Eighteen days to go. Eighteen days on the griddle. Eighteen frigging sunsets before the big sunrise. Two and a half long weeks of slavery, with freedom just beyond the slate-gray horizon. Four hundred more hours to sweat out in the open-door slammer. I reached up to mark the red-letter day off on the calendar.
Matt lumbered in, making the walls shake with each clumsy footstep. I knew what was coming. It came with a rush, a cruel crunch of tough muscle on tender sinew. An attack that would leave me sobbing and aching.
Matt fucked me.
When he swaggered out, I crept back to the calendar. Nothing had changed while the sonofabitch split my ass into fragments. There were still eighteen days before Saturday, the 24th, the day Keith Pryor promised he would take me away with him. Eighteen days till I escaped into heaven. There was only one cloud in the glittery skies, and it made me ashamed of myself. See. I didn’t really like Mr. Pryor. I couldn’t help it. Mr. Pryor just hadda be the kindest man in creation. He treated me like a son - even better. And he was under no obligation. We weren’t related. I never did a lick of work for him like I did for Matt Jenner. Yet he treated me real nice and, like I said, he promised to take me along when he left Melrose County two weeks from Saturday.
Today was still Tuesday, June 6th. There were...