Finding Zach by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

“Fuck…” David breathed. He’d expected scars, but this… this was unexpected, an ugly mass of scarring that completely covered Zach’s right pectoral muscle. Where the nipple should have been was a palm-sized knot of twisted tissue, purple and red and painful-looking. Other scars radiated out from the center, equally deep and violent, looking like a combination of cuts and burns. David swallowed hard.

“Yeah,” Zach said bitterly. “Esteban kept trying to break me. He beat me, but I kept fighting him. So he whipped me. I kept fighting. He broke my fucking fingers, and wrist, and ribs, but I kept fighting. Then he did this.” He indicated the scarring. “He broke me. I stopped fighting.”

David reached up and touched the knot of scar tissue at the center. “Zach,” he whispered, horrified.

“He used a knife. Dug the nipple out. It’s amazing, the amount of pain a person can tolerate without passing out. I wish I’d passed out. But I didn’t.” Zach’s voice was wooden, as if he were reciting a tale told about someone else. “He said if I kept fighting, he’d do it to my other one, and then my balls, and then my dick. I stopped fighting.”

“Jesus,” David said.

“It got infected; that’s why the scarring is so bad. They did something with cauterizing it or something. I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly on top of things by that point. All I know is that it looks like shit. And that’s not all.” He turned around. His back was a mass of raised welts and slashes, still red and twisted and ugly. Over his shoulder, he said, “That wasn’t a particularly accurate picture you drew, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” David said.

“No. Nobody does. Dick and Jane saw some of this at the hospital, but I make a point of not letting them see anything I can hide.” He turned back around and David saw more scars on his abdomen, leading down beneath the waistband of his jeans. He saw David looking and said, “Yeah, he was pretty… thorough. And besides, every once in a while I’d try to rebel, hoping that maybe I could get him to kill me, but he was too good at what he did. He knew just how far he could go without killing me. I should have expected it; he liked to torture people. So. Seen enough?”

David ignored the harsh tone in his voice, and laid a hand on Zach’s left breast, which was unmarked except a thin surgical scar curving around the bottom of the muscle. “What’s that from?” he asked.

“From when they fixed my ribs. They’d healed wrong, but when I got back to the States they were able to go in and fix them so I could breathe right again.” Zach shrugged. “Eventually I’ll probably have plastic surgery to clean up what can be fixed, but not yet. I’m kind of tired of being cut up, you know? It’s not like these have an expiration date.”

“No,” David said. He leaned forward and laid his lips right where Zach’s right nipple should have been.

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