Foto Chapter 21
Notice:
The contents of this story is purely fictional although based on real life happenings in my life. All names have been fictionalize to protect the innocent and not so innocent. The content matter of this story concerns love and sex between males teenagers. If this is not what you like reading or it is illegal for you to read this material because of age or laws go somewhere else. This story is copyrighted by it's owner and may not be copied or published elsewhere without the owners permission.
Author's note:
Okay here's the last chapter in the life of our young photographer - Foto. Sort of sad ending but one that gives him a future.
Sam Lakes
sam_lakes at yahoo.com
Foto
by Sam Lakes
Copyright © 2006-2008 All Rights Reserved
Chapter Twenty-One
It felt like my world was coming to an end when it registered that Leo was dead. I didn’t want to believe it. But why else would both my parents be here.
If only he had told me he was hitch-hiking I would have told him no. For a while I felt like it was my fault. I was the one who had told him of my adventurers and he had envied me. He told me I’d had an exciting life and I told him he had had a life of friends. Now he was gone.
I was beyond depressed and beyond tears – I was numb and simply didn’t care about anything for the next couple of days. I kept to myself and mourned the passing of Leo – the boy that I loved more than life.
Dad and Michael left me alone for the most part. One morning before any one was awake I felt someone stroking my cheek. I opened my eyes and saw two big blue eyes looking at me. I’m not sure what happened at that moment but for the first time since my dads told me that Leo was dead I began to cry. Noah started kissing my cheek as rivulets of tears washed from my eyes. Then he hugged me as I cried and hugged him back. He was the lifeline pulling me back from the abyss of despair that I had fallen into.
The remarkable thing was despite my wails of grief he wouldn’t let go of me. He was crying too and when his mom came in he held on to me harder and refused to let go.
Two days later my dads and I returned home for Leo’s funeral. It was then that I knew how many friends Leo and I had as nearly the whole school was there. I was supposed to say something you know a eulogy but all I could say before I broke down in tear was “Leo, I love you.”
Over the next two weeks I received over fifteen hundred emails expressing their condolences and offering to be there for me no matter when or where I needed them. Michael made me answer them all. Even though most of them I replied with just a thanks there were some replies that were longer. Our home never seemed vacant of fellow teens one day it was the whole football team the next day the soccer team, then the swimming team and so on.
I was hardly ever alone and I know that it was a very healing process for me as I never knew I had that many friends or that many people really cared about me and soon I was able to laugh a few times every day. I really learned the true value of friends.
Despite all of this I still felt something was left undone and that something was to catch the person who had murdered Leo. Leo had been the twelfth victim in three years and the incidents seemed to be getting closer together. All the victims were mid teenage boys some were homeless others were just hitchhiking to get somewhere. Two were gay but ten weren’t gay to anyone’s knowledge. The bodies were found within eight hundred miles of Denver. The MO was practically the same – all were sexually assaulted and all had been run over several times by a heavy vehicle sometime after the attack. They had tracked down every driver that had given Leo a lift to Denver. No one had seen Leo leave the tuck stop with anyone and the security cameras at the truck stop he’d called me from showed nothing.
I had been the bait once before in my life I could be it again.
One evening after all my friends had gone I told Dad and Michael I that I needed to talk to them and laid out my plan.
Michael was of course totally against it but I think dad liked the plan although he said nothing.
“No, Brian, this is not going to happen,” Michael said to Dad. He looked at me. I knew he was getting emotional.
“I …” I started to say.
Michael interrupted, “NO! I’m not going to risk losing you! Since the day you were born I have loved you. I’ve fed you, changed your diapers, kissed your boo-boos, I’ve looked after you your whole life. You are my life, Bastian. I couldn’t live without you. I couldn't live with me if you died the same way Leo did. You can’t do it.”
“I have to, Michael. I have to see this through. I lost half my life when Leo died. This person needs to be stopped before he takes another innocent life – another Leo. I have to Michael, can’t you see, I can’t live with myself knowing that some innocent kid is going to die. Dad will know where I am ever step of the way. He’s not going to let me died and you know it. How many more Leo’s will have to die, Michael? Tell me, how many more?”
He was silent.
“I need you to be here when it’s over. I love you so much. I know Dad won’t do this without your approval because he promised he’d never use me for bait again. Well, it’s me who is volunteering me. It’s my idea and I am going to do it on my own with or without anybody’s help. I have to end this nightmare.”
Michael grabbed me into a hug, “I love you so much Bastian, but God! You can be as stubborn as your dad. But then I love your dad too.” He looked at Dad, “Bri, you better make sure nothing bad happens to him or I’ll never forgive you.”
“I swear I won’t let him get hurt,” said Dad.
Over the next week Dad made me learn a few karate tricks. I had a tracking device similar to the tracking device they implant in animals but higher tech. My belt was a tracking device. My iPod wasn’t really an iPod it was a two-way radio and tracking device. They could monitor any conversations I had with anyone and I had an iPhone but it was just an iPhone. I had my ears pierce and my really cool earrings were tracking devices. I was literally a walking tracking and surveillance device.
For a month and a half I ‘hitchhiked’ from various truck stops around Denver to places south, west or north. I was getting nowhere. A couple of truckers offered to give me a blowjob – I told them that I wasn’t interested because it would be cheating on my boyfriend. When they’d ask about him I’d tell them about kissing at the top of Sears.
One night I was sitting in a booth when this guy said, “I hear you’re looking for a ride west?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Mind if I sit down?”
“No. Please do. Are you going west?”
“Yeah, Grand Junction, but what I really wanted to say is you shouldn’t be hitchhiking. It’s dangerous for a kid your age. There’s rumors that some bad things is happening to teenage boys your age. I’d hate to see you hurt or worse.”
“Yeah, I’ve hear that too, but I really need to get to California.”
“Why?”
“My boy-, I mean my best friend went out the over a month ago and I haven’t heard a word from him.”
“You were going to say your boyfriend, right? I’m cool with that. But look if someone here saw me given you a ride I’d get fired and I need this job.”
“Oh.” I said a bit disappointed cuz he seemed like a nice guy.
“Tell you what, go out that door over there stick to the shadows and go down the road about a half mile and I’ll pick you up and take you to Grand Junction. Won’t take ya across the state line cuz your only what fifteen?”
“Sixteen.” I replied, “And thanks!”
I got up and left.
“Dad, I think this is the guy,” I spoke quietly. Of course I’d said that several times before but I knew this guy was the one. “He’s the only one who has asked me to leave and meet him down the road.”
“I know, son. Keep aware. Press the panic button if you need to. There’s an abandoned car down the road. My men are there as the truck passes they’ll tag the vehicle.”
“Okay.” I saw the abandoned vehicle further on down the road. I stopped and waited. About ten minutes later I got picked up.
He had some tubes stuck up his nose.
“Oh don’t worry about this – oxygen cuz I have emphysema from too many years of smoking. Can you look in my glove box there should be a asthma inhaler.”
I got it out and handed it to him.
He smiled and said, “Thanks, Sebastian McCormick” as he released the sprayed from the inhaler. I had never told him my name. The problem was it was hard for me to stay conscious. There radio was so loud…
When I came to I was tied naked and spread-eagled. I guess he was planning on fucking me because he was naked standing in front of a big screen TV. I wondered where my dad was. Whatever he drugged me with seemed to be wearing off.
Slowly I became aware of something playing on the TV. It seemed like ages until what was showing on the TV made any sense and I screamed, “NO! You fucking bastard!”
He turned and leered at me, laughing insanely. “He had the devil in him. It was in me and I shot it into him. He wouldn't listen to me I was only trying to help but he wouldn't give up his stupid evil love for you so I had to kill him I couldn’t let the evil spread. He said you’d find me and you did. I’ve been waiting for you and I’ve been watching you. Those pathetic cops’ efforts, your efforts to trap me Bastian didn’t work. All your tracking systems have failed. I’m smarter than they are. Poor Leo told me all about you. You are a product of the devil himself! You see I know who the devil is! It’s your FATHER and he put the devil in you and you put it in your darling Lee-oo.”
He began laughing insanely as the TV showed him raping my Leo.
I shut my eyes tight.
“Ah-ah, no cheating, you have to watch. It’s your punishment.”
I tried to fight but it was useless he strapped my head in something so I couldn't move my head then he pried open my eyes with some kind of tool. He gagged me. I was helplessly trapped. Where was my dad?
He put in a different movie. “This was my first. He put the devil in my son.”
The boy on the screen couldn’t have been more than twelve. He raped and cold bloodedly murdered the boy by slitting his throat. I watch the boy die.
Then he put on the video of Leo. He was trying to get Leo to say he didn’t love me and Leo refused. For two days he tortured Leo. But Leo never gave in. I just wanted to die at that point. I no longer cared if dad came because I wanted to be with Leo.
I heard an explosion and the next thing that happened was the man pick up a shotgun and pointed it at me. Although I was gagged I was screaming for him to shoot me. He never got the chance. The gun and his hands exploded and I heard another shot. The man dropped dead with a bullet in his head. There was another blast and the TV died. Someone came over and released me. They said I was screaming and yelling but no one could understand me.
I woke up two days later in the hospital. I left the hospital two days after that with a boat load of drugs and appointments to see shrinks.
When I got home I flushed the drugs down the toilet and told Michael and Dad to cancel the appointments. Michael being Michael tried to talk me into it.
“That man had been in and out of mental institutions half his life. All they did was feed him drugs. Not one of them made him sane. They gave him drugs and sent him on his way. He went out and killed more innocent kids. Shit even I could tell that he was insane. I saw evil and evil isn’t the devil. Evil is insanity.”
“Yeah, but…” said Michael but interrupted him.
“Michael, I have you and Dad to talk to. You’re my parents and I don’t have any secrets from you. I trust you and Dad more than anyone else on this whole planet. I know it will take time for me to get over Leo’s death and what I went thru. But remember this I chose to do whatever I had to do to help end that cycle of innocent kids being killed and it was ended. It’s over and it was worth any suffering I went through to see it ended. I have a lot of friends who care about me and that will help me more than any shrink. I wouldn’t talk to a psychiatrist if my life depended on it because I have witnessed their results and their results suck.”
School had already been in session for a week when I went back. At first people were treating me like I was some sort of glass object that was about to shatter but that only lasted a few days. I was getting back to be the Bastian they knew. Yes, I had my bad times when I would miss Leo so much and I would burst into tears but I had that pretty much under control.
I think that what bothered me the most is I had no future. I mean Leo had been my future. We were supposed to live our lives together and now that wasn’t going to happen. It was like I was purposeless.
It was mid-October when my life changed again. Michael broke the news to me that Marcy was dying and only had a short time to live. They knew this last summer but with Leo’s death they thought it best not to tell me. I was a little pissed that they hadn’t told me but on the other hand I was glad that they hadn’t.
“What’s going to happen to Noah? Who will look after him?” I asked.
“Well, Marcy wants you to adopt him when you are of age. In the meantime, your dad and I have agreed to be his guardian. It’s up to you whether you want to and are ready to take on the responsibility of being a parent.”
“My immediate response is yes, but I’d like a few days to really think hard about this because I don’t want to make a decision that would not be the best for him – us.”
My situation wasn’t like Michael’s and Dad’s. There were two of them. There is only one of me. Sure, Michael would help but it didn’t want that to be a permanent thing. Michael and Dad deserved to be grandparents. That tickled me no end. I'm going to enjoy teasing them.
I did what any intelligent person would do. I searched the net to find out what I could do or learn to do that would allow me to earn a living and still be a stay-at-home dad. Four days later I had made my decision. I had found something that I could do and work from home over the net. I could learn to trade stocks and options. I found out from my grandfather that that was what he does and he’s successful at it.
I left on Friday to pick up Noah and bring him home with me. My visit with Marcy was sad for me. We had created a great friendship. She said she wanted no funeral and her wish was to donate her body to science. She said she was at peace now that she new Noah would be with me. I promised her I would be the best parent to him that I could be and she said that was all she wanted.
It was Sunday and Noah and I are flying back to Chicago. He’s asleep with his head on my lap and for the first time in my life I realized the truth. Children are our future.
The End
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