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My Boyfriend's Back chapter 4 (NSG sequel)
by Rebel Goddess (no login)
For Tina (Tinsel Fairy of Feedback). & Anon, impatiently calling from across the web.
I disclaim.
Chapter 4 - Otherwise known as this is when things get really weird.
Shawn woke up hours later, cold to the marrow of his bones and shivering. The manacles around his wrists and ankles were tighter than ever and the chain holding him to the wall allowed him to lie on his bed or use the toilet, but not even come close to the door. Shawn hadn’t known anyone could feel so cold without being dead, and wondered briefly if he was in Hell.
“Ah, Mr Brady, I see you have decided to rejoin us.” He certainly had the company of Satan. “Interesting night, wasn’t it? May I advise that next time you try to escape you take some clothing and food with you. It was really quite foolish, brave but foolish, to think you could escape me so easily.”
“Could you do a better job?” Shawn had just enough energy to be defiant.
“I think possibly you might, very soon. Arnie, fetch the machine.” The voice was smiling evilly. Shawn internally groaned, he didn’t think he could face another session with that tormenting device. He was too tired, too weak, and too far gone to hold on this time. May be the voice had noticed, and that was why he was doing it now, before the boy had a chance to recover the strength to resist. The voice was sadistic enough for that.
The pain grew more intense as the electricity surged through him. Shawn knew that there was only way he would survive with his mind intact. He let go, and slipped into his meadow. He found it as he had left it before, with the yellow flowers in full bloom. There she stood. His beautiful angel, all blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. She didn’t speak, but she held out her hand to him, waiting for him to come to her. The meadow was huge, but now Shawn could see a wood nearby, not like the forest outside the compound but one full of bluebells. He heard a stream and listened to the birds as they twittered in the trees. He took his angel by the hand, and her touch gave him the sensation of touching something that was at one and the same time, more real than anything else while not actually being there. He could feel things happening in his brain, connections being forged, information pouring in, but he ignored the feeling. He was with his pretty girl, his angel.
They were running playfully, the bright sunlight bouncing off her hair and her smile lighting his heart. The pain that his body underwent could not be felt in their place, it was no more real than the voice’s compassion. She pressed her finger to her lips, and after their laughter there was silence. The world exploded in a flash of blinding light and Shawn felt himself back in his cell, alone, with a killer headache.
He tried to remember what had just happened and found all sorts of new memories flood into his mind. Information that hadn’t been there before filled the empty spaces of his brain. He suddenly had the equivalent of the first three years of medical school training and five years as a Navy Seal in his head. He shook his long brown locks out of his face and stared into the darkness. The chains were tighter, true, but another session like that and he would make it out of the compound without a problem. Shawn smiled to himself. The voice was giving the very means of its destruction to him, and all he had to do was survive to use them. He could do that, he had to do that. The voice would pay, and Shawn would be the one making it.
Belle woke in her room alone, and felt miserable. She was missing Shawn more by the day, and the fact that she had no idea where he was didn’t help. At least when he had been at boarding school, she knew nothing too awful could have happened to him or his parents and the rest of Salem would have known. It was the not knowing that hurt the most. She thought enviously of the past, even of the summer of the last year when she had at least known he was alive and well. Now, sometimes, she doubted even that.
Her sleep had been disturbed that night by dreams of wild forests, wolves and pain. Belle was on her knees praying that Shawn was all right by the end. They weren’t her dreams, she was sure, but visions from him, of what he was going through, and that was terrifying.
Life was bad enough without Shawn, but Henry was making it worse. He didn’t seem able to take no for an answer. Everyday he bombarded her with flowers and gifts, begging her to go out with him. Belle couldn’t even consider going out with any boy while she was unsure of Shawn, much less the odious wretch Henry who had once molested her in a hall way until Shawn had seen fit to punch him.
Dragging her feet out of bed and down into the kitchen, Belle called for her mother and Brady, and was disappointed when neither appeared. Marlena had returned to her psychiatric practice, and Brady was at college probably, but Belle felt even lonelier without them there. The mailman delivered another load of letters and cards from Henry, but Belle didn’t even bother to read them, dumping them straight into the recycling. She had once written a reply, but Henry had just taken it as encouragement and gone around the town boasting that Belle and he were exchanging love tokens. No one had believed him, and Brady had gone after him for that, but it had made no difference. He backed off for perhaps three hours and was then back at it.
Tiredly, Belle flipped through the remaining mail, and found a letter marked Korea. Opening it more excitedly, she briefly wondered if Shawn had made it into the Merchant Marines and been posted there. She was disappointed. The letter was from Megan, who was recuperating at her father’s barracks, at his insistence, after the motorbike accident with Shawn that had left her with three broken ribs and a leg in plaster. She hadn’t heard from Shawn either, and was asking for news.
Belle knew that she wasn’t with him, but she had hoped she would know where he was. Megan had been closer to Shawn than she had recently, even if she didn’t know about JT’s parentage. Fighting back the tears, Belle folded the letter up and stuck it in her bag, before leaving the kitchen to get herself ready for another day at college. She wasn’t moving on emotionally, but she was allowing the rest of her life to carry her into the future. Shawn would be proud, she hoped, and then wept harder.
Shawn’s body was a sweltering mass of bruises. He had long forgotten what it was like not to ache from the last beating of the machine and the voice’s assistants. For once, after months of shivering in the dark, his cell was warm, swelteringly hot even. It felt good to finally be warm, and not feel ice encrusting the tips of his hair. He smiled into the darkness, knowing the voice would be there soon. It had been days since his last escape attempt, when he had run out of the bathroom, and he thought it might be time to shake things up again. Now he had the knowledge of a Navy SEAL, the physical fitness as well, and the medical knowledge of a specialist surgeon. The only thing holding him in his cell was his only determination that he would not become a killer.
Arnie swung the door open tentatively, and seeing Shawn slumped in the corner, he edged inwards. The boy had already displayed an unnerving ability to be able to stretch further out of his chains than most people realised, and he was the only one Arnie had ever known not to be sent mad by the machine. Then again, perhaps the machine had done its work and Shawn was mad, and it was his insanity that kept him alive, hidden beneath a frosty veneer of defiance and indifference. He might be covering, and everyone knew that no one was so strong as a truly mad man. Arnie began to doubt his boss’s orders, and hurried as he put the food down in front of the shaggy creature. He spilt the water, swearing as he did so, and for the first time, Shawn addressed him.
“Leave it. It can only make this pit cleaner.” Arnie felt somewhat reassured that he wasn’t mad, but something about the way he said those words struck fear into his heart.
“I’ll fetch you some more.” Arnie bustled out of the room, and Shawn watched him leave from under matted locks of brown hair.
Slipping out of his chains, which hung loosely on his wrists and ankles since he had jimmied them open an hour before, Shawn prepared himself to run. The sweltering heat was too much for him. He needed that water. He wouldn’t kill Arnie, he could never face Kitty or his angel with a death on his hands, but he would steal from him. He had stolen before, though he had technically termed it ‘borrowing’ his father’s motorcycle, and this was little different. He was still defying the authority that controlled his life, but this time the authority would do more to him than ground him for it. Shawn doubted he would be killed. He was now too valuable for that, but he might well be beaten to within an inch of his life. He wouldn’t think about that, though. That wasn’t important. What was important was getting out and staying out. Forever.
Arnie came back in to the dark cell, the keys of every door in the compound jangling at his belt, and within a moment he was on the floor. Shawn had struck him on a pressure point, and his inert body was now lying messily on the damp floor. Taking the keys, as much of the warm clothes as he could and Arnie’s thick boots, Shawn ran from the cell that was not so much home as his torture rack. He was nearly there.
Diving down another corridor, he opened a door he knew opened a maintenance closet. It was full of mops and brooms, but more importantly, at the back, there was a ventilation shaft. Unscrewing it hastily with Arnie’s Swiss army knife, Shawn was through in a moment. He pulled himself deeper into it as the door opened and one of the guards crept in for a quiet smoke. Shawn briefly considered knocking him out before he went on his way, but decided against it. Pulling himself along on red raw arms, Shawn knew he didn’t have long. He was nearly there, so close that he could taste the freedom in the air.
“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” He sang to himself quietly, realising the truth for himself in the words. There was comfort in listening to his own voice. It was more throaty that it had been, but it still belonged to the boy he had been so long ago, the boy he had almost forgotten as he became the man he was that day.
There was light shining in front of him, and he realised it was the security light flashing around in the yard. It was blissful to him that he was nearly there. Dragging himself for the last few inches, feeling the metal bite into his flesh, Shawn found himself in the open air. It filled his heart with a feeling of joy and his lungs were full of the cleanness of the air and the sweetness of hearing birdsong.
Nearly laughing, Shawn ran for the gate, scrambling over it with surprising ease, and found himself at the edge of the forest. He heard nothing from behind him, knowing that Arnie wouldn’t have been discovered so soon, and under the cover of the blackness of the night, Shawn vanished like a shadow into the forest. He didn’t know where he was, but he guided himself by the stars and thought of his childhood on the Fancy Face, and his return from the ocean to the world of Salem, and Belle. There were painful memories wrapped up with her, but sweet ones too. She was like Megan that way. There were things you shouldn’t think of, not even when you were alone in the forest, and there were things you had to remember no matter what happened because they were too important to forget. Kitty’s face was one of those things, but so was the way JT smiled when you tickled his stomach, his mother’s laugh, his father’s tattoos and stories about the Merchant Marines, the basketball games he, Philip, Brady and Jason had played, Megan’s expression whenever she was really mad and was about to stomp someone, Belle… Pulling himself abruptly out of his reverie, Shawn shook his head. There was no use in thinking about her. Kitty was the girl he was fighting to return to, not Belle. Belle didn’t want him anymore. Kitty would be his friend forever.
Words from a poem he had read drifted through his mind, and Shawn thought about everything that had happened to him and wondered where it had all gone so wrong. It reminded him of Belle, but that didn’t matter. It felt right.
The Fight
In this darkness that is my life you are my only light
You're the light that shines so brightly in heart and soul
Even when the darkness is so overwhelming you stick by me and shine a light so I can see
I feel as if I'm falling and you're the only one who can save me
All my life I've fought the darkness
It's so hard to fight
The darkness is like quicksand
If you fight alone with no light you get deeper and deeper in and you can't get out
Now the light is fading fast
You've fought so hard for me that I've driven you into the darkness
If only I could be your light then we could fight together
I've realised that I love you and that you love me
Now we are each others light
As we fight we embrace our love
This is our journey
(Poem by the delightful M.)
The smell of the trees was thick in the air, and Shawn thought he could hear a wolf pack howling on the distant mountain. The darkness was a cloak, a cover for his escape, and he had to use it. He hadn’t seen real sunlight in months, his windowless cell had seen to that, and his eyes were as well adjusted to the dark as they had ever been to the world of light. He did not trip or falter as he ran, keeping up a steady pace, but he wouldn’t be able to even walk for much longer. Suddenly, a light gleamed in front of him, and he saw a house. Thanking God and his angel, Shawn threw himself towards it, feeling the last of his fading strength about to fail him. Abrupt pains in his chest told him that he would die if he didn’t reach the house, and it was in agony that he made the last few steps to the door of the wood cabin.
He bashed his fist against the door a few times, and collapsed in the snow. Life or death was no longer up to him, but whoever lived within the cabin. He could do no more, and could only pray it was enough. There was no life left in his body, and it was only by a supreme effort that he had come so far. Closing his eyes, the darkness encompassed his mind and he lost consciousness.