Avery's Desire Pt. 12

He should have remembered to lock the door, or screamed for help. He should have done a lot of things but he didn't. Instead, he just ran and hid like a coward and look where it got him. Rick would be disgusted with him now; he knew that, because he was disgusted with himself. All that he'd suffered, all of the horrible things that had been done to him, or would be done to him, he could have prevented if he'd just been stronger.

Avery bit his bottom lip to keep from crying out. He wouldn't give Mikey the satisfaction of hearing him cry, not anymore. He just tried to focus his mind on something else, anything else. It didn't matter as long as he could escape from that awful place into his mind and push all thoughts of that night away. He could feel Mikey pushing into him, he could hear him breathing, and feel his fingers as they dug into the flesh of his leg, but all this he pushed out of his mind.

He imagined himself on stage; the warm glow of the lights surrounded him, the chatter of the crowd filled his ears. Rick was there on keyboard; the music poured from the instruments and engulfed him. The others were there too. Trash on the drums, Kat rocking the electric guitar as Cole furiously strummed his four string. Even Boomer was there, standing in the audience, smiling proudly at the band as they played. The auditorium was full but Avery wasn't nervous at all. A hush fell over the crowd as he took to the mic and he sang like he'd never sang before.

Avery looked out over the crowd who was now applauding the band, their cheers echoed throughout the room and Avery just beamed. It was perfect, magical, and he was so happy. That's how he imagined the battle of the bands. When they took the stage and began to play he wanted to win the crowd over just as he had envisioned them doing.

He could see himself standing there beside his band mates, Rick's arms wrapped around him as they announced the winner.

Of course in Avery's fantasy it was always Desire who'd won. Rick would pick him up and spin him around then kiss him. There would be an after party with champagne, and important people he'd never met before would come up to congratulate the band. It would be so amazing, a real dream come true.

When the party was over, Avery and Rick would return home, exhausted from the events of the day but too excited to sleep. They'd fall in bed together, kissing and holding each other passionately, then make love well into the afternoon when they would finally fall asleep in each other's arms. It would be the perfect ending to a perfect day. At least, that was how Avery had dreamed it. Now though, it seemed an impossible dream, one that he would more than likely never see come to fruition.

He felt his heart breaking as he thought about everyone who loved him and whom he loved as well. He had no idea if he would ever see them again. 'Rick.' He thought suddenly. 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I let this happen. Please don't hate me...' Once again he was on the verge of crying but he fought back the tears as hard as he could. He wouldn't let them come, he couldn't. He would stay strong and hold them back. There was no way in this life or any other that he would ever allow Mikey to see him cry again.

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Don leaned against the car and shook his head. "Man, this ain't right."

Frankie looked up and him and smirked. "Are you suddenly growing a conscious?" He asked.

Don looked at his friend and frowned. "It just ain't right. Scare the kid, sure; trash their equipment, okay, whatever. Beat the shit out of him, yeah that's a little bit much but, Mikey has his reasons so I can get behind it, but this? It ain't right. Mikey's lost his fucking mind. We shouldn't be allowing this to happen. That kid's suffered enough."

"It's Mikey's party bro; we're just along for the ride." Frankie lit a cigarette. "Besides, you want to be the one to go over there and tell him to stop?"

Don shook his head. "Hell no, I ain't got no death wish!"

"Me either." Frankie said as he exhaled a cloud of smoke.

"I still don't like it though." Don fingered the empty beer bottle in his hands. He was seriously debating whether or not to just jump in the car and take off. The problem was what Mikey would do later when he caught up to him. Frustrated, he flung the bottle into the weeds behind him and grumbled. "Man, I didn't sign up for this shit!"

"Take it easy Donnie." Frankie put his hand on his friends shoulder.

"Don't tell me to take it easy man. This shit..." He pointed to the field where they'd left Avery alone with Mikey. "It ain't my style. It pisses me off, but the worst thing is not being able to do anything to stop him."

Frankie shrugged. "Not unless you wanna be next."

Don shuttered at the thought. "No thank you!"

"Exactly, so cool it. If Mikey even suspects that we ain't on the same page, it'll be our asses."

Don nodded in agreement but he still wasn't sure. He was suddenly feeling guilty about the entire thing. If he'd had any idea of what Mikey was really planning, he wouldn't have had any part of it. He was in too deep now though. He was an accomplice, and he knew that Mikey would have no problem what-so-ever throwing him and Frankie to the wolves if it meant saving his own skin, especially if they betrayed him now.

Frankie took another hit off his smoke then flicked it to the ground and stomped it out. He lightly slapped Don on the shoulder to get his attention and Don looked up. Mikey was standing in the field calling to them.

"We better go." Frankie told him.

Don sighed and nodded. "Let's just get this over with." Sticking his hands in his coat pockets, Don reluctantly followed Frankie back out into the field. He just prayed the kid was still alive, but he really had no idea of what he was going to find when he got back over there.

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"Pathetic." Mikey shook his head as he looked down at Avery. He walked around to his right side and then crouched down beside his head. "You're so pathetic." He said again, this time in a barely audible whisper. "You didn't even try to fight back. This just proves what a waste of space you are. I was a fool for ever caring about you, but that was my mistake. I did love you— once; I want you to know that. I loved you, but you threw it back in my face and broke my heart. Everything that's happened to you is entirely your fault. You brought this on yourself."

Avery opened his mouth to speak but all he could manage was a raspy sort of croaking sound. Mikey's words didn't even register to him now. His mind was a mess. He was becoming delirious from the pain and anguish he felt. Nothing made sense to him anymore; the world around him no longer existed. He tried to hold onto to something concrete, some shred of reasoning as his brain pulsed in and out of consciousness, but all he could think about was the pain.

Mikey stood up; frowning, then he looked to Frankie and Don as they approached him. Don took one look at the kid on the ground and turned his head away, disgusted. He was really starting to get pissed but he wasn't sure who he should be more upset with, Mikey or himself for letting this go on as long as it had.

Frankie narrowed his eyes and shook his head when he looked at the boy. He was as troubled by what he saw as Don was but he didn't look away. Avery was laying there, shivering in the cold, half naked. Welts and bruises covered both of his legs and the insides of his thighs were wet with fresh blood. His t-shirt was pulled down so that it barely covered his private area but it was still painfully obvious what Mikey had done, and he hadn't been gentle about it.

Frankie looked up at him. Mikey was standing beside Avery; he'd lit a smoke and slowly exhaled as he raised an eye brow, glaring at Frankie. "What?" He snapped.

"Was this really necessary?" Frankie asked him. "I mean come on; you've already beaten the kid within an inch of his life. He didn't deserve this."

"Who's side are you on?" Mikey walked over to him and stood mere inches from his face as he stared him down coldly.

Frankie swallowed hard then shrugged. "I'm on your side of course. It's just...I think you've gone a little overboard here."

"Well guess what?" Mikey suddenly shoved Frankie backwards, hard. His face twisted into an ugly scowl. "You're not being paid to think, are you? I'm the one calling the shots here so unless you want to wake up in a fucking morgue I'd suggest you shut the hell up and stop questioning me!"

Frankie put his hands up, giving in. He wasn't about to fight Mikey. It wasn't getting his ass kicked that he was worried about. It was the retaliation that he knew would eventually come later. Still, the sight of the kid laying in the weeds and brush was just too sickening to ignore. Don was right. They hadn't signed up for this.

Mikey flicked his cigarette away and turned to Don. "Hey Donnie, gimme your knife." He demanded.

Don looked over, blinked, and then rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "Uh, yeah, Okay, what for?" He was suddenly frightened of the answer. There was no way that he was going to stand there and watch Mikey kill the kid, that was just way to far, and even if he got pummeled, he wasn't going to stand for it.

"Don't you fucking question my motives!" Mikey was suddenly in a rage. He pushed past Frankie and turned on Don. His eyes glowed with rage. He grabbed Don's collar and stood, nose to nose, glaring at him with those piercing eyes. "Just give me the Goddamn knife!"

When Don didn't respond to his demand, Mikey quickly reached into the man's pocket and found what he was looking for. A black handled folding pocket knife with a steel blade that was a little over two inches long. He shot Don an angry glance as he flipped the knife open then walked back to Avery who was still sprawled out in the grass.

Kneeling down beside him, Mikey grabbed a handful of hair and started sawing at it with the knife. When he'd cut the first handful, he dropped the long strands onto Avery face and chest and then picked up another thick handful and went to work on that one as well.

Don and Frankie just looked at each other, unsure what to do, if anything; neither of them really wanting to challenge a crazy man with a knife in his hand.

Mikey continued to cut away at the long locks, depositing each newly severed clump on top of Avery as he had the last. Avery groaned and shifted uneasily beneath him. At one point he lifted his hand to brush the hair out of his face though he seemed to not really understand what was happening. Don and Frankie on the other hand just watched on in disbelief and too scared to do anything to help.

When Mikey was done he stood up and tossed the knife down at Don's feet. "He's all yours." He told them.

"What do you want us to do with him?" Frankie asked.

"Whatever you want," Mikey said. "Just dump him in the woods when you're done. Let the animals take care of him from there."

Don narrowed his. "By the time someone finds him, there won't be anything left." He gasped.

"That's the point." Mikey growled. "Now, do what you want with him and then get rid of him. I don't want to see his face again, ever!"

"Where are you going?" Frankie asked.

Mikey turned to him, rolling his eyes. "I'm going someplace that's heavily populated. I need witnesses that can vouch for me in case people start asking questions, which they will! I can't have anyone linking me to his disappearance now can I?"

"What about us?" Don asked. "What are we supposed to do if someone links us with him?"

"No one will, moron!" Mikey shouted, growing more and more annoyed with the two.

"Avery doesn't know you. Rick and the others have never met you. The only one that's seen your face that could recognize you is Boomer but with as many people who come and go in that bar how the hell is going to be able to say for sure that you were there? And even if he does, what does that prove? It's a bar; tons of people go there, it's what it's for."

Don shrugged. It made sense, he supposed, but he still wasn't okay with Mikey leaving them holding the bag.

"Anything else?" Mikey asked, raising an eye brow.

Frankie shook his head. "We're good." He said softly.

"Great!" Mikey gave them each one last menacing stare, just as a warning, then turned and headed back to his car.

Don looked at Frankie and shook his head. "This is bullshit." He grumped. "I'm a lot of things but I ain't a killer. Fuck, he wants us to commit murder!"

"It's not really murder if we just leave him here, is it?"

Don looked at the boy finally. He felt a sharp stabbing pain deep in his chest. "If we leave him here, he'll die. It's the same as if we killed him ourselves."

"Don't forget that we're co-conspirators here, Donnie. If Mikey gets picked up he's gonna finger us too."

"So what do we do Frankie? Leave him here to die?" Don stared at him hard, demanding an answer. "I can't live with myself if we did that Frankie, I just can't. This kid doesn't deserve to die. What the hell did he do? Dump Mikey? Take his so called friends away? Well, I fucking wonder why? Mikey's a fucking douche bag and I'm seriously starting to reconsider having anything to do with him."

"So what do we do then? I'm with you, tell me what the plan is and I'll follow ya."

Don thought for a minute. He considered calling in an anonymous tip but he wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not. The kid needed medical attention and quick. It could take hours before anyone found him, especially in the dark. Then there was the threat of wild animals smelling the blood and attacking him.

No, they couldn't just leave him alone, which meant that they needed to take him with them. He sighed and looked at Frankie.

"Help me get him dressed." He told him. "We're going to take him to the hospital."

Frankie stared at his friend, his eyes wide. "Don, have you lost it man? They'll call the cops!"

Don shrugged. "We have to risk it man. We're as responsible for this as Mikey is. It ain't like we didn't get a few blows in ourselves. Hell, I kicked him in the back. If the kid never walks again, that'll be on me."

"You sure about this?"

Don nodded. He looked up and his face was serious, stern. "Yeah..." He said. "It's the right thing to do. We should have stopped it before it went this far but we didn't. The least we can do now is make sure he gets some place safe. I'll sleep better knowing that at least."

"Alright." Frankie sighed. He pulled out his cell phone and shined the light around till he saw Avery's pants, still under his head. "There's his sweats." He said. "Let's get him dressed and get outta here."

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The sun had just began to rise over the tops of the trees and the many small buildings that sat clumped together along Carol street, facing the East gate apartment complex. Rick began his slow ascent up the steps, weary from working all night, he was ready to just collapse on his bed and sleep the day away.

As he made his way down the deck to the door of the apartment that he shared with Avery something suddenly caught his attention that stopped him in his tracks. The front door to the place was standing wide open, and while Avery was notorious for forgetting to lock the door, he'd never before forgotten to close it. Especially not on a cold November morning when, Rick assumed, he would have been asleep.

Something wasn't right about it. It wasn't even seven in the morning yet and Avery wasn't known for being a morning person. Most days he slept well past noon unless he had a specific reason for needing to get up early which was unlikely.

Rick took a deep breath as he approached the open doorway. His heart was pounding so hard that each beat echoed loudly in his ears. The hair stood up on the back of his neck and his stomach was twisted into knots as this feeling of dread began to wash over him. He hoped beyond hope that he was wrong, but he just had this feeling, this horrible feeling, that when he walked into that apartment he was going to find something very disturbing.

He let out a sigh of relief as he walked into the front room. The large area rug in the center of the room had been kicked up on one corner and the coffee table was shifted a little closer to the couch than normal but other than that everything seemed fine. Avery probably had laid down on the couch to watch a movie and pulled the table closer to him so he wouldn't have to lean too far to reach his cigarettes and drink.

Maybe things weren't near as bad as he feared, though it was still strange that the door had been left open. Even a strong gust of wind wouldn't blow it open. It was a heavy, fiber-glass, door with a small, glass, spy hole. Still, it seemed unlikely that Avery would have left the door standing wide open and then gone to bed.

Rick closed the door and then moved farther into the front room, slowly casing the place, looking for any sign that something was out of place. "Ave?" He called out into the eerily quiet apartment. The furnace had kicked on though the place was impossibly cold, another fact that he found disturbing. Avery was born in the south, he hated cold weather, and for the apartment to be as cold as it was in that moment, meant that door had to have been standing open all night.

"Just what the fuck is going on in here." Rick whispered. "This just isn't like..." He stood in the doorway leading to the hallway and froze. The kitchen doorway was maybe three feet away from where he stood, opening off of the hall. The light was on and the bright yellow illumination lit up the normally white tile floor only this time, it wasn't white, it was red.

Rick's heart leapt into his throat and he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he instantly realized what he was looking at.

"Avery?" He called out again in a panic. "Avery, where are you?"

Moving farther down the hall way he peered into the kitchen and saw the broken table laying on the floor. Then, more blood, a trail of it leading from the bedroom all the way down to the kitchen. He rushed down the hallway, slammed the door open and tore into the room in a furry.

What he saw when he entered that room made his stomach lurch. The bed was empty, the sheets torn up and the blanket half laying on the floor, but that wasn't what frightened him the most. All along the wall and on the doorway were bloody hand prints. They were small, like a woman's, which told Rick at once that they were Avery's.

Rick walked around the bed, searching the room. He was actually relieved when he found nothing. In the back of his mind he imagined seeing Avery's mangled body lying on the other side of the room between the bed and the wall but to his relief there was nothing there but some discarded clothes, and a few volumes of BL manga.

A new kind of panic gripped him then. If Avery wasn't in the apartment, then where was he, and what the hell had happened to him? As Rick began to piece together everything he'd seen, one thing became clear to him. Whatever had gone down had started in that room.

The hand prints on the wall suggested that Avery had been in the back corner near the window. The bloody hand prints smeared across the wall stopped at the end of the bed and then another one appeared on the door frame. Somehow Avery had made it across the room to the door and probably leaned on the frame for a moment either in pain or to catch his breath before continuing down the hall way.

The trail of blood drops leading down the hallway along with more bloody smears along the wall stopped just outside the kitchen. Avery had evidently made it to the kitchen and then some type of struggle or fight had ensued from there which was evident from the broken table and debris on the kitchen floor. The large pool of blood right in the doorway was what surprised and concerned Rick the most.