Heat of the night

Chapter 3

Nikki  fumbles for the keys that he took from his mom earlier tonight.  He manages to grab them and shoves them into the lock. "Fuck." He mutters to himself, as he falls into the apartment, drunk as shit.

He puts his hand against the wall, trying to find his way down the hallway without waking the demon up. They haven't talked in 4 days.  Every time she looks at him, it's like poison spills out of her mouth. Then right back out of his mouth. It's awful. Nothing is safe anymore. He can't do anything without her vile abusive words in his head. Every time he comes home, he breaks out into a cold sweat, worried something is going to happen. He should be used to being screamed at, being hit, being told that he's never going to amount to anything, but yet, he's not. He's not used to it, and he never will be.

That's his mom.  She should be the one to protect him, to build him up, to carry him in her arms and tell him that it's all going okay, and yet she's not. Nikki doesn't think Deanna has ever been that kind of mom. Plus, it's too late to begin trying, their relationship is beyond repair. At least at the moment. 

He trudges into his bedroom, and flops onto his bed. His body slowly relaxes, and the tight muscles unwind themselves. He feels the labored breaths slow, and his eyes begin to close, the noises of the city start to lull him to sleep. 

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A thud echoes around the room, and Nikki sits straight up in bed. 

Three large men with a logo on their shirts, and a woman in a pant suit come pouring into his room, his mother hot on their heels. Cecilia stands in the hallway, clutching her blanket and twirling her hair. The woman stands to the side and beckons Deanna toward her as two of the men clamp their hands on Nikki's arms. "Wha-...uh?" Nikki rubs his eyes as he tries to wrench his arm back.

"Your mother signed temporary custody of you over to us. You need to get up and come with us." Nikki knows this isn't some cruel joke, by the way that her face moves, her eyes, deep set and stern. 

"If living with me is so terrible, lets see how you like wilderness camp. Little shit." Ashes from Deanna's cigarette float  to the ground. For a second Nikki is briefly captivated, before being yanked up from the bed, and hoisted toward his door like some type of prisoner. He utters a small protest, quickly being silenced by a stern glare, then, with a final sign of protest from a scrappy teen, he yanks back and turns to look at his mother, genuine begging, trying to signal them to stop.  Trying to see if his mother has some semblance of compassion for her own son.

And he's met with a blank wall.

He's led outside to a white van with the same wilderness camp logo that he had seen earlier. His heart thuds in his chest. Nobody ever tells him anything, they always just expect him to go along with it. He tries to shake off the dread in his chest, but it's setting in like quick dry concrete. The door slides open, and somehow, like he's wading through molasses, Nikki finds himself able to get inside the van. He's put in the seat, and someone locks the door from the inside, so that even if he tried to wrench it open, he wouldn't be able to.

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Tommy leans his head against the window, seeing nothing but the blank expanse of sparse mountains and dying grass. He doesn't know how many hours it's been. 6 probably. At some point the vast expanse of Utah lulled him to sleep. Neither of his parents are really talking to him, and he doesn't blame them. Imagine feeling so lost that you send your only son to...a fucking wilderness camp. He also can't bring himself to say anything, even though he knows he won't see them again for a while.

He never thought silence could be quite so loud.

His dad pulls into a long driveway leading up to a large wooden building with the camp name on the front. As they get ever closer, Tommy's heart rate speeds up, and every instinct in his body is telling him to run, only amplified by a barbed wire fence that they pass. The only other car is a large white van that's pulling up next to them, parking in the deserted parking lot. This strikes Tommy as weird, this camp has none of the welcoming visuals that the summer camps of his childhood did, instead looking rather dreary. The...counselors....he thinks, step out of the front of the van, and he notices that instead of wearing brightly colored shirts and shorts, they're wearing polos and slacks, with hardened set gazes as they shove open the van doors.

Tommy leans over the drivers seat, taking an almost immediate interest in the boy with a Led Zeppelin T-shirt on. He stumbles out of the van and rubs his eyes, turning toward Tommy's car confusedly, before being forcibly pointed to the building. 

'He's like Joan Jett, but a guy. ' Tommy thinks to himself, stepping out of the car with his parents and starting the walk inside. Biting wind stings his face, and sucks the moisture from his throat as they put their heads down to try and push inside. Tommy shoves his hands in his hoodie pockets, entire body starting to shiver from the cold as they're welcomed inside. 

He sits in a hard chair, adjusting himself to try and relieve the pain from the plastic pressing into his spine. Looking around, he notices that except for him, the receptionist, and a woman that's leaned over the receptionist desk, the room is empty. What happened to his parents? Or the three other kids he saw being led inside the building? 

He soon finds his questions answered, because one of the women leaned over the receptionist desk, calls out his name, looking dead at him. 

"Yeah?" He responds, wiping his clammy hands on his jeans, and standing up.

"Come with me, your parents have decided not to say goodbye."

That doesn't sound right to Tommy, they both told him that they would say goodbye, and neither of them seemed that mad at him, despite the previously frosty car silence. Plus, how could they just leave him without so much as an 'I love you?' They both promised, and neither was the type to break their promises.

Nevertheless, he follows the woman out of the building, and into a smaller wooden building. The walls and floor are painted a bright white, and a man is waiting in the building for them, gloves on his hand. A slight brush against his hand tells Tommy that he needs to give the woman his suitcase, and the man beckons forward, stepping toward Tommy. Behind hum, the woman dumps his belongings onto the floor, much to Tommy's dismay. A carton of cigarettes tumbles out of the sleeve of one of the sweaters, effectively solving the mystery that he had blamed his friend Bob for a few months ago.

"Take your shirt and hoodie off. Jeans and boxers too." The man instructs him, shining a light briefly into his eyes.

"Wh-what?" Tommy manages to squeak out. 

The man repeats himself.

"Why?" Tommy cocks an eyebrow. "Interested in the goods?"

"We need to search you." Is all he says in reply

Annoyed, Tommy complies, only to be shocked when the man asks him to squat and cough, yet again, doing as he's asked though.

Soon after, he's cleared of any contraband possession, and is being led to a small cabin on the property, sleeping roll and pillow tucked under his arm. He notices a boy sobbing, and then watches in horror as the boy is cracked across the back with a leather belt, making everybody else hauling wheelbarrows snap their heads up, and then immediately begin working harder.

He just stands on the steps of his cabin, in complete shock, until he's forced into the cabin, finding only the boy that he saw earlier in there, guessing everybody else is being forced to work.