The Unfortunate Story of Rory Crawford

Rory’s fingers ran along his collar, tracing the stitching in the thick leather black leather, counting every knot, feeling the weight of the small padlock in his small hand. He’d been up for hours now, and just as the sun began to crawl into his window, he said a quiet “good morning.” No to the sun, not to the window, not to the bars on the window, but to himself. Rory wasn’t one for talking to himself, but every morning he said it. Because it was his. He didn’t resent Cal in the slightest for owning him, for owning everything about him, but every morning he said good morning to himself because those words were his.

He stood up and began stretching, going through his paces and contemplating whether he wanted to run on the treadmill now or after Cal came to see him. His stretching routine lasted forty-five minutes, for two reasons: One, Cal liked how flexible Rory was, ergo, Rory needed to be flexible. Two, stretching killed time, and Rory always had time to kill. So he touched his toes, he did lunges, he squatted, he lowered himself into a split, he stretched every part of his body that could be stretched.

He planned out his day in his head as the sun worked its way further and further across the cement floor, warming its way up Rory’s legs.

After Cal comes down I’ll eat breakfast. I’ll run for a while, then read the newspaper. Then lunch, more reading, stretching, Cal, washing up, and bed.

That was the day. That was most days, actually, with some slight variations for whatever suited Cal best. Some days Cal would spend hours with Rory, either playing or, more recently, just talking about whatever was on his mind. (Mostly playing, though.) Other days, he’d bring Rory food and the newspaper, not speak at all, and that was Rory’s day. Rory hated those days, but not as much as he hated the punishment days. Those were the ones spent in solitude, without food, without a new newspaper. He knew he had earned the punishment… somehow… but sometimes it was just a little frustrating when he didn’t know what he’d done wrong. Not that he was trying to be ungrateful.

After finishing his stretching, he looked up at the clock. 9:30. On a Saturday. Breakfast time. He got onto his knees at the front of his cell and waited, looking around the basement for about the three millionth time, trying to spot new details he had somehow missed during his fourteen months with Cal. The bars were still there, three inches around, spaced five inches apart. They ran the entire length of the room, cutting it in half. On Rory’s side of the room was a single mattress, two pillows, three blankets, and beside his bed, three stacks of newspapers, each three feet tall. There was his window, eight feet up (well out of reach for him, even if it wasn’t bulletproof glass), a worn yoga mat for his stretching sessions, and a treadmill, bolted to the floor on the opposite end of the room from the window. There was also a water cooler and an enormous pack of colored pencils, both of which had been put in for “exemplary servitude,” as Cal had put it.

On the other side of the bars was a padded table on one side of the room and a sling hanging from the ceiling on the other. There was a large wardrobe standing in the far corner, filled with toys and equipment that Rory had come to know very intimately. And directly across from where Rory sat was the door. Besides his window, which offered a view of only the sky, the door was his only chance to see the outside world. Unfortunately, the view wasn't very exciting, and he usually only had a few seconds to sneak a peak before Cal closed and locked it behind him. From what he could tell, though, there was a finished basement outside, and judging from the white carpet and warm lighting, it was an expensive one. He sometimes thought about how, from out there, his little world was just another door, no different than the one leading to the bathroom or closet.

All in all, it was livable, and Rory had grown more than accustomed to his new life. Even now, as he sat waiting for his master in front of iron bars, he and Cal both knew the bars were meaningless. Rory had nowhere to go, even if he did want to leave. Truthfully, he hadn’t thought about leaving (let alone “escaping”) since his first few days, when he was so disoriented that he would’ve done anything to get out.

But as the door began to open and Cal stepped into his slave’s world, Rory thought of nothing except pleasing the man standing across from him. As his eyes fell to the floor and his posture straightened, he thought to himself the same thing he did every day: be good.

Cal, in turn, locked the door behind him and turned to Rory, smiling down at the boy and tossing the newspaper down on the floor in front of the bars. “Morning boy. Miss me?”