Sicko

by Amo Jones

  I remembered nothing. Blank spots filled my memory as I lifted my hand up to touch my head. Blindfolded. “Fuck!”

  “Roy?” Orson called out from somewhere in the room.

  “Yeah, bro. It’s me. Storm?”

  Storm grunted roughly from behind me. “Here.”

  “Are you all blindfolded too?”

  “Yes,” Orson hollered, with the sound of his jeans shuffling against the ground. “You remember anything after being in your room?”

  “No,” I answered tightly, my muscles tensing as I tugged on the binds around my wrists. “Nothing after falling asleep.” We all crashed in my room eventually, waiting for my dad to “handle it.”

  Hands tucked beneath my blindfold, tearing it off. A boy around my age with wide shoulders and short hair was glaring down at me with cold, distant eyes. “Don’t try to fight anything,” he says. “Just go with it.” I reared back from him, snarling.

  “How do I know that Diamond isn’t you?”

  Wicked stares at me blankly. Unnerved and unfazed. “Because I’m not.”

  “And we’re supposed to believe you?” Orson said, snarling. “Boy, take my blindfold off.”

  “I’d listen to him,” I said, spitting the blood that’s pooling in my mouth. He moves to Orson, removing his blindfold and ties around his wrist before shifting to Storm.

  “I’m Lenox, and I ain’t fucking him.”

  He finally came back to me, removing the tight ropes around my wrists. I flexed them around in circles. A loud crackle of sound echoed through speakers as I finally took in the room. Dark walls, one bed, one chair. No windows, no mirrors, one door—with a small window in the front. It smelled of bleach and expensive perfume. Maybe we’re in a lab inside a house.

  “Welcome, boys. Since you decided to defy me and attempt to run, consider this your warning and your punishment.” His voice was the same. The unnatural robotic undertones a dead giveaway that whoever this bastard was, he didn’t want anyone knowing. “I’m going to starve you to within an inch of your life, and then I will feed you whatever I wish to feed you. You will do as I say while you’re in here or I will start killing off each of your family members, starting with Jade.” My blood turned cold again. “You will do everything I tell you to do, and if you oblige to all, I will free you on the sixteenth day with your vehicles, your necessities, but not your dignity. You will be required to perform tasks to meet my needs. All tasks must be completed. All you will have is each other in this den. All you will see is each other, all you will fuck is each other, and all you will eat, will be each other. If you don’t listen, that is. Otherwise, I might be kind and feed you someone in my freezer.”

  I stilled, all of us foraging around the room while every now and then our eyes would land on each other.

  “I’m a powerful man. Don’t believe me? When you get out of here—if you do—Google Diamond. You’ll get an idea.”

  I’m squeezing the steering wheel, refusing to relive the sixteen days we spent together in what Diamond called The Den. “What happened when we left?” My voice is cold, distant.

  I wish I could say that we obeyed him from the second we were abducted into The Den, but fuck, of course we didn’t. He lived up to everything he promised, though. In a way, I think that’s why the four of us formed an even stronger bond. We left on the sixteenth day, but Wicked stayed behind. He wasn’t released until the twenty-first day, which is why we’re having this tense fucking conversation. I was pretty fucked up after it all happened. The club healed me; Lion saved me. I could have lost myself the day that I walked into Patches, but instead I found myself. A new family. I tried therapy anyway, because I was young and fresh out of being in the millionaire kids’ club. It was the answer to everything growing up. Something your parents can’t handle? Off to a flashy therapist who’d drain your parents’ pockets dry while making you feel like a colossal fuck up. You don’t need therapy when you’re around people who don’t make you feel like you’re alone or crazy or fucked up for surviving the shit you did.

  Wicked clears his throat. I already know that I won’t like anything that comes out of his mouth. But like a sucker for pain, I need to know. I need to know every single fucking detail.

  “You want to do this now?” Wicked says as I floor it forward, picking up speed. Motorbikes swerve in and out in the rearview mirror, catching up quickly.

  “Yeah, I fucking do. Just can’t promise I won’t crash this fucking car and kill us both.”

  Wicked doesn’t answer. After a beat of silence—a long fucking beat—the words I didn’t want to hear left his mouth. “He made me do shit to her. Brought her into my Den, same rules. Said she was fresh meat—” Wicked pauses and my breathing catches up heavily. The pulsing in my head is only intensifying, my jealousy rearing its fat fucking head. “—that only he had taken a bite out of.” My control snaps and I swerve into the other lane and drop down, gaining more speed. “Brother, I need you to know that I had no choice.”

  I can hear the wariness in his voice. The way his head moves from front-on to sideways, watching the road and me. The road and me.

  “Carry the fuck on, brother.” I need to pull myself together if I have any chance of surviving this story when I know what is coming. I know Diamond and how he fucking operates. I may not know who the man is behind the mask, but I know his traits. His taste. Thinking that Jade is tangled up with him makes me fucking murderous. One word keeps flashing through my mind in neon fucking light.

  Regret.

  Wicked doesn’t hold back. “She came in dressed in suit pants and a fucking bra. Her hair was all tidy, her makeup on point. She—”

  I cut in, “—to be clear, not saying that you knew because you obviously didn’t, but she was fucking fifteen.” I glare at him over my arm. “Fifteen, Lenny!”

  Wicked has a poker face that could conquer Las Vegas, but throwing his real name at him has his cheek twitching.

  “I didn’t know.” He shakes his head, running his big hand through his hair. “Fuck!” He punches my leather dash a few times. “Fuck!” I’ve never seen Wicked lose his cool. Not ever. He’s famous for keeping himself calm and collected. Unlike the rest of us unhinged bastards.

  “It’s not your fault,” I exhale, needing him to continue but not wanting him to blame himself. Wicked had a baby sister once, he knows how it is. He’d never willingly fuck an underage girl. The baby sister story plays a big part in why he doesn’t like people calling him Lenny.

  He clears his throat, and I know the rest of the story is going to come out pained. “She came in. Dressed up with a little bunny mask on and a shit load of makeup. She didn’t look fucking fifteen.”

  I study him over my shoulder, finally slowing my speed down. “Would it have mattered? You wouldn’t have taken a few days off—” I pause, knowing I shouldn’t go there but needing to, to drive my point home. I need Wicked at one-hundred percent when we war, and this one is going to be a cataclysm. “—her life.” I didn’t want to say her name. Fuck, if it was Jade, I’d strangle the vocal cords out of anyone who so much as breathes her name.

  Wicked sighs, his defeat heavy in the air. “Yeah. Anyway, she came in. He ordered her to do shit to me and me her. He told me I had to fuck her like she was a lover. It was weird, but nothing new from the shit we had to go through.”

  I snort. “Yeah, what like actually fucking a girl this time?” Throwing it out there in the open for the first time left uneasy tension in the space between us, but I didn’t give a fuck. I was done giving this cunt access to my shame. “Brother, what happened between all of us in there doesn’t mean shit.”

  Wicked shuffles. “It’s not that. I mean, not the sex. I ain’t fucking gay—”

  My hands go up. “—and neither am I! But you and I both know sex is sex.”

  Wicked rolls his bottom lip between his teeth. I was fucking with him. None of us touched each other willingly after what he made us do in The Den. We all felt debased. The act in itself
was difficult to digest because it’s not my sexual preference, but that’s not what made all of us feel violated. It was the fact that our choice had been taken away. We were no longer ourselves. We built L’artisaniant for two purposes. Well, if I’m being honest, three.

  The first, and most important was to take money off rich motherfuckers and put it into the pocket of an underground anonymous misfit group who were about to shred open child trafficking in the US. It was something that Wicked was close to since his sister was taken. She wasn’t a child, but she was young like Jade. The government doesn’t seem to be doing shit, but this group of civilians have split open the seams of some of the most notorious cases around not just the US, but Europe too. Gaining access to files, video footage, photos, and exposing everything through their website while protecting the identity of the children. No one knows who they are. No one. Not even us, and we fund them.

  The second, was to draw in Diamond and his sexual methods. Never fucking worked. He never set foot in there. The names of people who entered were always sent to Anonymous, who would check their records. Anyone who came through L’artisaniant that was on their files, we handed over to them. It was a net for sexual predators.

  The third, was our own sexual needs. All four of us have a sexual hunger on the same level, only different tastes. We’re selfish bastards like that. Everything that happens in L’artisaniant is above age with consenting adults. Using an exclusive sex club to draw in sexual predators was how we humiliated them, and then furthermore, the money went back into the pockets of the group who was fighting them, who would then spread funds out to the people that they saved.

  Wicked ignores me. “It lasted right up until I left. He made me train her, said that’s why I wasn’t to leave when you all did. Said if I tried to leave, he’d kill—” He pauses. “Poppy.” It was the first time I had heard her name since he first told me the story of his sister and how he ended up with Diamond.

  Poppy was fourteen when she met Diamond.

  She was fifteen when she died.

  Wicked thought she died when she was fourteen, but that wasn’t the case at all. Poppy’s story and her last year alive was far more sinister than that. When Wicked found out she was still alive, she was fifteen years old. He tried to save her. With everything inside of him. He couldn’t.

  “So I did what he wanted, and Jade seemed to go with it for the most part. I’m going to be honest with you always, Royce. I straight-up thought she was working with Diamond, and that’s why she was allowed in and out. Always looked nice. Well looked after. Wore the most expensive clothes and never took her mask off. Never spoke. We never spoke to each other, and I think we both preferred it that way.”

  “What’d you do together…” I take the next turnoff, checking the brothers are still behind me.

  “Everything.”

  Squeeze.

  “He let me go after he said I had completed her training and told me Poppy was already dead and that—” He pauses again and I know the next thing he’s going to say is going to hurt. Anger wraps itself around the next words that come out of his mouth. “Said she was our last meal.”

  My blood turns cold, freezing my limbs. I pick up speed again and floor it forward, needing this to kick off. I need to smell blood in the air and the sound of flesh being pounded.

  “Sorry, brother.”

  “Today’s the fucking day,” he whispers, but I don’t look over at him, wanting to allow him his privacy.

  “Today’s the day.”

  “Royce,” Wicked says, just as we’re pulling down one of the back streets that leads into an apartment complex that’s situated on the corner of a crossroad intersection in the city.

  I bring my eyes to his. This big motherfucker who had his heart taken from him the day his sister died and now walks around as the shell of the man he used to be. “Yeah?” I know I’d kill for him. Die for him. I know I can’t be mad at him for what happened between him and Jade, or that he fucked her at L’artisaniant. If anything, it brings a kind of peace. Could have been anyone fucking her in that Den with Diamond, would have rather it be Wicked. Even if it does make me want to kill the both of them. The two people I would die for make me want to kill them both.

  It fucking bothers me that she obviously knew who Wicked was, though. If she’s been keeping that from me, fucking what else has she been hiding up that sleeve.

  Wicked shakes his head. “Be careful with her. You don’t know how deep in she is.”

  I squeeze the car door handle. “Yeah, I fucking know.”

  A well-made lie will continue to burn the tip of your tongue well after you’ve been fed truth.

  My fingers are twitching, my brain moving at speeds that a snail could lap. My tongue sticks to the top of my mouth like a sponge, desperate for water, or any fluid. An ice-cold Coke would satiate my thirst at levels not even water could reach right now.

  “Jade?” Sloane croaks from the side, and I turn to face her. She’s lying down in a white dress, the opposite of my black but the same style. Her hair is straightened, falling down her back while mine is crinkled into waves, dropping above my butt. Red bottom heels are on my feet, pointed tips and shiny. Hers the same.

  “You okay?” I ask, but the words fall out like a jumble of letters, unwilling to remain in a straight line.

  She nods, sitting up from the made bed made with Egyptian cotton sheets and scattered rose pedals. “What’s happening? I feel drugged…”

  “You are,” I whisper, already knowing the room I’m in. The apartment complex downtown. It’s owned by James, but instead of the usual tenants that most complexes have, his is occupied in levels. There are twelve, and at every level, someone dripping in evil occupies it. I have met evil in my life, and all those times it was right here, in the basement level of this complex. One a politician, another a software engineer, another I suspect working in some undercover legal area. When James hosts an event every month, he puts the buyers in a room. Some are reoccurring, some new. The human trafficking has worsened over the years, but what James offers is something that not many can grasp on to.

  Young, beautiful, and at times, virgins. Young. Young.

  “I know every corner and every hole in this place,” I say to Sloane, kneeling in front of her with my hands on her knees. “I will get you out.”

  Tears prick the corner of her eyes as she wobbles to her feet. “What is this place?”

  I take her hand in mine. “It’s an apartment complex right in the center of the city.” Because James was smart. He didn’t do his dealings in a dingy building. He took what everyone thought they knew about human trafficking and refined it, putting it right in the center of town, and right around the corner from the LAPD. They would never guess it. Smart or stupid, or a combination of both. I could never make up my mind, but one thing was for sure, James Doe was a tyrant.

  Taking both of her hands in mine. “Listen to me very carefully, Sloane.” I can’t hear if someone is right outside the door or if they’re about to walk in. The walls are soundproof, no windows. Just a single-bedroom apartment fitted with everything you would find in any apartment. Nothing out of the ordinary. There’s a bed in the room, a dresser, a large TV, and some casual clothing. The room looks lived in, they all do, but they’re all not.

  The purpose of The Complex is pure horror, despite the obvious lavishness. Things have changed. Trafficking doesn’t look the way it used to. These people have leveled up. They’re hiding behind normality, so no one sees anything out of the ordinary. It’s what makes it so much more dangerous now.

  “What about you?” she asks, squeezing my hand.

  The door opens behind me and James’ right-hand man steps through, his hands in his suit pocket.

  “It’s time.” I smile at Sloane, hoping to ease some of her fear, but I feel like a fraud. I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I know is that I need to save her at all costs. She didn’t ask for this. To be here, mixed up in this world. She’s here becau
se of me.

  I turn, making sure to stand in front of Sloane and bring my eyes to Isaac. “How long have we been out?”

  The first day I met Isaac, I was fifteen years old.

  My thighs ached. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to get out of the car and enter this fucking house. I knew what awaited me, more torture. More cruelty. All he wanted to do was inflict pain through the gentlest way. Why? I wasn’t sure. Why he made it such an effort to make my life a living hell, I will never know. Was he punishing me, or someone else through me?

  I wanted it to be over.

  I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror of the car. He was unmasked, but I could only see his eyes. The dark way they shifted until they were set on me. Hard. Feral.

  The man in the back seat with me interrupted my staring. “He will allow you out when you’re tasks are completed.” The car came to a stop outside a small-sized cottage about an hour away from where I lived, the man beside me opened the back door, pushing it open. I followed behind him submissively until I was out on the driveway. No other houses were around us, completely gated in by a high wired white fence and shrubs that offered further privacy.

  “What’s your name?” I said to the man who was leading me through the front door of the cottage.

  “Isaac.” He was around the age of James. Stronger, longer, thick shoulders and a military-style cut. I didn’t know much about what James did, but as every hour passed from when he first put his hands on me, I came to realize that whatever he did, it was evil, and to do evil, one must surround themselves with evil, so Isaac was a bad man.

  Just like James.

  Isaac continued to lead me down a long hallway. The home was vacant, with no furnishings inside of it, but it smelled fresh. Like bleach and another note I couldn’t quite figure out.

  His hand came to a door handle where he squeezed gently, his gold Rolex catching the dim light that hung above our heads from a crystal chandelier.

  He looked at me from over his shoulder. “Do what he says, Jade.” Then he pushed the door open and shoved me inside, where I fell to my knees. The door slammed closed behind me, my eyes flying around the room.