Dramatic Child Stars

Twenty-Seven

Ryland,
July 28, 2021,
8:00 pm.

"You'd think he'd get tired of getting himself beat," said the first man. He was the scary one. The one that kept beating the shit out of me. I'd come to find out his name was Marcus. I'd just overheard that.

"You'd think you'd get tired of beating a very confused person after so many times," I replied. My mouth tasted coppery when I said that. Talking actually took a lot of effort. Being alive was a lot of effort too. This was exhausting.

"Shut it," said the second one. I'd heard he was called Tyler. He was blonde and fair skinned I think, but it's hard to tell when the only light coming in was through that doorway. Silhouettes are difficult to evaluate.

"I thought the point of this was that you wanted me to talk," I reminded him helpfully.

"Ryland, you're really pushing it," Marcus said. "You've not been making this easy on yourself at all."

"Does this fun thing we're doing ever have a potty break scheduled?" I asked, continuing my effort of being super helpful. "Because next time you hit me, this whole rooms going to smell like piss."

"Where does he get the energy for this?" Tyler asked, sounding quite a bit like he didn't find me at all helpful.

Shocking, I know.

Marcus didn't answer him, but I could practically feel the way he rolled his eyes in the dark.

"Just tell us where it is," Marcus demanded of me instead. "It's that easy, and all of this goes away."

Liar.

"Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you because you're a horrible host," I said.

That was obviously a lie on my part, so atleast we were both liars. I'm a coward. I'd tell them exactly what they wanted if it meant ending whatever this was. I was beyond over it. This wasn't interesting or fun. This was actually kind of horrific.

"Let him marinate," Tyler said. "He'll come around."

Maybe they were actually warded off by my piss threat. I expected to get hit again, but Marcus and Tyler must have had something else on the schedule what wasn't beating me, because they walked out and closed the door on me again, shrouding me in a darkness that was honestly becoming comforting. It's odd how things change like that.

When I saw Marcus walk out of the RV a few days prior, I knew it wasn't the first time we'd made acquaintances of eachother. I'd felt that fear. It was very real and corporeal. Marcus had done unimaginable things. I could feel his crimes just by being in his presence. I could feel the actual ache in my body that I was sure came from his hands. Fear is weird though, and it had dissipated somehow while I sat there in the dark room. It was like exposure therapy, since Marcus was my most common visitor. It's hard to quake in my boots every time I see him. Truly, it was a relief in some ways to have a change of scenery every time he opened the door.

Their whole strategy seemed to be trying to beat answers out of me, which was objectively unhelpful. I'd gathered through repeated questions that they were after the bag of drugs that Basil had informed me I'd taken. Other details were shady to me, like how it had come into my possession or why I'd not returned it. Nobody would even tell me why I'd woken up on a bridge. They wouldn't tell me how much the bag was worth or why I couldn't just pay for it. I was a multi millionaire. In my head, there wasn't an objective reason why I couldn't pay or why I hadn't paid in the first place for that matter.

Except for I was aware that things like this went beyond money. There was a factor of trust involved. There was a matter of principals and standards. This had clearly caused a lot of talk amongst the community. The uproar had to be met with an iron fist.