sTOCKHOLM SYNDROMe

It was the humiliation that still destroys me slowly, like raw virulent sewage. Like when I was raped, impossibly long ago, impossibly young, and the utter submission I enjoyed despite not wanting it, that bothered me the most.

Not the dull skull ache of being pistol whipped with a loaded gun.

The gun boring into my forehead, was my entire world, past memories, future bullshit, nothing. I must worship the hand on the trigger to survive.

I wanted to submit, and felt gratitude even, that the trigger wasn’t being pulled. That my master in this eternal moment, deemed me worthy to breath. Such was the cling, the pull of life. Life was everything. Survival novels don't come close to expressing the primal truth of this feeling.

His veins bulged like frozen plex plumbing.

“ You can fuck her all you want, but if I don’t get every dime in the next 24 hours, you are going to experience castration.”

I knew he wasn’t bluffing. I knew who Nina’s boyfriend was. Ofcourse, Nina and I never “fucked”. She looked at me like a dog she loved. Never more. Not with that hot, hateful lust she looked at Nick Conte with. Now he had that same look on me. The thrill of my submission was indeed sexual on some level for Nick. I felt it too. And it made me hate myself FAR more than him.

The critical mass of this self loathing finally calibrated appropriately; he would die for making me feel this way. I looked around hungrily for a way. Desparately searching, but focused to the atoms edge on my survival.

My moment arrived quantum fast. His goon, walking in now, reeking of cheap cigar and cologne. Barely restraining a near feral, sore covered German Sheppard on a lease. A German Sheppard with a taste for male anatomy. A pooch that Nina knew, and much more importantly, gracefully, miraculously, knew and shared, the attack command it lived for....

It's only release and revenge on a species it loathed, a species commited to beating and humiliatiing and starving him. Today he would starve no more... It would eat my nuts... Jesus CHRIST.

She had cried to me, vomiting the details of how she learned the command, now burned in me. Details invloving guts unwinding out of a poor saps stomach as the dog ran...

" Bart, You have three seconds. one...."

"WUTHRAD!!!!"

The pooch came right at me, at my command, impossibly fast. At the same moment a started Nick turned and fired on the pooch. This caused instant cognitive dissonance on his goon, and precious seconds for me. I used them to get my ass up and "run", shackled at the ankles.

They were fast behind me, but impossibly, miraculously, a wrestling match amongst lowlifes fueled by shock, greif and sentimental wrath gave me the time I needed.

I grabbed the Little Black Book, Nick's sweaty gym log, where the combination to the lock around my ankles was mercilously notated. As they grappled I furiously searched. And found it. In the back. At the end.

I released my self and ran to his pickup, keys inside.

A rock went through the window, and I saw that Nick and his goon suddenly got their shit together and back on point. Back in the zone!!

And I broke into a cold sweat when I saw their faces. It was the same look my father had killing cockroaches.

Ofcourse, impossibly cliche, the truck woudn't start. I added just a fraction of gas. Now Nick's hand was on my throat, even as the broken side door glass cut the largest incision I've ever seen, to the muscle, in his forearm.

An impossibly loud and tactile THUMP as I ran him and a goon over, bone sticking out of his shoulder. I drove to Nina. Only after driving over them exactly 10 times.

The pop and cracks of bones, felt through the seat even, impossibly detailed, still haunt me to this day.

My eternal brass ring Nina. Just out of reach . I was slowly suffocating. My larynx partially crushed.

A world of pain.

I told her everything, by texting her even as she was in front of me. My throat on fire, the horrible feeling of suffocation, like a tie too tight. She loved me like a mother loves her still born. She slapped me and asked me where I hid the money. I told her. She gave me half to leave town with. Thats the story. Im a grimy theif. Of the one I love.

Endangering her to monsters. Goons. Lowlives.

That's what I am, a weak parasite. what else could I be after being violated in the flower of my youth.

Something on this planet loves me. My throat is fixed, and I'm on my way to see Nick's people to work out a payment plan. They will likely kill me, but not her.

And I hate myself, but not enough shirk my duty and pull through this agony of a life for her. Maybe find the courage to be more than I feel I am.

For her.

THE END