Hapi by Cari Waites

Jayden’s breathrasped in his throat as he struggled awake with the taste of muddy water still in his mouth. He squinted in the gloom and it took a while for him to bring his surroundings into focus. He wasn’t sure if that was because he’d taken a knock to the head—it was throbbing like hell—or if it was just so improbable that it took a while for his brain to compute it. Why the fuck was he in someone’s shed?

It was a big space, gloomy, and the noise of the rain on the tin roof muted all other sounds. Jayden picked out strange shapes in the shadows: a car body in the far corner, shelves, the rusted tines of what looked like part of a cultivator or plough. Stained plastic containers held sprayer attachments. Bristling metal shapes might have been star pickets. The place was full of junk. The shed was divided down the middle by a massive conveyor belt. Had this been a packing shed? Whatever it had been once, now everything was covered in dust and rust and grime. It didn’t look like it had been used in years.

Jayden was lying on an old, grimy mattress. He sat up gingerly. Everything still tasted of mud, and he really wanted to wash his mouth out, but where the hell was he? Why was he in someone’s shed and not in an ambulance or a hospital? Or at least in someone’s house?

His lungs were heavy and they ached. Jayden coughed to clear them. It felt like it did when he was a kid with bronchitis, except it was dirty water he spat out, not phlegm. He remembered the river. He remembered his vision going dark. He remembered thinking that whole thing about drowning being peaceful was bullshit. He shivered. What the hell had happened, and where was he?

His clothes were still damp, but that didn’t mean anything. It could have been hours or days—nothing dried here.

He drew a breath and held it while he stared around the shed again, and then he climbed to his shaky feet and headed for the faint vertical line of light nearby that hinted at a warped door no longer flush in the frame. His bare feet scraped across the cracked concrete floor. As he moved, the shadows seemed to shift as well, stretching to follow him. Jayden squeezed his eyes shut as his vision greyed and a wave of dizziness hit him. He fought against the sensation, sucking air into his lungs and holding it. Then he opened his eyes again and shuffled forward.

He reached out as he neared the door and put his hand against it. He pushed. It shifted an inch or so and then stopped. Jayden heard the rattle of a chain and pressed his face to the door so that he could peer through the small gap.

It was still pouring. Jayden couldn’t see anything apart from the rain and a shifting curtain of trees in the narrow field of his vision. A thick chain held the door closed from the outside.

Jayden pushed the door again, heart hammering. Metal scraped and groaned, but the chain held. He pushed a third time before he could finally recognise the truth: someone had locked him in here on purpose. It… it didn’t make sense, or at least, it didn’t make sense in any terms that Jayden was willing to accept.

He stepped back, wiping his hands on his damp boardshorts. Walking carefully around the rusted conveyer belt and heading for the star pickets, he moved to the far side of the shed. There had to be something in here he could use to cut the chain.

The shelves.

He squeezed past the car body to get to them, flinching when something moved. His heart raced. Fuck. The last thing he needed was to come face-to-face with a snake or something in here. He remembered hearing once that snakes were more scared of him than he was of them, but that wasn’t any comfort when he was rattling around in the gloom in bare feet.

He inspected the shelves. Bolt cutters would be nice, but there was nothing useful here, just weird shapes of rusted metal that looked like they were parts of farm machinery. Jayden moved on to the star pickets. He grabbed one. Maybe he could use it as leverage to bend the bottom of the door up enough to crawl through. It had to be better than nothing. Rust flaked under his shaking hands as he gripped the picket. Panic was building in him, thick and fast, but he pushed it back down. He needed to act. Needed to get the fuck out of here. He needed to stay ahead of his fear, and ride the wave of his adrenaline rush to focus on getting away from this place, instead of… instead of drowning.

Why had someone—Happy?—pulled him from the river only to lock him in here?

It didn’t make sense, not in any way that was good.

Jayden hurried back to the door, where he wedged the star picket through the gap. He gripped the middle tightly and leaned on it. Metal strained and groaned. And then, just when Jayden thought maybe he was getting somewhere, a shadow passed in front of the gap in the door. A screeching sound filled the air as the star picket was pulled through the gap and out of Jayden’s grip.

Jayden stumbled back.

The chain rattled, and a moment later the door was pulled open.

It might have been gloomy outside, but Jayden was still blinded for a moment. Happy loomed toward him, one arm outstretched, and his big fingers fastened around Jayden’s throat.

Jayden gasped for breath, clawing at Happy’s fingers in a futile attempt to free himself. His feet scraped against the concrete as Happy marched him backward, and Jayden barely had time to register what was happening before he was slammed down on the mattress, what little air he had in his lungs pushed out of him.

Happy straddled him, one hand still squeezing his throat. His gaze was black in the gloom.

Jayden thrashed and struggled under him, choking for breath. His eyes watered, and his chest ached. His vision greyed, and spots appeared in front of his eyes. Panic gripped him as he tried uselessly to buck Happy off him.

“Shh,” Happy crooned. “Still. Stay still.”

He loosened his grip almost imperceptibly, and Jayden sucked in a desperate breath. Hot tears streamed out of his eyes and slid down his temples.

“Wh-why—”

“Shh,” Happy said again and gave his throat a warning squeeze.

Jayden’s head pounded as he stared up at Happy through tear-filled eyes. He trembled, fingers twitching against the mattress. He’d never been so terrified.

“Stay still,” Happy said, his thumb rubbing up the side of Jayden’s bruised throat, where it settled against his jugular and pressed in slightly. Jayden could feel the pulse in Happy’s thumb beating in counterpoint with his own. Happy leaned in, his face expressionless and eyes dark, staring down at Jayden as though he was looking for something.

Jayden swallowed a whimper.

Happy leaned back, his grip loosening again on Jayden’s throat, but Jayden had the impression that if he moved or spoke, he wouldn’t even have time to blink before those punishing fingers cut off his air again. He lay underneath Happy, small shocks running through his body like electricity, trembling.

Happy made a sound in the back of his throat that might have been one of pleasure, and then he shifted slightly, tugging the hem of Jayden’s T-shirt up to expose his pebbled skin. Jayden bit back a half-formed plea as Happy’s fingers drummed gently against his throat in warning. He squeezed his eyes shut so he didn’t have to watch as Happy peeled his T-shirt off.

“Arms up,” Happy said.

Jayden wasn’t sure how he had the strength to obey or the coordination. But he must have listened to the orders, somehow, because a moment later his arms were above his head, and his T-shirt was tangled tightly around both wrists. He opened his eyes again—not seeing suddenly felt worse than the alternative of not knowing what was coming next—and watched as Happy appeared mesmerised by the rapid rise and fall of his ribs and abdomen. He sucked in panicked breaths. Happy laid his free hand over Jayden’s chest, spreading his fingers.

“Your lungs are like wings beating against a cage,” he said. “I want to cut them free and show them how to spread.”

“No! Please, no! Fuck!” Jayden tried to wrench free, his spiking panic overriding any intention he’d had to stay still and silent like Happy had commanded him. “Help me!” He didn’t even know who he was screaming for. “Help me!”

Happy grunted and clenched his hand hard around Jayden’s throat.

Jayden thrashed and struggled, the spots and the greyout coming faster than last time. He kicked his legs reflexively and pushed his arms down to try to dislodge Happy, but Happy was too strong and Jayden was rapidly weakening. Then, just when Jayden was sure he’d pass out and not wake up again, Happy loosened his grip.

Jayden sucked in a tiny sliver of air, his head throbbing and body shaking. Even though Happy was pressing him into the mattress he felt, bizarrely, like he was floating. He sagged back down, twitching as tremors ran through him, the rasp of his scant breath as loud as a roar in his throbbing skull.

“Still,” Happy said, “and quiet.”

Jayden doubted he had the strength to struggle again.

Happy relaxed his grip another fraction and then slid his free hand down Jayden’s chest, down the dip below his ribs. His fingers skirted Jayden’s naval and tickled over the hair on his abdomen. He shifted back, settling his weight on Jayden’s thighs, and tugged at the strings holding Jayden’s boardshorts on.

Jayden tensed and so did Happy’s fingers around his throat. Jayden squeezed his eyes shut again. He felt his boardshorts being tugged down. Jayden flinched as Happy closed his hand around Jayden’s dick. He hadn’t realised it was half hard until he heard Happy’s hum of approval. Happy released him, and Jayden heard the sound of spitting, and a moment later his hand was on Jayden’s dick again, this time jerking him off.

Jayden’s brain shorted out. He tried to squirm away from the touch, but there was nowhere to go. He opened his mouth to scream for help again, but clamped the urge down before the words could escape. Hot tears forced their way out from between his tightly closed eyelids.

And then Happy began to squeeze his throat again.

Something was happening to him. The pressure on his throat, his aching lungs, and his throbbing head made everything feel bigger. When Happy allowed him another breath, Jayden sucked it in eagerly, and his body was flooded with relief, with a rush of something electric that lit up every nerve ending and made his blood catch fire. He cried out, a raw, rasping sound, and didn’t even realise he’d come until Happy was shoving his cum-slick fingers into his mouth, and he tasted it.

He blinked up at the man while his body still floated, unable to distinguish the sensation of his orgasm from the rush of full-body exhilaration at being able to breathe again. He felt drunk or high. He felt like a stranger in his own tingling skin.

“Good,” Happy said, and his mouth twitched at one corner in what might have been a smile. He withdrew his fingers from Jayden’s mouth and pinched one of his nipples. His hold on Jayden’s throat was light now, almost a caress, although Jayden could feel the bruises already forming. “I own your breath, Jayden.”

Jayden blinked tears out of his eyes. “H-Happy?”

“Hapi,” the man corrected, drawing out the vowel sound a little.

“Please let me go,” Jayden begged. Hapi pressed his thumb into his pulse point, and Jayden moaned and swallowed down the rest of his plea.

“Quiet,” Hapi said, “and still.”

Jayden jerked his chin in a nod.

Hapi leaned down, his breath hot against Jayden’s face. His eyes seemed to glitter in the gloom. “You have crossed the river, Jayden. You have drowned in it.”

A new flutter of fear unfolded in Jayden’s gut and bile rose in the back of his throat.

“And now you will be judged,” Hapi murmured. “Your heart will be weighed. My father, Horus, will take your soul. My brothers will take your liver, your stomach, and your intestines. But your lungs are mine, Jayden. You breathe for me.”

Jayden stared up at him.

“You breathe for me,” Hapi repeated, rubbing his thumb along Jayden’s bruised throat. His mouth twitched again. “Until you breathe no more.”

* * *

Jayden pressedup against the gap in the shed door, squinting out into the darkness. It was night and still raining, and he could make out a faint glow through the trees. A house? A house full of crazy people like Hapi? Maybe he was the only one who was crazy. He probably did have brothers—Barry had said something about the Horace boys—but they couldn’t all be crazy like Hapi.

Nobody could be fucking crazy like Hapi.

Jayden shivered.

Something about the stuff Hapi had said sounded vaguely familiar. His heart being weighed. Jayden thought he’d heard that somewhere before, maybe when he was a kid, like a story? But it was impossible to try to figure it out when cold dread pooled in his gut at the realisation that Hapi had meant every word. That stuff about the heart and laying his lungs out like wings.

Bile rose in his throat, sour and stinging, and he fought not to be sick.

This couldn’t be real.

It couldn’t be.

He swallowed and it hurt. His throat was fucked-up because Hapi had choked him. Not even the most fucked-up thing Hapi had done. Hapi had jerked him off, and it was sick and twisted, and Jayden knew his physical reaction was just something to do with fear, with relief, with adrenaline and endorphins or whatever. He didn’t want to look at it too closely, though, because he’d dreamed of Hapi, and he’d been frozen under the man’s gaze long before Hapi had even put a hand on him. He pushed those thoughts away because he wasn’t giving up. He wasn’t going to fall into the trap of thinking that this had been in any way inevitable. And he sure as shit wasn’t going to start wondering if he really had drowned in the muddy river, and worry about whether or not all of this was part of his divine judgement.

He moved back toward the far end of the shed. He was blind in the darkness, and he swore as he stubbed his toe against something hard.

He wasn’t staying here to die.

He squeezed past the rusted car body, no longer giving a fuck if it was full of venomous snakes because his encounter with Hapi had sure put them into perspective. He rattled around on the shelves, going more by feel than anything else, looking for something—anything—sharp enough to use as a weapon.

His fingers closed around something that might have been a tent peg. It was heavy, metal, and pointed at one end, so whatever the fuck it was supposed to be, it was Jayden’s only weapon now. He shoved it in the waistband of his boardshorts and kept searching blindly for something better just in case.

Rust crumbled under his fingers. He cut his thumb on something.

At last, satisfied that there was no better option—he liked the star pickets, but could hardly get the jump on Hapi with something he couldn’t hide—he retreated back around the car body and the conveyor belt, returning to his dirty mattress. He sat there, testing the weight of the tent peg in his hand.

Could he really stab someone with it?

Then, touching his bruised and aching throat, he realised it didn’t matter if he thought he could do it or not. He didn’t have a choice.