Three, Two, One (321)

I know the answer, but I refuse to believe it. I won’t believe it. Not after everything that’s happened.

JD’s words stop, but his hands are just beginning to wander. I’m sore all over from the night before my escape. It’s always worse the second day. It’s like the gods of punishment are fucking with you the first day. Because you start to think it wasn’t so bad. You start to think you won’t be limping for a week or struggling to breathe through the bruises on your throat. Or that the open sores on your back won’t be weeping with pus for days before they finally scab over.

But the gods of punishment are cruel. Because they make that first day bearable for the sole purpose of building you up just to take you back down again on day two.

My whole body hurts, but JD’s touch is soft and soothing. He doesn’t try to fuck me again. He doesn’t even try to get me off. It’s like he knows. And he must have an idea if he recognized the branding scar on the back of my neck.

“You know what it means?” he asks, his voice still very low. “That brand?”

I nod. Of course. Everything was explained the first day. “Eternity.”

I feel a long hot breath on my upper back as JD deals with that. “Did you see any—”

“No.”

He stops talking for a few seconds. Maybe I stunned him. Or maybe he accepts it as truth. Or maybe he knows that was too much.

We’re silent for so long after that, I figure he wants to go back to sleep. But then his soft touches start up again.

A fingertip tracing up and down my prominent ribs.

His palm cupping the hip bone that sticks out way too far.

His lips caressing the welts on my back.

Every bit of it hurts. Not all in the same way. But every bit of it hurts. The bones remind me of how malnourished I am. What could these two beautiful men see in me? How could they possibly see past my emaciated shell of a body? And the kisses across my back are just painful. Putting on a shirt will be a reminder of what they did, no matter how loose it is.

And then his hands rub lightly over the curve of my ass. The hands that grabbed it with such passion last night and made me forget.

He knows I’m crying before I do. He turns me towards him, hugging me close.

But it hurts. It all hurts and I cry harder. “Please stop,” I beg. “Please don’t touch me anymore.” I just want to lie still and forget. I don’t want to be reminded of anything. Not the good. Not the bad. Not anything.

JD is still next to me for several minutes, but then he just gets up, gets dressed, and walks out of the bedroom. A few moments later the front door slams.

I close my eyes with relief and slow the crying down to small hiccups of air that cannot be rushed. They stop in their own good time and there is nothing I can do but allow myself to forget.

“I saw this golden monkey once,” Ark says a few minutes later, startling me out of my blissful solitude. “It escaped from its enclosure at the zoo a few summers ago. JD and I were just getting into the groove of things with the business. And we were shooting a scene at the zoo.” He stops to chuckle. “It’s fucked up, I get it. But don’t judge me yet, Blue. Because I’m a man of many layers. And I do things for a reason.”

I turn my body, wincing and groaning as I let the pain take over for a second. “What’s that got to do with a monkey?”

He smiles at me and his dark eyes soften for a moment. He’s older than JD, that’s clear. He’s got some worry lines around his eyes. And he’s got a look that makes me feel like he’s in control of things. Maybe everything. “They thought it was still in the zoo, so they were telling all the patrons to keep an eye out that day. Like a public service announcement. They’d stand at all the intersecting paths leading to various animals, and talk about the missing golden monkey. They were desperate to catch it. If it got out of that park, it’d probably get hit by a car on Colorado Boulevard, or snatched up to be sold as a pet.”

I eye him, wondering if they found and sold the monkey.

He smiles again, like he knows what I’m thinking. “But it didn’t get out of the park. And JD, me, and the girl we were filming were the ones to actually find the golden monkey.”

“Where was it?”

His smile stops and his expression becomes sad. “Just sitting in a tree. It was closing time and even though we are scum for filming a girl sucking off JD at a family park, at least we did it late at night. So when I looked up and saw it, it was illuminated in one of those yellowish sodium lamps they use all over the city to try to cut down on light pollution. So it was…” He stops. Like he’s thinking. Like he’s picturing that golden monkey right now. Seeing it again. “It was like a halo around its head.”

“Was it beautiful?”

“No, Blue. The monkey was sick, I guess. It escaped while being transported to the medical facility and that’s how it got away and we found it in that tree.”

“Oh.”

“They said she had cancer and they were taking her to be euthanized, because they felt she was in a lot of pain.”

My attention on his story is rapt. I cannot look away even if I wanted to. “What did you say?”

“What do you think I said?” His eyes search mine for a moment. And then he breathes out a long breath. “They said she was not worth saving. The treatment would be long and the odds were not good. It was expensive.” He shrugs. “So JD and I adopted the golden monkey. We donated a hundred thousand dollars to save her and buy some new machine they needed for… something. I don’t know what.”