*Trigger Warning*
A kind smile. Bright lights around him. Cheerful laugh. Loving eyes.
People loved him. People cared for him. People wanted to protect him.
If only they could see it. Swimming in the outer rims of where the lights end. Circling around him like sharks. The darkness is waiting. The darkness is looking for the perfect chance to attack him.
When I look at him... I can see it slowly making its way towards him. And I have no choice but to stand and wait, stand and watch as it gets ready to destroy him as it did with everyone else.
It shouldn't be too much of a shock, however... He is too innocent for his own good... So that's why everyone pushed him out of the way of each attack, and he never saw it... That is until he looked in the mirror and saw someone walk into the darkness, to buy him just a little more time with his innocence...
How did I not notice this until now?...
***
"It is so nice to finally meet someone that my son is dating," the sweet voice told me through my phone screen.
It's two days after Christmas, and Jonathan finally came out and told his family about him being gay, and told them that he was dating me. After a mini freak out reaction that he said invalid his dad walking out of the room, his mom having a panic attack, and his sister laughing, yelling "I knew it" over and over, his mom wanted to say hello to me.
"I have to admit, even if I don't agree with Jonathan new lifestyle, he does know how to pick a good looking man."
"Mom!" Jon looked like he was about to die from embarrassment already, even though his mom and I have barely even talked for a minute.
I chuckle, feeling my face heat up. "Thank you, Mrs. Dennis. It is very nice to meet you too. Hopefully someday soon we can say that is person."
"Oh, I would love that! Granted I'm not looking forward to church for the first time since I was young, but as long as my children are happy, I'll suck it up and be happy for them. And pray a little more," she whispers the last line, but I act like I didn't hear it.
At least she is trying.
I look behind her, towards the corner of the screen and see Jonathan leaning against the doorframe, watching us speak. He looks over, and it sort of feels like he and I lock eyes, which makes both of us smile.
"Speaking of children, I need to know; do you have plans on adopting in the future?"
I quickly feel my eyes widen and I almost drop my phone. The idea of kids hadn't exactly come to my mind, ever. Most likely because I still am technically a kid.
In the background of the call, I hear a girl laughing and Jon quickly yells at his mom. "We just started dating four months ago!"
"Well, that's plenty of time to start thinking. Plus, you told me that you wanted to come out now because you-"
"Evan, what time is it there," Jon quickly interrupts. I look back at the screen and see him now pulling the camera away from his mom so that it's facing him. "Shouldn't you be getting ready for work?!"
I look at the time and sigh, knowing that he's right. "Yeah actually. I need to leave right now."
From off-screen, I hear someone then yell out, "Isn't it, like, four or five where he is?"
"It's four," Jon says, annoyed. "What's wrong with it being four?"
"What does he do that makes him go to work at four?"
My jaw drops and I, without thinking, ask, "Wait, Jon, you haven't told them what I do?"
Jon snaps his head around to look at the screen and then to the camera. I see the color drain from his face and his eyes go wide. "Well, uh, I thought, uh," he starts rambling.
"That's true, what does he do, Jonny," his mom asks.
Biting my lip, I quickly feel bad, however, "Well, I got to get to work. It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Dennis! Love you, Jon! I'll see you when you get back!"
My quick goodbye instantly snaps him back to reality. "What? Oh no, you don't! You are-" before he could finish his sentence, I quickly end the call.
I instantly start laughing, but quickly get up and start grabbing my things, not wanting to be late for work. As I walk out of my apartment, I look over and see Brock, Ze, and Mini all hanging out in the middle of the courtyard. Pulling myself back together, I decided to walk over to see what's going on. When I walk up to them, they all turn to me and smile at me.
"Hey Evan," Mini greets me. "Brock just told me you started on your sophomore year of high school a few weeks ago. I know you said before that you were going back to school, taking online classes, but damn boy. I didn't know how much work you were putting in to do this. I'm proud of you, man."
"Same here," Ze adds in. "I know it's hard to go back to school, but the fact that you're actually stepping up to go back and get that degree, it says so much."
I blush. "Thanks, guys. I just hope I can get through the rest of my classes just as fast as I got through my freshman classes."
"You know you can always turn to us if you need the help," Brock tells me.
"And when it's a slow day at the club, I can always cover for you if you want to hide out in the VIP rooms to do some work," Ze adds in.
I smile at the three in front of me. "You guys are the best."
They reach over and gently pat my back before Lui and Tyler walk over and join us. Once they do, we all start walking to the parking lot before we split up to get into our different cars, driving straight to the club.
Once there, all of us change and get straight to work, setting up the club. It all feels like a completely normal day. A bit busier than it was last week, but my guess is that these are all there family members from out of state or something. There are definitely a lot of new faces here, which quickly becomes annoying. This means that a lot of the guys here have the idea that just grabbing whoever they want, whenever they want it okay, which it very much isn't.
I wasn't the only one either. At one point, Ze pulled me to the back and asked me to cover for him, because he was one more admitted dick grab away from beating someone's head in with a tray. While we worked around people needed to take breaks before breaking someone's something, it was quickly adding up. After three hours of the club being opened, I was getting ready to punch someone in the face as well.
Especially after one man literally walked up behind me while I was giving a group their drinks. The sick son of a bitch grabbed my hips and pulled me into him, pressing his dick into my ass. He then tried to grab my shorts, and I had to yell out "you had too much" which is code for the security guards to come help us. Part of me feels like Tyler and David had been on the floor with us the whole night already, because they had gotten to me just two seconds around I yelled that out.
The worst part, however, they didn't throw him out. They couldn't, because he claimed to have bumped into me, and the bastards at the table this happened in front of claimed they didn't see a thing. They were probably hoping to see one of us get fucked as if it was a fucking porno.
By the four hour mark, I was pissed and ready to start fighting, telling me that I needed a little bit of time. Looking around the club, I could tell some of the dancers had thought the same thing too. There was only a handful left on the floor, so it was my guess that the others went to the back as well.
Turning to Ze, I sigh and say, "Hey, can you cover me? I need to work on homework or something before I take a tray to someone's dick."
"Yeah, I'll cover you, but don't go to the VIP rooms. Some of the dancers are trying to take care of these assholes in there, hoping that taking them out of the hormonal crowd will get them to calm down a bit."
I look over towards the hall leading to the VIP rooms and I see Mini and Lui leading two people down the hallway. "Shit, those are the only rooms that are soundproofed enough for me to actually get some work done."
"Panda's office is soundproofed," Scotty points out. "Why don't you ask him if you can get some work done in there?"
"I don't know," I say, nervously. "I haven't told Panda that I was going back to school, so I don't know how he would react to hearing that."
"Seriously, how many people here are students?"
I let out a sigh and am about to say something, but am stopped when Ze then says, "Why don't you go work in your car? Just change into your street clothes, lock the doors, take fifteen minutes to work and relax a bit, and then come back."
"That's a great idea, Ze," I happily say, glad to not have to try to explain what I'm working on to Panda. "I'm going on break," I then say as I put my tray down and start running to the back.
As I walk backstage, however, I notice that the area is mostly empty, with all the dancers either being on the stage, the floor, or taking some of the customers back to the VIP rooms. However, I do notice one person back here, peeking out onto the floor from the curtains.
"Panda?"
Panda looks over to me and sighs, shutting the curtains. "Did something happen to you too?"
"What?"
"Almost everyone has gone up to my office, telling me that this crowd has been the worst we've seen in a long time." He then walks over to the couch and sits down. "Well, most have said the worst we've ever seen, but Brock described it as the worst we've seen in a long time. Long before you even came in."
I take a deep breath and walk over. "I was just taking a break because of these assholes."
Panda just sighs and starts to rub his forehead. "What did they do to you?"
"Do you want the list or just the worst?"
"Oh god, there's a list for you?" I nod. "Just tell me the worst of it."
"A man grabbed my hips, pushed me into his dick, and tried to take my shorts off."
"God damn it," he said again. "Alright, I asked our regulars to come in for a check-in, and I'm going to ask them to look the other way."
"Wait, what?!"
My reaction made him rethink what he said and he snaps to attention. "Oh god, that's not what I meant! I'm talking about you guys!"
"What?"
"I'm going to talk to them and have them be extra hands, extra security guards, just for today. And I'm going to ask them to arrest any bastards that put their hands on you guys, and look the other way so you guys can have a little payback if they touch you."
My eyes widen and my jaw drops. "Wait, so, if they touch us or try to grab us-"
"If the regulars agree to help, you can smack them around a bit before they arrest them." I can't help but smile when he says this, which causes him to laugh. "Hey, I make sure to keep a good relationship with the police department for a reason. It's taken a bit of time, but keeping that relationship strong will be important. Especially when it comes to times like this."
He then stands up and stretches, popping his back. "Well, I'll add your incident into the details for them. If you wanted to hang out in someplace quite, you can go ahead and use my office to finish up your break. I'm just going to keep an eye on everyone from here since I need to wait for the regulars to get here."
"When were they coming?"
"I just made the request for them to come about five, maybe ten minutes ago. They just need to report back to their station or some shit like that and then they'll be over."
I nod and thank him before I turn away and run out of the area, quickly running up the stairs. When I pull out my phone, I see that I have about eight minutes left for my break. Not that much time, but it's better than nothing. So, I pull up some of my English homework on my phone and take a seat on the couch and get started on it.
I'm only able to get through reading a couple pages of a chapter I needed to read before my break was up, but its better than nothing. So, I start to back out of everything on my phone before I went back downstairs. As soon as I get back to my home screen, I walk out of the office, down the stairs, and out to the floor, where I'm greeted to Ze growling loudly as he slams his tray onto the bar.
That's not good.
I run over and quickly ask, "What happened?"
"What do you think," Ze snaps. "I'm getting sick of these assholes pressing their fucking boners against my ass! I swear, paying for fucking college isn't worth this shit!"
"Look, things are going to get better soon," I try to reassure him. "Why don't you take another break?"
"Hey!" Ze and I quickly turn around and gasp when we see someone trying to climb over the bar to get to Scotty. Even from the other side of the bar, I can see his bloodshot eyes clouded with lust and the disgusting amount of sweat pouring off of his face. With the chaos that was just these assholes happening around us, I just realized I wasn't paying attention to how much my customers were drinking. And if I wasn't paying attention to that, I don't think anyone else was either.
Ze and I back away, not knowing what to do, but just as the man is about to swing his legs around to be on the other side of the bar, Scotty grabs a full bottle off of the shelf behind him and bashes it into the drunk's head, causing him to fall backward and hit the floor hard.
Before anyone can say anything or do anything, we hear someone yell from the entrance, "Looks like we came just in time."
We all turn and see Jordan, Dan, Aleks, Eddie, and James all standing in front of the entrance, uniforms on and three of their guns drawn. Along with the regulars coming in, two immediately running in and arrest the drunk before he could get off of the floor, Jay stops the music, and we hear Panda walk out on stage. With a fire burning in his eyes, the room stays quiet and a lot of people quickly sober up.
"For those of you who do not know me, I'm the owner of this club! And all night, I've been told about all of you trying to grab my boys in ways that this club doesn't work by! I didn't realize I had to explain this, but a strip club is not the same as a fucking brothel!
At a strip club, you pay for the tease! At a strip club, you pay to watch people take off their clothes, dance around a pole, and maybe dance on you! At a brothel, you pay for the sex!
This is a strip club! And because I've gotten over fifteen complaints from my boys, I had to call the police to make sure you boys behaved yourselves. However! Because of that man right there in handcuffs trying to climb the bar, we are closing for the night! Boys, come to the back! Get these fuckers out of here!"
Once he was done speaking, Panda turned away and walked back backstage. Ze then grabs me and practically drags me to the back to get away from everyone on the floor. Soon after we get backstage, the rest of the dancers, servers, and Scotty join us.
"I'm sorry you guys had to go through all of that for so long," Panda tells us. "I've had to work crowds like this in the past as well, and I remember wishing I could rip their dicks off every time they pressed their shit against me."
"I don't get it," I speak up. "Last year we had a crowd from out of state, but they didn't act nearly this bad."
"That was probably because they had more places to go to," Ze then says, rolling his eyes.
"What do you mean by that?"
"You're talking about the three clubs that just got shut down, right," Scotty asks as he walks over to one of the vanities and sits down.
"Hold the fuck up," Panda interrupts. "What are you two talking about?"
"Y'all are talking about the nightclub downtown and the two strip clubs from uptown, right," GaLm asks. Ze and Scotty look over and nod their heads.
"The nightclub got shut down for selling cocaine, molly, and LSD," Ze goes on to explain. "I think I heard that one of the strip clubs was shut down for human trafficking, right?"
"Yeah," Scotty takes over. "According to the news article I read, that club was taking women from other countries and forcing them to work for almost no pay. Some of the women started doing tricks just to get some more money to try to pay their way out. The other club was a gay strip club, and they got shut down because the owner was "encouraging the workers to please the customers at any cost" as one of the dancers from there put it."
My jaw drops when I hear about this. "How did they all get caught?"
"The police, obviously," Ze says. "According to my friend that told me about this, the clubs had been under suspension for a while, so the police sent multiple cops in to collect evidence of all of those things. At the nightclub, they sent several police officers in undercover to buy everything they had to offer, and pounds of it. They ended up even getting the owner on camera, saying that he had been selling for years.
As for the two strip clubs, they sent people in as Johns. At the straight strip club, they pulled several girls aside after they were offered sexual favors, and the girls told them everything on camera. After they got a search warrant, they found books filled with the girls' names, how much they owed for their freedom and their passports.
At the gay strip club, they struggled to try to collect evidence without having to pay the boys for sex. They ended up having to catch one of the boys and hope that he would wear a wire or a camera. They somehow got one though."
I look over to Panda and see him shake his head and sigh. "These bastards must have come from that club. They were probably hoping you boys would be just as eager to please them as that other club." He then looks over to the curtains. "It's probably a good thing that I asked our regulars to come by. I'm sure they would love to take in these assholes for pissing all of you off alone. Anyways, after they get rid of these bastards, we'll-"
Panda stops when we all hear screaming and crashes coming from the floor. My blood quickly turns cold as one of the voices quickly stands out to me. It's Tyler. And I can tell that he's struggling with someone.
Everyone quickly runs towards the door and stage to see what is happening, but I feel as if I'm frozen in place. So many horrible things have happened this year, and we're only a week away from the new year. What other horrible things could happen?... What will the world... This club... Do to Tyler, when he was just starting to be happy?
I feel as if I'm walking on nothing as I walk to the stage and push my way through everyone. My heart pounds heavily in my chest as I see James and Aleks pulling Tyler off of someone, while Jordan and Dan hold the guy down. When they pull him up, I see the same asshole that had grabbed me and pressed his dick on me.
Tyler's face is red and filled with tears. He's screaming that he's going to kill that guy for what he did.
It isn't until Jordan says the charge this bastard will be taken in for that we all stop breathing, shocked and horrified by what had happened when we weren't looking.
"You are under arrest for the sexual assault of Craig Thompson. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can not afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.-"