Purgatory Games, Part Two

i. 

JT crept through the liquid darkness. Every muscle in his body stood out as he moved through the firelight of the torches. His oiled body glowed softly in the orange, flickering light. Up ahead, he heard the low growl of an animal. Fear slithered down his spine, spreading through him with cold fingers. 

Every corner JT turned held the promise of danger. The low animal growl echoed, bouncing off the walls, making it impossible to know where the sound was coming from. 

All around him JT heard the sound of murmuring men. Only the richest of the rich could afford seats to watch The Maze in person. JT knew that millions of people were glued to their televisions across the country and around the world, watching The Maze, the Super bowl of the Gladiator Games.

JT already battled past the three other gladiators in the maze. All he had to do was find his way out and he’d be this year’s championship winner. The cat growled again in the darkness up ahead. The audience held its breath. From their vantage point above the maze, they saw both JT and the wild cat that was supposed to be drugged, for show only. 

JT knew better. He turned the corner, realizing too late that the wild scent of the cat was suddenly all around him. Up ahead, not two feet away JT saw the feral gleam of yellow eyes. In a massive leap of sleek muscle and deadly claws, the black Panther launched itself at him. 

JT covered his face, backed away, and tripped over his own feet. Suddenly the hot flesh of the animal knocked him over and a loud buzzer was going off insistently, blending with the roar of the crowd.

JT shot up in his bed so fast he nearly hit his head on the top bunk. He wrestled free of the thin grey blanket wrapped around him in a tangle. The morning buzzer that woke the prisoners bleated again, filling the morning with ugly sound.

Kyle, who was reaching for his jeans, looked back at JT.

“You ok? You were mumbling and moaning,” Kyle said.

“Yeah?” JT said. “Come here baby.”

Kyle thought JT would push him to his knees between his legs like he did some mornings. But JT pulled him into bed with him, and wrapped his big arms around Kyle. He ran his hands slowly up and down Kyle’s ass, pressing a finger gently into the crack of Kyle’s ass. Kyle pushed back against him.

“You’re a good bitch,” JT whispered into Kyle’s ear, trailing his calloused fingers through Kyle’s silky brown hair.

Kyle twisted around in JT’s big arms so he was facing JT. The boy ran his hands gently over JT’s hard muscled chest. His skin was dark and smooth as black velvet.

“What’s wrong?” Kyle said.

“What do you mean boy?”

“I don’t know. You always have this worried look on your face,” Kyle said.

“We ain’t exactly at Club Med,” JT said, pushing Kyle to the wall and getting up.

“But how come - ”

“Get dressed,” JT said, turning his back on Kyle.

Kyle sat up on the edge of the bed. “But why are you so - ”

JT turned back to Kyle and grabbed Kyle’s hair, pulling his head back roughly. “Learn to do what I say, boy,” JT said quietly, and let go.

“Sorry,” Kyle said, dropping it. He didn’t want JT pissed off first thing in the morning.

ii.

Kyle liked the cool shadows of the prison library. Up here on the second floor, shelving books, he was in his own world. He thought back on the two months that had gone by since JT and Tyrone had dueled over him. Kyle knew that the fight had upset some delicate balance. 

Before Kyle, there had been an uneasy peace between JT and Tyrone. Calvin had told him that much. Now, JT and Tyrone weren’t exactly enemies. They were more like hostile Kings, each with their own territories. From the little Calvin would tell him, Kyle understood that as long as JT and Tyrone stayed out of each other’s turf, there wouldn’t be trouble. 

JT talked to Kyle about nearly anything, except that. The one time that Kyle had pressed him on it, JT had slapped him hard and threatened to belt him. Kyle knew it was a forbidden topic. That’s why he’d let it go this morning. When Kyle asked Calvin about it, he refused to answer any of Kyle’s questions. Which left Kyle wondering. What was the big secret in Purgatory?

Kyle grabbed his pack of smokes from a shelf and headed for the door on this floor. He wouldn’t smoke in the stacks. Bad for the books. Kyle used an old volume of Aquinas to prop the door open. It was quiet in this part of the prison. The library was separated from the main buildings. Kyle smoked, leaning against the cinderblock wall, thinking about all the things JT wouldn’t tell him.

The screams penetrated Kyle’s thoughts with the clarity of a cold stiletto to his heart. They stopped for a moment, then started again. Kyle knew where they were coming from. The basement. JT took him down there to fuck him sometimes. When Kyle asked about the screams, JT told him to shut up and close his ears. 

The screams came again and this time Kyle noticed the metal grill in the floor next to his feet. There must be a stairway to the basement nearby. This was his chance to find out what the hell went on down there.

Kyle didn’t have to go far to find the heavy iron door that led to stone stairs. He looked back at the door to the library. The door was still propped open, letting a narrow shaft of light escape. JT had warned Kyle about going down there alone.

JT would never know. Kyle would be right back. He just wanted a quick look.

Kyle swung the heavy door open and closed it behind him. Mr. Derron, one of the prison guards, came around the corner just in time to see Kyle disappearing through the iron door. He thought it was strange the boy would go down there by himself, but he shrugged it off. Maybe he was meeting JT for a quick fuck.

Kyle followed the steps that twisted down a narrow stone throat, until he came to another door that stood open. The screams echoed again, much louder down here, making Kyle realize that more than one person was screaming. The sounds were coming from different places. Kyle looked back at the door behind him at the top of the stairs and nearly went back up. 

Suddenly the screams came again from his left, a narrow pause, then they came from his right. Unmindful of the old saying about curiosity and the cat, Kyle shrugged, and went left.

Naked yellow bulbs barely shed enough light for Kyle to see the black stone walls surrounding him. The darkness was alive with the sound of heavy wheels of some kind rolling along the uneven cobblestone floor. What the hell? Supplies were delivered up in the main prison. 

Kyle passed a big stone room brightly lit where men, big and muscled like gladiators worked shirtless, their hard bodies dripping with sweat, lifting big boxes, stacking them onto carts that were labeled with city names like “New York”, “Port Huron”, “Los Angeles”. Other men rolled the carts away, making the noises Kyle had heard earlier. Kyle drew a little closer, hidden in the dark shadows of the arched doorway. His jaw just about dropped when he saw what filled the boxes on the ground, waiting to be sealed up and loaded onto carts.

Last time Kyle had been in a store, ugly bruised apples the size of his fist had sold for eight dollars a pound. Other fruit, like oranges, were downright impossible to get. 

The boxes in the room were filled to overflowing with a fortune worth of oranges, apples, grapes, tangerines and one the most expensive black market item, white sugar. Other boxes were loaded with chocolate bars and pastries. Those boxes of chocolate alone were worth their weight in gold. Nobody could afford the price of chocolate with the war on. And there was hardly any sugar around anywhere. Kyle couldn’t believe his eyes. What the hell was going on in Purgatory? 

The screams came again, startling Kyle. He’d nearly forgotten what brought him down here. He knew he’d been gone from the library too long. Seeing all that black market shit had soured his curiosity. Whatever was going on down here, he didn’t need to know about it.

Kyle turned to go back the way he had come, but the heavy sound of a rumbling cart heading his way stopped him dead in his tracks. He waited for the right moment, then darted across the wide doorway, stopping on the other side and looking back to make sure no one had seen him. 

He walked down the dark corridor, away from the door that led back up to the library. Men with carts were heading that way with their cargo. 

The screams came again, surprisingly close this time, bringing Kyle up short. He didn’t care who was screaming anymore. He had to get back to the library. If JT found out Kyle had come down here alone, he’d be the one screaming. 

He needed to get back upstairs. Kyle followed the narrow twisting corridors, searching for a door that led to a stairway, but all he passed were solid brick walls unbroken by doorways of any kind. 

Kyle rounded a hairpin twist in the stone corridor and suddenly he knew who was screaming and why. He didn’t want to know, but it was too late for that, wasn’t it? 

The corridor ended in a wall. The screamer was pinned to the stone wall by a black man, who Kyle thought he’d seen in the yard training with the gladiators. The screamer was a boy about Kyle’s age. His jeans lay on the floor in shreds. The man holding him against the wall was fucking the boy’s ass hard. 

“Yeah bitch,” the man said, pumping into the boy’s ass. “That’s it scream for us.”

“Fuck that bitch,” the other man said. “Fuck his little ass real hard.”

Shit. Kyle knew he would be in real trouble if the men turned and saw him. As quietly as he could, he backed away, praying. If they turned around, there was nowhere to hide. Only the turn in the corridor would hide Kyle from them. Kyle was so focused on the men in front of him that he didn’t think to look behind him.

“Who the fuck are you boy?” a deep voice said behind Kyle.

Kyle whirled around, his heart knocking in his chest. He was trapped between the two men in front of him and the man behind him. Kyle tried to inch past the man, but the man’s hand shot out and grabbed Kyle’s thin t-shirt.

“Where you going bitch?” the man said.

The man who’d been watching his friend fuck the boy, turned around.

“You brought us another bitch, Desmond?” he said.

“I found him,” Desmond said, pulling Kyle’s shirt harder.

The boy’s screams surrounded Kyle, making him wish he’d never left the fucking library. He was in real deep shit here. 

Kyle said what JT had told him to say if this ever happened to him. “I’m JT’s bitch,” he said.

The men looked at each other. For a moment, blind hope leapt in Kyle. He’d count himself lucky to get out of this with a hard belting from JT.

“Yeah?” Desmond said. “Well this is Tyrone’s turf boy. That means you’re our bitch.”

Oh fuck. Kyle tried to twist away, praying to every saint he knew. His shirt ripped, leaving a ragged hole across the top, and Kyle was free. He hauled ass down the dark corridor, hearing the men hard on his heels.

Endless dark stone walls flashed by. Kyle followed anonymous twists and turns in the darkness, becoming hopelessly lost. At every turn, he heard the men behind him. Finally, he came to a deserted cell, and dodged in there. He watched the men run by. 

Kyle leaned over on his knees, breathing hard. How the fuck would he get out of here? He leaned back against the wall, wishing he’d paid more attention in church. Holy Mary, Mother of God, hear us now in our hour of need. Is that how it went? 

Too late, Kyle heard the men coming back. They were only feet away from the cell by the time Kyle realized they’d crept back in near silence. Shit. Now what? He’d never make it past them.

“Hey,” he heard a voice say. “Here’s the bitch.”

The three men came into the cell, closing a tight half circle around Kyle. With his back pressed against the wall and the three men between him and the only door, one thought pounded through Kyle’s mind over and over with terrifying clarity – I’m fucked. Oh God, I’m fucked.

A loud scream echoed down the deserted stone corridor. The three men facing Kyle acted as if they heard nothing. 

“What you doing down here?” the man closest to Kyle said. 

No excuse, Kyle thought, just stupid. “I heard screaming,” he said 

High pitched screams of torment twisted wildly through the darkness again, completely unnerving Kyle. 

“Screaming?” the man in front of Kyle said. “I don’t hear nothing. You hear something Desmond?”

Desmond was dark as midnight with muscles so hard he looked like stone come to life. He shrugged his big shoulders, the movement of a giant.

“All I hear is a bitch getting fucked,” Desmond said, looking into Kyle’s terrified eyes and rubbing his bulging crotch.

“Yeah,” the man on Kyle’s right said. “Sounds like some bitch’s gettin’ it up the ass. Real hard.”

Desmond hooked a giant finger into Kyle’s jeans and pulled hard. The worn denim ripped with a loud, ugly sound.