Hunger

Austin: Playing Defense

I used to wet the bed all the time. Even at Nancy and Riley's when I was far older than the accepted pissy-pants age. They probably knew about it, but I was humiliated and washed my own sheets every time. There was no way I could confess it. No other twelve-year-old needed pull-ups. I felt like the biggest freak in the world. It was just one more thing that separated me from all the normal kids.

I have not pissed the bed since I was fourteen. I have not pissed the bed until tonight.

Wet dreams? Sure. Especially now that Rory's in the picture and sexual frustration has become my new norm.

But pissing myself? Seriously? Are we really fucking doing this?

Apparently, yep.

Oh, and to make it all picture fucking perfect, I am in a group home with no possible chance of hiding this by washing my own sheets. You know who does the sheets here? Other kids. Not even adults who might just write me off as a special-ed nutcase, but kids my own age who are assigned the laundry chores and will now know that I wet the bed. The thought is more than humiliating. It's like another category of embarrassment yet to be invented.

As I lay there in my own piss, I think things can't get worse. They just can't. I have hit the brick wall of suckage head on. Pixie gone. Ray hunting me. Facing prison. No Rory. For the first time in a long time, I think about dying.

It's Seth. That's why. Rory told me everything and it triggered every trauma in my brain. The way he got passed around at that party. Being drugged. Out of it. It triggered memories I've buried so deep I no longer knew they existed or were part of my life. Now it has come flooding back in my dreams (pun intended).

Ray drugged me in the early days with opiates and benzos so I'd be calm and compliant and well... easier for clients to handle. You can't just throw a kid to a pedophile and expect them to perform. They gotta be groomed. Prepared. That was the word Ray used that first time he sold me. He said I wasn't prepared yet for what the man wanted. I didn't know what he meant til later. Prepared means compliant. Compliant means calm. Calm means relaxed. Relaxed means... well, I think you see where I'm going. Relaxed means they could do whatever they wanted to my body because all my muscles were sleeping.

Knowing the truth about Seth makes me remember truths about me that I don't want to think about. Ever. Ever. Ever. Horrible truths. Nightmare realities. Traumas that make me wet the bed like I'm still five.

Wetting the bed makes me think about my mom, and a memory comes up that makes me want to see her but I can't and probably never will again, and that hurts worse than I thought it would.

Nikki heard me whimpering in the twin bed next to the one she shared with Ray. It was two-thirty in the morning. I had my hands over my mouth, trying to stifle the sound of my tears.

She got up and sat beside me. She pushed my sweaty hair out of my eyes and gently stroked my cheek.

"I peed the bed again," I choked out, tears running down my cheeks.

"I know. Come to the bathroom. Let's clean up."

I glanced once at Ray's sleeping form before climbing out of bed and hurrying into the bathroom. Nikki followed me and gently shut the door behind us. The fluorescent light above the dirty sink buzzed and hummed. We had been living in this shitty motel for more than six months, ever since we got kicked out of our last house for not paying rent.