A rose to grind

-38-

How many days had it been since I had been locked up? Days flitted by so quickly and meaninglessly. Where once I would be suffocated under insurmountable mountains of oppressive papers, and boring sheets about the livelihood of the Junta name, I was now as free as a dead man.

If it had been a few days prior, all I would've wished for was that son of the bitch Jacklin Rogue to keel over in his pile of shit, but that duration of pent-up frustrations, and fruitless anger directed at a man who lusted over the past, indulging himself in illusions of depravity and intimacy that once existed between two young boys, I started to realize.. no matter how much I prayed, pleaded, pursued that bastard's death, no being in those skies would hear me. Perhaps, they chose to ignore it, for I was never a filial son, nor a religious, righteous man who repaid anything by living. God himself would presumably descend and strike me into oblivion if he could if he existed.

It was a hapless, ironic, pathetic mess that I could blame no one but myself, for having fallen into the hands of the lunatic.

Still, Jacklin must've loved me in his own deranged, twisted way. He wasn't exactly a cruel owner. Not heartless at all. I'd even call him a spineless coward. This person, diligently perspicacious on the outside, just taking a glance at his seamless countenance, would not appear abnormal in any way to anyone with a pair of eyes with working vision. If anything, he'd even be analogous to a goldfish in a pond. Staring at his silver-golden scales, it evoked a restless urge inside of someone to dip their hand and whisk away it out of selfish greed for beauty, but underneath the sparkle and shimmery shine, he was nothing but a rotten corpse that leeched off the life of just anyone who would've mistaken him for terrific luck.

He tied my restraints to a king-sized bed, left the air-conditioner running. The bathroom was pristine clean, which I witnessed with my own eyes that man scrubbed himself. If I was bored, there was a television screen with the width and length of a table pool for me, but it wasn't linked to any channels. He left a box of CDs in one of the cabinets. The last time I inspected it, it was only filled with the movies that he performed in. Out of anger, I smashed everything, even considering to ingest some fragments, hoping that I wouldn't be able to catch a glimpse of that revolting smiling face, but the thought of carrying something related to Jacklin within my body deterred me from the idea.

The pieces of the CDs lodged themselves within my skin—like owner, like annoying films—when I went on that rampage. It was the dead of the night when Jacklin returned from what I assumed was a late-night outing. I noticed that as renowned as he was, he still could never say no. Flushed heavily in the face, the white-haired sicko  stumbled his way through the room. He couldn't handle his alcohol, and ended up face-planting in the middle of the room. As he lifted his head, he had two trails of blood flowing endlessly down his white face, yet as he saw the splinters digging into my skin, he turned a blind eye to his own state, restlessly using a tool to pick at the little chips of glass and plastic.

Drunkenly murmuring hushed apologies under his breath, he would apologize over and over again, but all of that fell on deaf ears.

I didn't know what he wanted with me. If he wanted to love me, or to fuck me. Arousal and love, was there a clear distinction between these two abstract concepts?

I hadn't a clue. With Etienne, the selfish creature mistook his lust towards me as a form of 'love.' To label that grotesque thing that he affectionately called 'love' love would be disgraceful towards those who honestly loved. Yet again, if love was the only way for me to get what I wanted, I could love, as superficially as they wanted.

For, during the first few weeks in this luxurious confinement, I rejected each and every gesture without hesitance. Back then, how could I stomach it? I, a grown man, with my own autonomy, was being treated like a feral, disobedient rottweiler that had torn up its master's favorite shoe. He restrained me in chains that a wild dog would be subjected to, admiring me with those sickening, loathsome eyes of his, always upturned in silent satisfaction. He enjoyed my vulnerability like how a cat relished in tearing apart mere mice. I would've ate my own intestines from inside out, rather than let that psychopath derive any sort of pleasure from my attachment to misery.