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My Boyfriend's Back chapter 3 (NSG sequel)
by Rebel Goddess (no login)
I disclaim.
Chapter 3
It was time for his fortnightly bath. Shawn loved it. It was the one time when the manacles came off. Arnie threw him into a room with a tub of warmish water, a lot of harsh soap and took off his manacles. An hour later, he would return, chain Shawn up again and return him to his cell.
Shawn stripped off his ragged T-shirt, and his jeans. They hadn’t given him any other clothes, and this was his once chance to rinse them out a bit before he returned to the drudgery of his cell. His chest was stronger than it had been. For all the voice had said, Shawn had spent his time, when not fantasising about his life in Salem, working out. Press ups, sit ups, lifting the iron frame of his bed, and attempting to wrench the chain out of the ring in the wall had done a lot for his muscles. More, now he was being given the chance to build up the rest of his body. Washboard abs, strong legs and the shoulders of a Titan were being developed around the already hard muscled Brady body. The tattoos on his skin rippled as he plunged himself into the water. He hoped the baths would be more frequent now that he was too run every morning, but he doubted it.
It was his one hour of partial freedom, something to be treasured and looked forward to. Just for a little while, he could pretend that he was home in Salem, sitting in his own bathtub, with his mother cooking downstairs, and his father playing with his baby brother. Shawn closed his eyes as he scrubbed his skin, thinking about his angel. The blonde hair and blue eyes were haunting him out of his dreams as well as when he slept. She had been so beautiful, so pure and innocent. She had been perfection personified. The water splashed around him. The room was a windowless box, larger than his ten by eight cell, but not big enough to provide any real sense of freedom. Shawn felt a little more hopeful. Perhaps, now that he was let out for runs, he would be able to break free from his prison. He wouldn’t try it the next day, but wait to earn their confidence and build up his own strength. Then he would reclaim his life and deal with his captors. They would regret the day they had kidnapped Shawn Douglas Brady.
Flashback
Shawn had woken in his hospital bed in pain. He looked at the clock and found it had been three hours since the nurse had been by. He had been incoherent for a while, not recognising his surroundings, and the doctor had realised that the pain killers Shawn had been taking for his gun shot wound and the ones he had been given for his other injuries were combined to a near deadly effect. The doctor hadn’t known his patient had been taking anything else, and it hadn’t been until Shawn had gone into a fit that he had realised something was wrong. The drugs were out of his system now, and Shawn was waiting for the questions to begin.
The dark haired nurse with the rose bud above her ear was smiling at him. She had brought him a bunch of flowers that had belonged to another patient who had left them behind when they checked out. They had been poppies, beautiful and scarlet red. Shawn smiled softly. They reminded him of the roses he had been going to give Belle, before he realised she was sleeping with Henry. The tears filled his eyes, but he pushed them away. He had no right to feel angry with her. He was the one who told her that they shouldn’t be together for another year. It was his fault the situation had arisen.
“Lovely, aren’t they?” The nurse was arranging the poppies in a vase.
“Yes,” Shawn’s throat hurt him as he spoke, and he reached out a shaking hand for a glass of water from the carafe on the table.
The nurse poured it for him and handed it to him. Shawn drank it thirstily, and smiled at the nurse.
“What’s your name?” his trademark grin flashed and she couldn’t help but smile back.
“Maggie.” She was blushing slightly.
“That’s a lovely name,” Shawn put the cup down and kept smiling.
“Can you tell me your name?” Maggie remembered what she had come in to the room to do.
“James Black.” Shawn said the first thing that came into his head. “James Harley Black.” He had thought of his motorbike, of his rebellious hero and of her as he spoke. James Dean and Belle Black gave him a name unrecognisable as his own. He had always hoped that Belle would change her name from Black to Brady, and it was strange to find that he was making the change himself.
“Good morning James,” Shawn smiled with a little effort. Maggie was being nice, and he was trying to be nice back. “How are you? Be honest, being a tough guy helps no one around here.”
Shawn flinched involuntarily at her accidental mention of his nickname. “Well, my shoulder is killing me, my chest hurts when I breathe and really don’t want to be here anymore.”
“You have to rest, James.” Maggie tucked the blankets in a bit tighter, unable not to notice the well defined muscles of her patient’s body. “You had dislocated your shoulder, but it was back in when you got here, so I’m not sure what happened to it otherwise. You broke a couple of ribs, and you’ve got some cuts and bruises along with a nasty concussion. I’ll be honest, it’ll hurt like Hell for a bit, but there’s no permanent damage.”
“So my basketball career isn’t over?” Shawn was trying to smile, but there was a horrible pain in his jaw when he moved it too much.
“You’ll be scoring baskets in no time. The doctor will be through soon.” Maggie finished fixing Shawn’s bed and rearranging the room a bit. “I called Salem General about your friend, the girl.” Maggie raised an eyebrow at Shawn’s abrupt reaction of sitting straight up in bed, no matter how much he was hurt by his ribs. “She your girlfriend or something?”
“No, she’s my best friend.” Shawn thought about Megan for a minute, and felt his chest tighten.
“OK, I believe you,” Maggie had smiled at the same time. “Millions wouldn’t.” She had chuckled with that, and the doctor had come in to see to Shawn’s wounds.
End of flashback
Perhaps if he hadn’t lied about his real name he would have been alright. His parents would have found him and he wouldn’t be having a bath in a steel tub washing the same clothes he had been wearing for three months. He dunked the T-shirt into the slightly dirty, soapy water, and watched it disintegrate slowly. The fragments of the shirt drifted in the water, and Shawn wondered briefly if the voice would give him another, or prefer him shirtless to make sure he was developing his muscles properly. He laughed at that, rather bitterly, thinking that the voice would poke and prod him like a horse to see if he was healthy and doing well. That was how he saw himself after that, a horse that had to get out. Perhaps the voice was his cowboy, controlling the wild creature as well as the cattle of his employees. Shawn wouldn’t let himself be tamed.
Abruptly, Shawn brought his head up and turned to see not Arnie but another one of the voice’s henchmen bringing the manacles back to chain him again. The gun wasn’t cocked, but the henchman obviously hadn’t realised. He wasn’t paying much attention. Suddenly, the taste of freedom he had in the bathroom went to Shawn’s head. Forgetting the danger from the gun, he slammed the guy to the wall, lifting up the manacles and quickly clicking them into place. Then Shawn ran. He was out of the door and down the corridor in seconds. He had had the foresight to grab the gun, and when he saw the first guard who was trying to stop him, he lifted it and pointed, cocking it as he moved.
“I’ll shoot you, don’t think that I won’t. It’s you bastards that have kept me locked up here for three months and don’t think that I don’t know that it was you that beat me that night. I have no qualms about killing you. You’re less than an animal.” Shawn was snarling at the guard, who cowered before him.
Flashback
Shawn had lain in the dark for ten days, seeing only the voice occasionally and Arnie when he came in to feed him. That night it was different. The manacles that held him to the wall were looser, and as he struggled, it came to him that he might escape. With a mighty effort that nearly killed him because of the pain in his ribs, Shawn ripped away the ring that bound him to the wall. He was free, in a sense. He went to work on the door, and found that they hadn’t locked it properly, probably mislead by his wounded bird act. Shawn had pretended to be very badly hurt when he arrived to avoid the violence that would have been doled out to him otherwise. Now, he opened the door with ease, trying to stop his chains from clanking and found himself in an empty stone corridor, with high bright ceiling lights showing him the way. He was at the end of it, so there was no question where he would go. There was nowhere to hide, so he hurried as quickly as he could, pressing himself against the wall.
He had reached the end of the corridor and suddenly there were four guards standing in front of him. They had happened on him so suddenly that none of them had time to react. Shawn tried to run past them, but the third guard back caught him by the shirt, and with a horrible smile, had dragged him back. The guards were smiling nastily, pleased at their chance for violence. Shawn tried to fight back, but the second guard threw a punch to his ribs that doubled him over in pain.
End of flashback
What had followed was one of the worst beatings the guard had ever given. Arnie had actually taken pity on him when he found the boy curled into a ball in the corner of his cell, a weltering mass of bruises, cuts and suffering from the abuses of his body.
Shawn hit the guard around the back of the head with the butt of the gun. He didn’t want blood on his hands just yet. The gunshot would have brought more guards, anyway. Flying down corridor after corridor, Shawn remembered being dragged through it, memorising every twist an turn of the way. He found himself by the door of the outside world anxious minutes after he left the guard unconscious.
The dark, just before dawn sky had never looked more beautiful to Shawn. Taking a deep breath, he began to run. He found Arnie’s cart and hot wired it. Aiming at the gate, he pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor and felt the cart lurch under him. It was going quite fast when it hit the gate, punching at it heavily. The padlock and chain shook but did not break, but the hinges of the gate did. Bursting through, Shawn leapt out of the cart and made a run for the forest. He reached panting, but didn’t stop. He had to keep going. The further he made it before he collapsed, the better his chances were.
Shawn wasn’t afraid of the dark. The dark can’t harm you, and he had lain in pitch blackness every night for three months. His eyes could see better now in it than ever before. He was afraid of what was in the dark, though. The gun couldn’t have many bullets in it, and he could hear the unmistakable cry of wolves in the woods around him. They were coming closer and closer, so Shawn kept catching glimpses of grey mottled fur in the frosted bushes. Shawn felt the bitter wind bite into his bare skin, and wished he had had the sense to take the guard’s clothes as well as his gun. He couldn’t stop running, his feet pounding against the frozen earth, but with a slow dawning horror, he realised that he wouldn’t live if he didn’t find shelter soon, or unless they dragged him back to the compound to the warmth and security of his cell. It would have made him more determined if there was any sign of hope, but after two hours of running, his cross bouncing heavily across his chest and his feet in their heavy boots ripping into the frozen ground, he knew that wherever he was, friendly people weren’t. He was lost in a place he had no knowledge of. He didn’t even know if he had been running in the right direction.
His breath was coming in shallow pants, his chest heaved and he collapsed against a tree. His only chance was to be found. He couldn’t go any further, not without collapsing from exhaustion, but now he faced death from hypothermia. He decided coldly drifting off might be better, and his tired body agreed. Running was no longer an option. Shawn’s cold body was ignoring him, going blue and numb, but his memory was still working well.
Flashback
For a day he lay in the hospital bed, recovering and asking after Megan. Again and again he heard the same words, ‘no news, but soon’. It gave him time to think things through. He decided that he wouldn’t return to Salem, but join the Merchant Marines. Once that was done, he would call his parents to tell them he was safe. He was eighteen and they couldn’t drag him back from that. Smiling a little, Shawn climbed out of bed. The doctor hadn’t said he could go, but he thought he might go visit New York to recover. He was missing Rosa and all of his other friends there. It would be his safe haven.
End of flashback
Even as he slowly froze to death, Shawn could still reprimand himself for being so stupid. He shouldn’t have thought that he would get away that easily, that life would be that simple. If he had stayed in the hospital, there would have been people to protect him, keep him safe. He was so idiotic as to think that by leaving Salem he would leave the people of Salem too. The voice had shown him different.
Flashback
Shawn signed his release papers and walked out of the hospital. He was free. Glancing across the street, he saw the bus station and figured it was his best chance. He looked both ways before he crossed, and was paying attention. That was the part that didn’t make sense later. How could he not have noticed the car? He started to walk across the road, but as he reached the middle, a black car with dark tinted windows came flying out of nowhere. He felt his still aching body be thrown across the hood and fall back down. Two men jumped out, and, as he lay groaning on the ground, pulled a bag over his head and heaved him into the back.
That hurt his ribs, and in his half conscious state, Shawn couldn’t help but give a little groan. Then there had been the sharp stab of a needle in his arm and the world went dark.
End of flashback
That was barely the beginning of the nightmare. He had woken aboard a plane, and after that, he had no idea where he was. Every piece of evidence that could have led his family to him, the police to him, was systematically destroyed. His efforts to leave messages were rewarded with blows and the one time he pulled away from his attackers and succeeded in getting out of the car, they were in a wilderness with no help in sight. Shawn had long since accepted the idea that if he was to escape it would be on his own, and now he was wishing he hadn’t escaped at all.
His breath was shallower than it had been, and he was losing consciousness. He fought to stay awake, alive, but it was hard. The world began to become darker, and Shawn knew he was dying. Kitty’s image appeared behind his eyes, willing him to live, but he could not. The cold was too much. Then another figure joined Kitty, his blonde angel, his beautiful creature beyond compare, and Shawn twisted his body into a standing position. It hurt terribly. He started to walk, staggering through the woods. He didn’t know where he was going, but he thought he saw the wolves in the bushes, and that pushed him on.
It felt like hours of endless toil when he found the clearing. He had only made it because Kitty and the angel had screamed at him, called for him, coaxed and encouraged him to take one more step each time he tried to stop. To stop was to truly die. He saw light, not the dawn light, but man’s light and with a final cry of pain, fell to the ground.
The light in Shawn’s eyes was darkening as the voice’s henchmen dragged him to the truck. They had been searching for hours, and were surprised to find him still alive. The alarm had been raised when the guard had been changed over, and now the voice was desperately looking for the newest subject of the experiment. Shawn didn’t, couldn’t, care any more, and was grateful for the warmth the truck and the blanket gave him. He buried himself in it and forgot everything as the warmth slowly seeped back into his body. He was alive, that was all that mattered, and he was alive thanks to his Kitty and his angel. He would have to thank them one day, if he lived that long. In the darkness of the back of the truck, with the blanket wrapped firmly around his blue tinged shoulders, Shawn was beginning to wonder if he would. There were things he couldn’t control, and that could kill him. Then he thought of his girls, and was strong again.