Horizon F/X - Chapter 46 - Part 5

“Hey, what’s this?”

“Shine your flashlight over here, jerk face.”

Tim stirred, startled to realize it was completely dark as he shaded his eyes from the bright beam of the flashlight, felt the dampened chill of his skin.

“What’s that marking there?”

“Can’t tell. It’s all blurry from the rain.”

“Let me try.” A third voice.

Tim felt a finger tracing roughly across his ass.

“Ten, no, tem . . . temporarily vacant.”

“Oh yeah, and then . . . uh . . . ”

“Please . . . ”

“Please . . . occupy as . . .”

“Hah! Temporarily vacant. Please occupy as needed!”

A chorus of harsh laughter.

Tim stirred, remembering Dominic and Anthony doing something to his butt, remembering that humiliating time when the other monks had graffitied his naked body. Cartoon lightbulb image flashing over his head — finally he understood what Dominic and Anthony had written back there to shape this whole day.

“Occupy as needed. That’s pretty funny. Think he’s only for the suits?”

“I don’t know. You see any suits right now?”

“Let’s take him. Them toilets’ll wait.”

So Tim found himself roughed up by the four janitors, dutifully donning condoms but stingy with the lube, two of them holding him in an awkward, contorted position for their fellows and then switching before dropping his exhausted carcass back to the flagstones.

Half dozing, he watched sections of light come on and then go off again as they cleaned their way through the deserted building.

* * *

The poking was insistent. Tim knew if must be Lauds and he had to wake up, check the slip of paper from the Torture Fairy, but he simply couldn’t do it. And couldn’t believe how cold his cell had gotten overnight. Then a dousing of water roused him and he realized he was actually chained in the courtyard, the rain still coming down, the rumbling sound of an engine nearby.

“Shit! This one’s a mess.”

“Still alive?”

“Yeah, I guess. Let’s get it over to the Institute.”

Fingers fumbled against his throat as the chain was finally released. Stretching, Tim rubbed at his neck. The next thing he knew, he was being hoisted into the air by a metal claw that scooped him up bodily and held him, swaying, over the courtyard. With a creaking sound, it ratcheted over and then suddenly dropped him. He landed with a metallic clang and found himself sprawled on the floor of a barred cage. Someone clicked the door shut. More creaking as the cage was lifted into the air and moved slowly away from the administration building, dangling from the end of a hook on something like a front-end loader.

He crouched in the cage, the metal grid on the bottom harsh against his feet. Away from the building, it was dark and he caught only an occasional image along the roadway from the lights of the tractor.

Fifteen, twenty minutes or so and the tractor was approaching another building, lit only by a few exterior security lights. The loader maneuvered around the back to a dock area and, with a series of jolting creaks, lowered him, cage and all, onto the deck.

“Now what?” one of the men asked over the drone of the engine.

“Nothing,” said the driver.

“We just leave it out here?”

“Yup. Our part’s done. They’ll probably come out for it in the morning.”

“Okay.” A pause. “So do you think these, you know, would be more anxious if they knew tomorrow they were gonna be made into sausage?”

And with that, the engine sound diminished, taking most of the light with it.

Stunned, Tim stared after the departing tractor. The guy had been kidding, right?

Then, face pressed to the bars, he tried to figure out where he was. Still quite overcast, no moon. He could see only a few crates stacked near him and the shape of a big garage or warehouse door. Part of the cage was under the eaves, but the rain was still coming down. Finally, Tim huddled himself into a ball on the barred floor, trying to keep himself warm. The guy had said morning. Nothing to do but wait.