was walking down the street with my backpack over my shoulders and my eyes set on finding a place to sleep. I’d known I was in a bad part of town based on the way people would look at me whenever I passed them. A woman pulled her blinds shut when I walked past her window. A group of children playing in a front yard were ushered into the house by a wary father. An elderly woman smoking on her porch looked at me, tilted her head up, then grabbed her cane and walked into her home. It seemed to be the perfect setup for something bad to happen: Little Dakota Hammell, ex-boyfriend and now full-fledged traveling prostitute, is walking alone at night while trying to find a place to sleep. Unbeknownst to him, something is about to happen. A monster is about to come out of the darkness and change his life forever.
And it did.
The black sedan seemed to morph out of the shadows in the alley before me.
At the time, I wasn’t sure what was happening. I thought maybe the alleyway led to a group of apartment complexes and that the sedan was simply leaving, or that maybe someone had detoured through a broad alley so they wouldn’t have to take the long way to wherever they were going. However, when the doors opened and five guys came out, I knew I was in trouble.
“Hey,” the one guy had said.
“Hey,” I’d replied.
That’s when someone pulled a switchblade out of their pocket and another one dragged me into the alley.
I don’t think I have to describe exactly what happened. It’d be too graphic and gruesome, and I know for a fact that you don’t want to read about what they did to me. All I’ll say is that after they asked if I had any money, and after they painstakingly tried to navigate the several pockets on my backpack for the wallet I’d had hidden in a secret pocket in the inside of my pants, someone punched me hard enough to knock me out, undressed me, then started having their way with me. The five guys took turns beating and fucking me until they had their way. At the end of it, someone pulled a baseball bat out and hit me in three places: my chest, my ankle and my arm. I’m surprised he didn’t crush my bones with that bat. He probably would have if the guy who’d been driving hadn’t stopped him.
After all that time—after beating and fucking me for however many odd hours they did—they fi
nally stopped.
I didn’t believe in a God until that moment, when a cloud of peace came down at the moment the guy stopped beating me with the bat. I’m not sure if the God exists, but it doesn’t matter, and I’m starting to stray away from the point.
When the bat stopped raining down, everything stopped.
“He’s good, dude,” the leader guy said. “We got off. Let’s go.”
That’s what happened that night.
I saw the sedan leave before I passed out.
The following morning, I woke to the sound of someone walking toward me in the alley.
You know who that was, John?
It was you.
You saved me that morning.
When you took me in your arms and helped me into your car, when you drove me home and offered me shelter, you did the one thing a dozen other people probably wouldn’t have—saved me.
Thank you.
I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I love you. You’re the greatest friend and one of the best men I’ve ever known. It’s because of you that I’m alive right now.
Thank you for helping me.
Thanks for helping me fight this until the very end.
–Day 47–
It’s December eighteenth. Eighteen days after John told me that I would start fighting this thing until the very end, I’ve conquered just that. It’s kind of crazy to think that I’ve been here for forty-seven days, but it’s even crazier to think that I’m almost completely healed after such a short amount of time.
I’m not sure what else to say.
John hasn’t read my journal. I think he’s been swamped with pre-Christmas clients and has been too tired to read my journal because of it. That’s all right though. I’m ok with it. Right now, I’m just happy that I accomplished what I set out to do—to fight it, the memory, to conquer it and to start to put it behind me. Now that I have, I’m not sure what else I have to do.
