Page 16 of Hunter

“Feel it, Charles,” he murmurs, voice low and holy and wrong. “Feel how unnatural it is. This is what the devil put in you.”

Another boy—older, one of the “graduated” ones they bring in for demonstrations—kneels in front of me. His pants open and his dick out. His hand is already on himself, stroking exactly how they tell him to while they watch. Brother Mark’s grip tightens as the boy grows hard and stiff in his own grip.

“Touch him,” he orders. “See if your body betrays you again tonight.”

My fingers shake as I reach out. The second I make contact and feel his silky smooth shaft beneath my fingers, the shame floods in so thick I can’t breathe. It gets worse when the boy moans. They are all watching. Two more counselors in the corner, murmuring prayers and crossing themselves.

“See how your body is reacting?” Brother Mark says, almost triumphant, when my body betrays me despite the tears streaming down my face. “That’s the demon fighting to stay. We have to drive it out.”

Cold hands shove past my waistband. Clinical. Probing. Seeing exactly how hard I am, before they grab my balls and squeeze until I cry out.

“Getting hard is a sin when you are touching another man.”

I try to leave my body. I try to float somewhere above the room where none of this can touch me. But they keep pulling me back. Pain and then forced pleasure.

One of them pulls my bottoms down, forcing me onto my hands and knees, and I beg them.

“No. Stop. Please don’t. I don’t like boys.”

It doesn’t stop them.

The nightmare doesn’t stop.

It never stops.

I wake up sobbing.

The blankets are twisted around my ankles like restraints, trapping my legs. My chest heaves so violently I can’t pull in air. Tears burn down my face, hot and endless, and the broken sounds ripping out of my throat don’t even sound like me.

“No—please—stop⁠—”

My voice cracks, small and terrified, the same voice I had at seventeen. The nightmare is still wrapped around me. I can still feel the weight of those hands, of the body behind me, violating me in the worst way.

I curl into a tight ball on the mattress, back against the wall, arms locked around my knees, rocking myself, unseeing. Sofia launches onto the bed and presses herself hard against my side, purring frantically like she can vibrate the demons out of me. I pick her up and bury my face in her fur, but the smell of mildew and old carpet still clogs my nose.

“It’s not real,” I choke out. “It’s not real. I’m not there. I’m here. I’m safe.”

But my body doesn’t believe me.

My skin crawls like invisible hands are still on me and a pastor is trying to fuck the demons out of me. My stomach heaves with the phantom taste of shame. The ache between my legs is not arousal. Fresh sobs tear out of me as the memory refuses to release me.

I stay like that for what feels like forever, curled so tight my muscles scream, Sofia’s small warm body the only thing tethering me to the present.

Eventually the sobs quiet into ragged, hiccupping breaths. I untangle the blankets with trembling hands and yank them up to my chin, but I can’t stop shaking. The nightmare is still too vivid when I close my eyes. Their hands. The forced pleasure. The pain. The way they made me hate myself for reacting at all.

The painting in the corner catches the light from outside, and my gaze locks on the face of my newest obsession. I know that it was allowing myself to paint his face that brought on the nightmares.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block it out.

It doesn’t work, and I open them again.

Hunter’s hazel eyes stare back at me from the canvas, raw and hungry, and for one sick second, the nightmare and the painting bleed together. The weight of hands on my shoulders holding me down becomes the memory of him towering over me, voice low and cruel. He doesn’t look anything like Brother Mark. But the anger in him is almost an exact match.

I press my face harder into Sofia’s fur, whispering the same words over and over like a prayer I don’t believe anymore.

“I’m safe. I’m safe. I’m safe.”

Sofia purrs louder, her tiny body now vibrating against my cheek, but I can’t shake it. Every time I blink, I feel the rough carpet again, the clinical hands, the whispered scripture he used to make it seem right—Obey your leaders and submit to them—and more still—He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. It was all sick. Those words stuck with me and turned my own body into something shameful.