“Ryan, go give Uncle Damien a cuddle,” Momma says to me, but I don’t want to. “Go on,” she encourages me as I try to dig the heels of my sport shoes into the dirt.

“Come on, boy,” Uncle Damien says with his hands extended to me. I look up at momma and she smiles sweetly giving me a little nod of her head. I drag my feet, trying to take as long as I can to get to him, but it only means this’ll take longer than it has to.

I go to him and he embraces and squeezes me too tightly. He smells really bad, like onions and beer mixed together. Yuck.

“That’s it, boy. You like this,” he whispers in my ear.

I turn away as quickly as I can and go stand next to momma. She’s talking to Uncle George, her brother, and doesn’t notice me shaking next to her. I look over to Uncle Damien and he’s got one eyebrow lifted as he’s staring at me. I’m not gonna leave my momma’s side until the party’s over, and then I’ll be alright.

I hate Uncle Damien.

He stands up and comes to stand too close to me waiting to talk to his sister, my momma. She turns to him and smiles.

“So, Elaine, I was thinking of going fishing tomorrow morning. Can I take Ryan with me?”

“What do you say, Ryan? Do you want to go fishing with Uncle Damien?” Momma looks at me with her big green eyes and smiles.

“No thank you, Momma. I’ve got, um…” I hesitate, “homework to do.”

Please don’t make me go, please don’t make me go.

“No you don’t silly, you finished it yesterday. Remember?” I’m shaking my head ‘no’ to her. Please Momma read my thoughts, I don’t wanna go. Please don’t make me go.

“You’ll love it, Uncle Damien’s a really good fisherman and he can teach you a few tricks.”

“No thank you,” I say again.

“I’m sure he’ll have a ball once he gets there. What time do you wanna pick him up in the morning?” she says to Uncle Damien.

I feel sick, this isn’t good. I don’t want to go.

“We’ll be leaving really early, so how about he just stays with me tonight and we can head off at about 4am. What do you say, champ?” He ruffles my hair as he gazes down at me with a strange look on his face.

“Sure, he’s got some clothes packed because he was supposed to stay at his friend Mason’s tonight, but he can skip that and come home with you.”

“Mom, I don’t want to go with him. I want to go to Mason’s house.” She kneels down in front of me and smooths my hair to the side.

“You’ll see Mason at school on Monday. Uncle Damien really wants to spend some time with you, he wants to take you fishing, and you’ll have so much fun.”

“I don’t want to go to Uncle Damien’s house. He scares me, Momma.”

She glances over her shoulder and Uncle Damien’s looking up at the clouds.

“Sweetheart, since your daddy died it’s hard for me and Uncle Damien wants to help. Will you please just go tonight? Just to help me. Please?” I know she’s been sad since daddy was killed, and I’ve tried to be good, I really have. Sometimes I hear momma crying when she thinks I’m asleep. And sometimes she doesn’t even try to hide the tears.

So I think I need to help her, and if staying with Uncle Damien for tonight will help, then that’s what I’ll do.

“Okay, Momma. I’ll go fishing with Uncle Damien.” Out of the corner of my eye I see him turn and look at me. The smile on his lips makes me want to run away and hide forever. I hate him, a lot.

“Good, so we’ll be leaving soon, Ryan because I really want to give you a lesson tonight before we go out on the water tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Uncle Damien,” I say in my saddest voice.

The next hour I try not to leave momma’s side but it always feels like someone’s watching me, and when I look around the party the only eyes I see looking at me are Uncle Damien’s.

“Come on, Ryan time for us to go.”

I say bye to momma and Uncle Damien leads me out to his car with my bag in his hand and his other hand on my shoulder.

“So I’m thinking we get take out and watch a movie with dinner. Is that okay with you?”

“Yes, Uncle Damien.”

“When we get home you can call me Damien alright?”

“Yes.”

I go to get into the back of the car but Damien tells me to sit in the front with him. When the car starts he puts some music on the radio. I’ve never heard it before; it’s a slow song talking about love and things like that. Damien squeezes my thigh as I look out the window.

“You alright?” he asks but doesn’t move his hand from my thigh, instead he squeezes it again
then
moves it away.

“I’m fine.”

“That’s my good boy,” he says as he starts to whistle along to the song.

We get to his house and he puts my bag in his room as I stand in the family room and wait for him to return. He comes back with a beer in his hand and a soda for me.

“Here you go, Ryan, how about we watch a movie now?” I sit on the chair that’s by itself as Damien sits on the big sofa and relaxes back into the seat.

He puts a movie on and it’s pretty funny. It’s about these little creatures and if they eat after dark they go crazy, and some are cute but you can’t put water on them or they multiply. I’m laughing at some parts until Damien calls my name.

“Ryan?” I look over at him and he pats the seat next to him. “Why don’t you come and sit here? You’ll be able to see better.” He’s right, so I move and sit next to him.

The movie continues and Damien starts ruffling my hair. I try to pull away and he moves his hand from my hair to my thigh.

“I’m a little bored with this movie, can I put something else on, Ryan?” I nod once.

He flips the channel and now there’s a sex movie on TV. There’s a boy, like me, and he’s being kissed on the mouth by an old man.

“I like this movie, do you, Ryan?”

“No. I don’t like it. Can you change it please?” I try to look at Damien, and I notice him watching me.

“I’ll turn it off in a little while. Just watch a little more, you might like it. Go on, look at the screen. That boy likes it, see how he’s kissing his special friend?”

The boy looks half asleep, he doesn’t look like he’s having any fun at all. I don’t know what to do? I try to look away but every time I do Damien turns my head gently so I keep watching. I close my eyes tight so I can’t see what’s happening, but I can hear the man telling the boy to ‘suck my cock’. I don’t know why he’d say that, it’s making me sick in the tummy.

“I want to go home, Damien,” I say without opening my eyes.

“I tell you what, Ryan. If you give me one little kiss on the lips then I’ll take you home. Can you do that?”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want to. Please take me home.” My tummy’s hurting and I think I’m about to cry.

“The boy on TV is about your age, he’s only ten or eleven. And you’re a beautiful little ten year old boy. I just want one little kiss, no one has to know. It’s just for me. See? Look at the screen. He’s got he’s special friend’s cock in his mouth, you don’t have to do that to me yet, baby, all I want is one little kiss.” I open my eyes and see the boy kneeling in front of the chair the man’s sitting on. His head is going up and down as the man has his hands in the boy’s hair.

“I don’t want to.”

“Yes you do. Look at that.” He runs his hand over my pants and I can feel my pee pee get hard under my shorts.

“See you like me touching you there, or you wouldn’t go hard like that.” He keeps rubbing me. It feels so wrong and I don’t like it. “Just one little kiss, baby. I promise you’ll enjoy it.”

He leans into me and I close my eyes to hold the tears in, but they start to spill over and I can feel them running down my cheeks. I feel his mouth on me and he smells more like beer now, the onion smell’s gone away. He pokes his tongue in my mouth and I feel like throwing up. He holds my head in his hands so I can’t pull away. Instead I cry as he shoves his tongue in and out of my mouth. When he finishes kissing me, he starts rubbing my pee pee again.

“See you did like it, it feels a little wet here. Hang on, boy, let me check you haven’t wet your undies.” He shoves his hand down the front of my shorts and grabs me tightly and starts tugging and pulling me.

“Please stop, Damien,” I whisper as I drop my chin to my chest and continue crying.

“Just a little more, and then you can do the same thing for me.”

Damien keeps stroking me and whispering things that make me whimper more.

I don’t want this.

It’s so wrong. He shouldn’t be touching me.

But, it feels nice.

“That’s it, boy. I can see how much you like it,” he says, but his voice sounds deeper and different.

Something starts happening to me, it feels like I’m running really really fast.

It’s then that I feel like I’ve wet myself a little.

“Good boy. Now you have to do the same for me,” Damien says as he stands in front of me with his pants pushed down.

He takes my hand and grips it tight around his pee pee.

I start crying again, his part is right in front of me.

Damien’s moaning as he’s patting my head.

“That’s it, boy. I like that,” he says.

It’s making me feel yucky in the tummy.

I
never
want to come back here again.

That night I had so much of my innocence stolen from me. It wasn’t only a kiss that I experienced, and it wasn’t the only time that happened.

It got worse as time went on, and I could never tell Mom because Damien threatened to kill her if I ever said anything, and I believed every single thing he said.

The abuse continued for three years, just after my thirteenth birthday he told me I had too much hair and looked too much like a man so he didn’t want to ‘fuck a man’ because he ‘wasn’t gay’.

The nightmares never stopped, my heart never healed, the anger I have has continued until today.

Today I turn sixteen, and today I’m going to kill the man that destroyed me.

I’ve managed to get my hands on a very special knife, a knife with serrated edges that will do serious damage.

For the last three years my life’s been difficult. I fight at school a lot, I’m angry all the fucking time and I’ve been suspended and even threatened to be expelled. I’m on suspension now ‘cause I punched the principal after he told me to ‘calm down, boy’.

They were words that Damien used to say to me when I cried because it hurt.

But today, I’m going to right the wrongs that Damien did.

Today I’m going to kill the man that destroyed my youth and selfishly took my innocence.

What does it take for a broken boy to finally find freedom? Damien’s death.

Chapter 1

Now

The lyrics of Rob Thomas’ Now Comes the Night tells me not be afraid. But afraid is exactly what I am.

Afraid to close my eyes.

Afraid to have them open.

Afraid of all the years that were taken from me.

Afraid of the hurt that exists in every part of my broken soul.

Afraid to live.

Sitting in my family room with a tumbler of Jack in my hand all I can do is stare around the havoc that my life is. Everywhere I look I see the mess that surrounds me. In one corner there are newspapers and bills which are stacked in piles, disheveled, a lot like my mind.

In another corner, discarded dirty clothes that are waiting for them to be picked up and cared for, exactly like my body.

Behind me lies rubbish strewn carelessly, hoping that one day they’ll be thrown out, exactly like my soul.

BOOK: Yes, Master

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