Imperfect Isolation

I used to talk too much. At least, that's what people used to tell me. I loved math, and I talked about it a lot. I told my friends things that were so cool to me, but I also talked about myself too much, and sometimes I didn't listen to my friends when they were talking, because I just wasn't paying attention. I wonder if that was too selfish of me. I wonder if that's why I'm here now, because I talked too much then, so I have to make up for it. I used to get this feeling of deep joy from sharing the stories in my head, and I'm sorry that I took it so very much for granted now.

Back then I was in love with mathematical proofs. I liked how once I really understood something, the universe got a little more solid. I knew something, instead of just guessing or hoping or believing. That seems silly now, though. Now I know that people can think two different things at once, and they're both just as true, because they both don't mean anything. I used to hear people talk about that like it was a bad thing, either something silly that dumb people do, or something sinister that evil people make you do. But that can't be true. Thoughts aren't facts. They don't exist in the real world like trees or pigeons or ice cream. Every thought is a belief, and every thought is both wrong and right.

I can't remember the last time I had a real conversation with someone. I remember my last conversation in perfect detail, every single night in my cage. See? Two things, both true. Because I believe. But... I don't know. Not anymore.

I really, actually can't remember the day, or the week, or the year when I last saw sunshine, though. Sometimes I think I remember, but then I remember again and it's different. And then again, and again, until I forget what I was remembering. I like to play that game with myself, remembering, and forgetting, until it all washes away.

I miss looking at the sky. It was bright. I miss bright. I'm worried that I'm forgetting what bright looked like. I imagine the sky, or a supermarket, or a television, and I think that the picture in my head is what the thing that means "bright" looked like, back when it was real for me, but I'm scared that it's not as bright in my head now as it really was then. I've already forgotten so much... I wonder if it will hurt, when I forget what bright really looked like.

Some things that I forget, I feel happy about. I have no idea where I went to college anymore, and that makes it seem less real. When that memory vanished, it got easier to ignore what my future was going to be. I still think about it sometimes, but it's all vague flashes of being in classes, studying math, drinking warm bitter delicious coffee, and being with the man who brought me to the dark world I live in now. I don't remember his name anymore. I wish I did.

I lost my own name too, somewhere along the way. It stayed for a long time, long after I'd forgotten dad's name, and mom's name, and big brother's name, and what they called the place where I used to live. I still remember Buddy's name, but I try not to think about that one, and I hope I forget it soon. Dogs definitely don't live as long as I've been here. I hope Buddy becomes "dog" like the word that's missing became "college I went to" so I can have one less thing that hurts so sharply, and one more thing in the dim mosaic of hurt that everything else is. I could handle that.

I was eighteen, I know that. That memory doesn't change. I was in college. I had a friend, and he as cute. I can't picture faces that well anymore, either, not well enough to say which ones were cute and not cute, but I think he was cute. I think I was cute, too. Sometimes, when I can, I touch my own face, but it doesn't feel the way it used to look. I always wear a mask, except for when they put me in the box. The mask just feels like the mask, but my face always feels wet, either from lotion, or the sweat when I'm inside the box and it's so hot and I'm working so hard, or from the cum and the spit and the snot and the tears.

I think I'm a lot older, now. I know I was a lot younger when he took me. I loved him so much back then. He loved me, too. He loved me for my blowjobs, and my rimjobs, and the way my cock leaked when he played with it, and the way I pouted, and the way I kissed, and the way I screamed when he touched me and hit me and stroked me and fucked me and beat me. I miss how spontaneous he used to be back then. I miss when different things happened to me.

There's a schedule to my life, now, and it doesn't really change. Sometimes I think the things happen in a different order than they did last time, and sometimes they forget about me in my cage for a day or two, but those things are just part of the schedule. I counted off the seconds and the minutes and the hours in my head one day, when I had been here for what I thought, way back then, was a really long time. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, nine thousand one thousand, on and on until I hit a full day. I was really good at math, before. I think that's why I was in college, and I think that's how I met him, back when I remembered his name, but I don't know for sure. I don't know how many seconds are in a day now, but I knew back then. I think I trust what I knew back then. Enough to tell myself a story, at least.

I saw the place where I live now, once. The day he brought me here was bright and hot. I saw the big metal fence, and the cute old house, with a big green lawn and pretty trees, and so far up the big hill. I don't remember this part so well, but It's a story that I tell myself and I think it's still true. I don't know why I tell myself stories anymore. The memories just happen to me, like everything else just happens to me, and after a while they all stop being memories and become stories, and then they're always a little different, and I wish they would all stop.

When we got here, he took me out of the cage in his van and he told me it was going to be different now that I was going to live with his friends. I told him I didn't want to go, and I asked him to take me back to my mom, and I said I was sorry, but he hit me. I yelled, and he hit me really hard, and then I stopped yelling for a while. I don't yell anymore at all, now. They don't like it here when I yell, so I don't.

I used to make up reasons for why I don't yell anymore. Little lies I would tell myself, about being good just so I could buy time to run away, or how I wasn't really being good for them, I was just pretending, and I'd stay me underneath. And I'd be okay. Everything would be okay. I just had to wait.

When we got to the house, one of his friends was there, but I don't know who and I don't remember his face. His friend put the mask on me, but he didn't talk to me. My mask became my new face, and I think they only know me by the mask now, and I sometimes wonder if anyone's alive who remembers what the face under it looked like. I wonder if mom and dad are still alive. I wonder if my big brother is, too. I don't think I'm in my thirties yet, and definitely not my forties. My hands don't look that old. But mom and dad were old, and big brother was sick. I think if big brother died, and they thought I was dead too, my parents are probably gone. I think about that a lot, how I might be all alone even if I left here, and how I can't remember my family's names, and how the only name I remember for sure is the name of a stupid fucking dog that I miss so much. I think about all of that a lot, even though I don't want to, and I hope I forget all of this soon.

I'm always naked, except for my mask, and I'm always a little cold, or a little hot. I didn't like my mask back then, and I still don't like it, but I wear it every day. It's so tight. Tight enough that I think it might have been made for me, specifically. I get to see it when I'm not inside of it. I take it off when I go in my box, so I can work. It's black, tight, leather. There's buckles and locks that keep it ratcheted down tight on my skull. There's a collar that keeps it locked below my chin, but the collar is just as tight as everything else, and I always feel a little light headed. There are no holes where my eyes are, but it does have these short, stubby little tubes that go in my nose to breathe, and a little rubber piece sewn inside at the mouth part that helps remind me not to make noises or try to talk. I like the rubber piece a lot, because it's fun to chew on, and it keeps me from breaking my teeth when they punch my face, or hurt me and make me bite down really hard so I don't scream too much. Sometimes, I like to chew on it just for fun, and imagine I'm a dog. A happy, quiet dog, warm and content by a fireplace in an old man's living room, chewing my toy. Carefree. Loved. He would talk to me...

I miss talking. I miss being talked to. I miss when I could share the ideas in my head, say what I wanted, what I needed... When I could cry and I could tell someone it hurt and they could see me, back when I was me. Sometimes, I wish they would just leave me in the box. Tie me up so I can't move, and let my body rot and mesh with the walls until I'm just a fixture. I could go away so easily then. I would go insane so much faster. I would just be the object that I am now, and I wouldn't feel so lonely, or have to get hurt, and I wouldn't have to move and I would probably stop thinking. I think I could accept that.

But they'll never forget about me for that long, and they'll never let me be me again. I don't get to say any words at all, not even when I'm in my cage alone, or when I'm in my box with my mask off. I tried to talk a lot when I first got here. But the hurt from being dumb, or slow, or not good enough at serving, the kicks for oversleeping and the beatings for existing, those are all tolerable, compared to the torture for speaking. If I make them drop a plate when I'm a bad table, I get punched in the face, but if I speak, I get the electric wires or the boiling water or the sharp things, so I don't speak anymore.

I have a schedule to keep. I sleep in some kind of cage. I've never seen it, but it has thick heavy bars, and I sleep in it on good days, and I lay in it, crying but not moving and not making a sound on the bad days, until the snot clogs up my nose tubes and I can't breathe and I have to stop crying. The cage is different than the box. The box is where I work, and the only place I get to take the mask off, because they can't see me when I'm inside of the box. They don't like to see me. I want so very much to tell them that I'm almost gone, that they can take the mask off and I'll be so quiet and I'll be so good, and nothing will be different for them if they just take it off and let "me" see the sun one last time before I stop being me forever. But that's an idea, and all of my ideas have to stay in my mask, alone with me. My ideas can't reach other people.

I've never known if it's morning when they wake me up, but I call it morning. Something always aches in the morning. My cage isn't very big, and I get really bad aches and my neck always hurts. It makes a creaking, cracking noise now when I move my head. They wake me up with cold water sometimes. Usually they just drag me out, still asleep, limp and bruised, confused and scared. I'm always a little scared in the mornings. When I dream, I'm somewhere else, and when I wake up and I can't see, and I can't talk, and their hands are on my neck, and my arms, my legs, my balls, pulling me out, it feels wrong. I have to fight myself so I don't fight them.

There's only three things that happen when they wake me. I never really know which thing I'm going to do until I start doing it. It took me a long time to learn how to do my things, because they never told me how, and I am not allowed to ask. I learned from the beatings, and the shoving, and the hands that moved my body into positions while I cried and shook and tried really hard to think about what they might want me to do. Some days, the first thing I do is work out. I run on a treadmill until I think I'm going to pass out, I lift things until I think I'm going to pass out, I do squats until I do pass out and wake up with their boots in my ribs and their hands pulling me up to do more squats.

If I don't work out, then the first thing I have to do is be a different kind of object than the one I already am. They make me kneel, and I'm a foot stool with feet or heavy boots on my back, and I'm so good at staying still but they don't say thank you or good job or make fun of me for being a dumb little object, because you don't talk to an object and an object doesn't talk to you. I don't like those days. It gives me too much time to think, and I start to cry under my mask. I can't let myself sob, because sobbing means your chest moves and your body shakes and you get beat or cut or whipped. But I cry, until my nose gets stuffy, then I try to stop because if I can't breathe, I panic, and I move, and...

Other days, they leave me in the cage, but that doesn't happen very often. I don't think it's part of my schedule. I think they just forget I'm there, like how you'd forget a toaster was in your kitchen or a pen was on your table, even though you were looking right it all day, because you didn't need to use it right then.

Whether I work out or I serve, that only takes up the first half of my time outside of my cage. The second half is always the box. That never changes, and I like that because the box has become the one thing I can trust to always happen, eventually.

A lot of people live here, and a lot of people come and go, but I don't know how many. I know he comes here a lot, the man who brought me here, because I can hear his voice. He doesn't live here, but he comes here on his weekends. I hear him talking. I listen to them talk to each other a lot. I like listening, because I can imagine I'm laid out on a warm sleeping bag at a campfire, and my eyes are closed, and I'm listening to my friends talk to each other while I nod off in the warm open night air. I don't always like listening, though. When I heard the man I used to love talking about how he had graduated college a long time ago, and he works with computers now, it hurt, because I was going to graduate college, and I was going to do things with computers, and I was going to have a life with him, and I still kind of do, but it's not really a life.

I really wish they would talk to me. I have come to understand that I can't talk, because talking would make them see me as a person, but I don't understand why they don't talk to me. I want so many things, and not knowing things hurts me so much, it always has. I wish they would tell me what I wanted, what to think and what to feel, so I wouldn't feel so conflicted. I don't like not knowing, but I guess they don't know that.

But they don't talk to me. They never give me orders, or tell me "No!" or that I've been a good boy or a bad object or anything. They grab, they shove, they move my body around like I'm a broken machine that needs a few kicks to get it working again, but their words are never for me.

I miss words, but I miss faces, too. I saw a face once. A long, long time ago. It was in the early half of when I got here, not the now half. I was in my box, with my mask off, and I hit my head on the wall of the box, really hard, and everything went bright for just a second. It felt right, so I did it again, and again, and again. Then, suddenly, there was a person. He was standing there, right in the doorway, and it was so bright behind him that my eyes hurt and my body wanted to look away but my mind fought through the burning and the throbbing from the bright, because I could see his face. He was real. It wasn't the guy who brought me here, I don't think. But he held me close, and I cried. I tried to fight, but he held me harder. I said "Please let me go." and he held me and put my hands in cuffs. I said "Please, talk to me." And he hit me in the stomach til I threw up. I said "Please, please, just talk to me, I'm a person, I'm a real person please just say hi, say hi to me." And he put the mask back on while I cried. I cried a lot that day. There were needles, and electricity, and I think they broke some of my ribs, because it hurt to breathe for a while after.

Nowadays, I'm always good, but I'm especially good when I'm in the box. There are some things in there that I'm supposed to use. They're not my things, and when I go in, I become one of the things. There is a padded leather spot on the floor where I kneel. There is a hole in the wall, a circle about as wide as both of my fists put together and about as high as my mouth when I'm up on my knees. On the left side of the hole there is a big container full of something dull brown that I eat and later shit out, so it must be food, but it doesn't taste or feel like it. On the right side is the same kind of container, but full of water. To my left, when I'm kneeling and facing the hole, is the door I crawl through. On the right is a little shelf with three things on it.

There is a key, which I use to unlock the buckles on my mask. The key is the only thing I take care of because I want to, not because I have to. Next to the key, there is a featureless mannequin head. I wonder if they made it featureless on purpose, sometimes. It's head shaped, but there's no face. I guess I'm not even allowed to see fake faces. When I take the mask off my face, and I clean the inside to get the slimy gel lotion out, and my spit and snot and tears, I put it on the blank mannequin head. There's another mannequin head next to it, and another mask wrapped around it. It looks a lot like my mask. I've looked at it before, but I don't look at it anymore. It scares me and I try not to think about it. It has the same buckles, but I tried the key on the locks and it doesn't work. It has the same rubber piece to bite down on. It just doesn't have any holes, anywhere. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, nothing to speak through or see through or breathe through. The collar looks tighter, too. I think I know what it's for, and I think I know why it's there, but it's not my mask yet and I don't want it to be my mask yet, so I pretend it's not there.

I worry about brain damage. I love being in the box, because I can see, and breathe easier, even though it's so hot and muggy and it smells like sex, and because my head doesn't hurt from the leather squeezing me so tight. When I take off my mask, and I finally undo the collar that digs deep into my neck, I can feel the blood rushing back up, and I worry that there's been some brain damage from the years of having my neck squeezed so tight for so long every day and every night.

I worry, but I have things to do, so I don't worry long. I have to eat, I have to drink, I have to wash my face and my mask. And then I have to work.

It's not really work, but that's how I think of it. Working for my living. I don't know what time I go in, and I don't know how long I spend there, but I like to think it's nine to five. It makes me laugh, quietly, in my head. Working nine to five. What a way to make a living.

The hole in the wall isn't an open hole, not exactly. There's a sheet of rubber inside of it, with a little hole in the middle that's too tight to see through unless you stretch it open. I did that once, but I think there's just another box on the other side of my box, that the men go in and out of, because it was just dark when I looked. They burned my feet for that sneaky peek, and made me run for what I think was more than a day, maybe more than two. I didn't look again, after that. Now I just stay in my box, and I look at the wall. And I wait.

It's dark in the box, but not black dark like my mask. It's dim. There's a light up above but it's not very bright, which is good because my eyes would hurt too much. I can see in dim light, though. I think I can probably see better than anyone else in almost but not quite pitch black. I like to pretend I'm a wild cat, stalking my prey in the dark, seeing them while they can't see me. But then I remember the camera above, and the microphone to make sure I don't try to talk to myself, and then I remember that I'm not a cat and I'm not a person, I'm just... here. I don't know what I am. I don't think I'm a slave. I'm barely an object. I think they'd be more sad if their car died than if I did. It's a long walk down the hill, after all.