Chapter 11 - Abednego

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Sunday, September 24, 2000

“What are you doing?”

Abednego’s brothers had gotten him into trouble before. They’d gotten him hurt before. Once, Shadrach had almost gotten him killed. And more than once, Meshach had nearly killed him.

None of that, not one bit of it, except possibly the electrocution, had been nearly as bad as this.

Abednego froze. “Going to the bathroom? Sir.”

Sir was important. Sir avoided him getting hit. Somewhat. He could do that. He’d done that before.

“You didn’t ask permission.”

Abednego swallowed a sigh. You didn’t tell me I had to. He’d tried that answer the last time. It hadn’t worked. Or the time before. “I apologize, sir. I didn’t know.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were the wrong ones. He hadn’t quite been looking at his – his owner­, his captor. He didn’t want to risk making eye contact. But he could see the guy’s head come up, and, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the sickly, twitchy smile that came on whenever Abednego did something wrong.

He spent a lot of time looking at that smile. He spent a lot of time doing something wrong. He was waiting for the moment when breathing became wrong, and he was fairly certain it was coming.

It turned out his brothers had “Kept” people while they were here.

It turned out “Keeping” people let you do just about anything to them.

It turned out that, unlike being someone’s big brother, Keeping let you force the person to enjoy it.

“Let’s make it easy, then.” His captor stood up. Abednego did his best not to cringe. It made his “Keeper” angry if he cringed. “If it’s not an autonomous function, you need permission to do it. Do you understand?”

No. Abednego nodded carefully. He cleared his throat. “Sir, may I…”

“No, I don’t think so. Go back to your corner. You have homework to work on, or something like that, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” At least, he had things that could be done for classes, and that was better than most of the things his captor came up with him to do. Abednego began walking to the corner that had been designated as his.

“Stop.”

“Sir?” He stopped, struggling against the order to go back to his corner.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“I’m sorry? What, sir?” He took a tentative step forward.

His owner flapped his hand negligently and laughed. If it had been anyone else, Abednego might have thought he sounded embarrassed, but his owner had nothing to be embarrassed about around Abednego. “You’re fine, go on, go to your corner. It sucks, having orders that don’t make sense. Having orders that run into each other until your brain twists up in knots. It sucks not understanding what’s going on.”

“Sir?” Abednego hurried to the corner of the room before his owner could change his mind again. There was a dog bed there, a low table, and all of his homework. It wasn’t all that bad of a set-up, if you excluded the angry owner part.

“I hated being Kept. Hated every minute of it, every second of it. Except when – and sometimes even then.” He twitched his head. “You’ll be saved one thing, at least. I’m not going to lend you out.”

Lend you out. Abednego swallowed. “Thank you.”

“Do you want to go to the bathroom, boy?”

The subject changes were giving him whiplash. “Yes, sir? Uh. In the toilet, sir.” It was probably best to specify.

“Then come here.”

It was a trap. It had to be a trap. It wasn’t like he had a choice, though. He left the pretend-safety of his corner and walked to the bed, where his owner was patting the comforter. “Sir?”

“Sit down. Here, on the bed. It’s all right.” It didn’t look all right. Abednego sat down. He sat stiff-spined, looking straight ahead, trying not to do or say anything at all. He didn’t want to screw up. Anything could be screwing up.

He jumped anyway, when he felt his owner’s hand in his hair. The touch was light, and if it had been another situation, he would have thought it was feathery. “Look at me.”

He’d been doing a very good job of not doing that. Slowly, Abednego turned to look at him.

“No, really. I want you to see me. You brothers never did, you know.”

Abednego swallowed. “They don’t. They don’t tend to.”

“You won’t end up like them, will you?”

His owner had tousled brown hair that would, in other situations, make Abednego want to comb it, to run his fingers through it. He had a wide jaw that looked stubborn, sad, and big brown eyes. He looked far too worn out to be as angry and as painful as he was.

“I won’t, sir.” There had never been a chance in hell he would become Meshach, and after watching Shadrach spiral down the toilet, no, he wasn’t going to end up like his brothers. Abednego knew better.

His owner studied Abednego for a minute. A week ago, he had been just another guy in a couple of Abednego’s classes, not the prettiest one here by far, a bit too wide in the shoulder, a bit too hunched over, like he was trying to compensate. Abednego hadn’t even known his name. Now he was scared to even think it, unless it slipped. He’d gotten hit for forgetting to call him anything but sir, even when he’d appended that sir to the end: Rafe, sir. He found he liked being hit by a Keeper even less than he liked being hit by a stepfather or a brother.

Rafe-Keeper cleared his throat. “I’m sure you won’t. But I’m going to make absolutely, positively certain of it. Nobody else is going to end up like Eris, do you understand?”

No. “Yes, sir.”

“I am never, ever going to have to watch one of my friends being tortured again. Do. You. Understand?”

Yes, yes, oh, fuck, he did. “Yes, sir.”

His Keeper stroked his hand through Abednego’s hair. It felt weird, horrible and good at the same time. “Good. You should be glad you don’t have any friends yet, pet. It makes it easier.”