Macabre Pleasures

By: Chantrea Johari

Rating: R

Summary: Jeff Kirkpatrick is an eighteen year old boy with a great life and a steady girlfriend. But due to an unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Jeff finds himself in the clutches of a group of criminals in order to keep him silent about a crime he witnessed. Taken to the group's headquarters in the middle of nowhere with no means to escape, Jeff wonders if he will ever see his family or his girlfriend again. The deplorable treatment by his kidnappers makes everything that much worse, yet eventually, he finds himself being sucked into their world. Then, it becomes not a matter of if he can leave, but instead, a matter of if he even wants to escape.

Jeff Kirkpatrick is an eighteen year old boy with a great life and a steady girlfriend. But due to an unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Jeff finds himself in the clutches of a group of criminals in order to keep him silent about a crime he witnessed. Taken to the group's headquarters in the middle of nowhere with no means to escape, Jeff wonders if he will ever see his family or his girlfriend again. The deplorable treatment by his kidnappers makes everything that much worse, yet eventually, he finds himself being sucked into their world. Then, it becomes not a matter of if he leave, but instead, a matter of if he even to escape.

Warnings: This story is YAOI which means it contains MALE/MALE RELATIONSHIPS AND SEX. The story may also contain any of the following: STRONG LANGUAGE, RAPE, DRUG USE, ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and BDSM. As you can probably tell, this is not a happy story. If you are looking for fluff or love, go elsewhere. I am not warning you again.

This story is which means it contains . The story may also contain any of the following: , and As you can probably tell, this is a happy story. If you are looking for fluff or love, go elsewhere. I am not warning you again.

Background Information: The major focus of this story is on a condition called Stockholm Syndrome. For those of you who don’t know, Stockholm Syndrome describes a psychological condition in which kidnapping victims develop a relationship to their captors. It develops when a person is in captivity, usually due to attempts to gain the sympathy of or relate to one’s captors. Often they even help their captors commit their crimes. Over time, kidnapping victims often get used to their treatment out of necessity and begin to magnify small acts of kindness to form the belief of caring on the part of their captors. Often, rescue attempts are seen as a threat by people suffering from the syndrome.

The major focus of this story is on a condition called . For those of you who don’t know, Stockholm Syndrome describes a psychological condition in which . It develops when a person is in captivity, usually due to attempts to gain the sympathy of or relate to one’s captors. Often they even help their captors commit their crimes. Over time, kidnapping victims often get used to their treatment out of necessity and begin to magnify small acts of kindness to form the belief of caring on the part of their captors. Often, rescue attempts are seen as a threat by people suffering from the syndrome.

The syndrome is named for the Norrmalmstorg robbery which took place in one of the largest banks in Stockholm, Sweden. Four captives were held for six days in the bank strapped to dynamite. When they were rescued, they were so sympathetic to their captors that two of the prisoners formed friendships with their captors, one of them even forming a ‘defense fund’ to help pay for the expenses procured by their trial. It was even rumored that one of the captives got engaged to one of the men who held her captive, which, though untrue (it was a product of mistranslation), helps to illustrate some of the effects of the syndrome.

Please understand that this does not mean that the characters fall in love. Far from it, in fact, so don’t look for that here. Perceived love is far different from actual love, and love out of cruelty is not love at all. This story is an unabashed DARKFIC without a doubt. There will be no more warnings about any of this, and any flames along these lines will be ignored because you have been warned.

Notes: The prologue of this story actually takes place at the end of the story, the rest of the story then focusing on how events got to that point. Please, don’t be confused by that fact.

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The two officers in black gear motioned to the other members of the squad, watching them immediately fan out around the perimeter of the house, using the woods around them and the darkness as cover. Nothing more than a faint rustle of brush around them belied their presence around the house, lights out in all of the rooms at the late hour.

Detective Hayes looked at her partner, barely seeing his face in the cloak of blackness surrounding them. She watched as he did quick survey of the officers around them, getting affirmative signs from all in sight. Detective Jameson pulled the mouthpiece of his headset closer to his lips, speaking softly into the receiver.

“We have the perimeter secured, sir,” he said softly into the small radio. “The house is dark. How should we proceed?”

The small-sounding voice filtered into all the officers’ ears with only the slightest bit of static. “Proceed quickly into the house. You’ll have to knock down the door; the security system and locking mechanisms are too complex to disable without alerting someone inside. We’re going for speed, not stealth.”

“Roger that,” Detective Jameson said into the mouthpiece, seeing as a few officers came up beside his partner and himself with a large battering ram. He gave them the signal to proceed just as he said, “Be ready to move as soon as the door is open,” into the microphone for all the other officers to hear.

The two detectives in charge moved to the side, letting the other officers smash the large object into the door. After two firm hits, the door flew open off its hinges, the detectives running inside with lightning speed to the sound of at least two loud alarms echoing off the walls, both with different screeching, computerized frequencies.

The two made their way up the stairs immediately, leaving the ground floor to the other officers flooding in behind them. They heard two voices call, “Clear!” before the angry screams of a young woman shrilled through the house, echoing off the walls loudly. Cursing to themselves at the extra noise she had made, the two detectives picked up their pace. They had clearly located Kathryn Blake.

Two officers behind them made their way into the rooms on the right. Detective Hayes motioned for Detective Jameson to head to the door to her left, moving to the door just ahead of her. She could hear from the calls of the other officers that the rooms they had just checked were empty.

Detective Hayes pushed open the door quickly, pointing the gun through the doorway cautiously. She found it to be a bedroom, though it appeared to be empty. She ran in to check the closet just to make sure but found that empty as well.

Detective Jameson made his way down the hall, opening the first door he came to and extending his gun into the room. He pulled down the gun after just a half-second; it was just a bathroom, and clearly an empty one at that. His partner joined him after a second.

“Mine was empty,” she said. “You?”

“Me too,” he confirmed, both of them turning to look at the door at the end of the hallway. It was the only room that hadn’t been checked. Exchanging a glance, the two ran toward the door Detective Jameson kicking it open with a great deal of force. Both detectives had their guns pointed into the room in seconds, a red beacon on the wall flashing in time with the alarm.

A tall man with long black hair falling around his face was pointing a gun at the two of them, a slightly shorter man with brown hair standing next to him doing the same. Both were in a trained shooter’s stance, their legs spread slightly apart and their knees bent a bit, as if preparing to strike if need be. Both of the men were shirtless and in various degrees of undress.

“Drop the guns,” Detective Jameson called in his most intimidating voice, though he was almost sure that they would not comply. Still, it was procedure that they say it, or excessive force could not be justified.

As he had expected, the suspects did not drop the guns, but instead stayed nearly still, pointing them at the two officers in the doorway. Another group of officers came up behind them as Detective Jameson began to survey the room, never truly taking his attention off of the suspects. He was astounded by what he saw.

Behind the two armed men was a younger-looking man with blond hair cowering next to the dresser, a large bruise already forming on his face. He looked stunned, if not truly afraid. He was completely naked, huddling his small body into a tight ball to try to cover that fact, his knees drawn up to his chest like a frightened child, despite the fact that he was at least twenty.

But what really struck even the most seasoned officers was the scene on the bed. There was a young man with semi-long light brown hair sweat-plastered to his face. Tears were running down his cheeks, but there was a gag in his mouth so that he couldn’t scream, his hands handcuffed to the headboard above him and ankles chained to the footboard. He had obviously been blindfolded, but the blindfold had since come loose, falling to about nose-level. He was completely nude, the blanket atop him only allowing for the tiniest bit of modesty.

What was most shocking about his appearance was not the way he was tied but the large, crimson stain forming on the sheets beneath him, only a shade darker than the silken sheets he was lying atop. There were small cuts all along what was visible of his chest, a myriad of whitish scars covering the area to show that this wasn’t the first time he had been treated that way. Rough bite marks covered his neck and shoulders, and there were finger-shaped bruises along his hips. The area around his lips was swollen and red from the gag, the tiniest bit of blood dripping from his lips. The red flashing alarm light cast the room with an even more eerie glow, the soft light that had before pervaded the room so dim that they had been unable to spot it from outside.

“Drop your weapons and no one will get hurt,” Detective Jameson heard one of the officers behind them call, and the two men exchanged a glance, obviously seeing that they were ridiculously outnumbered. They didn’t drop their weapons though.

Suddenly, the taller man simply collapsed, the other man glancing around nervously for the reason. The officers all knew of the sharpshooter outside using a gun with a silencer, but they took advantage of the other man’s distraction to tackle him to the ground, his gun sliding across the floor and out of reach. The boy chained to the bed tried to let out a strangled scream around his gag, but it was mostly lost in the commotion. Someone else subdued the man who had been shot—the man they all knew to be Nigel Blake, the group’s ringleader.

Detective Hayes ran to the bed to sit beside the restrained young man, confident that the other officers could control the suspects. She looked at the chains in frustration, glancing at the man cowered next to the dresser, shaking. She didn’t want to upset the obviously frightened man, but she knew that if they didn’t get the other one unchained soon, there was a chance he’d die of blood loss.

“Where are the keys to this?” she demanded, looking at the cowering man. He began to tremble even worse but he pointed up at the dresser above him, where Detective Hayes could see a ring of keys. She crossed the room, trying to ignore the tumult as the two men struggled to escape from the numerous officers restraining them.

She grabbed the ring of keys, going back to the bed as she motioned for one of the free officers to go help the trembling nude man on the floor. The female officer approached the frightened man slowly, but as soon as she got close, he started to scream, “Don’t touch me! Stay away!” and she backed off a bit, trying to be as non-threatening as possible.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said quietly. “I just want to get you out of here.”

“No! Leave me alone!” the man screamed, burrowing further into his protective corner. Detective Hayes turned her attention back to the man on the bed, fumbling with the keys until she found the right one to undo the handcuffs around the young man’s wrists. He started struggling immediately, flailing his one still-cuffed hand around dangerously.

The two suspects had been subdued, so a few freed officers came over to help her with the hysterical man. One came over and held his wrist to keep him from hurting anyone or himself while another officer took the ring of keys and undid the manacles on his ankles, pulling the blanket that lay atop him off a little more. More blood was revealed soaking into the sheet below him but the man continued to struggle, kicking with his feet now as well.

It took two officers to restrain the man’s feet as Detective Hayes gently attempted to remove the ball gag from his mouth, his struggling making that difficult. She finally managed to get it off, though she had made a small cut into the side of his mouth because of his thrashing around.

The second the gag was out of his mouth, he began screaming, his flailing renewed as he regained his voice. “Don’t touch me!” he screamed, his words echoing what the other man had been screaming even before. “Nigel!” he shrieked after the man they were now leading out of the room on a stretcher, the bullet wound he sustained crippling his ability to leave the room of his own accord.

Detective Hayes’ brow furrowed nervously as the dark-haired man looked over at the frantic man violently fighting them on the bed. Was he really calling for the man who had kidnapped him—raped him?

The man on the stretcher turned his glassy eyes to his captive. “It’s all right, Kitten,” he said gently. “Stop struggling. Just go with them.”

“No!” the young man protested loudly. “Nigel!”

“Shh, Kitten. Quiet,” he soothed, sounding like he was talking to a spooked horse. The man on the bed finally stopped struggling, falling limp in the officers’ grip. The two paramedics carrying the man on the stretcher led him away and the man on the bed lay limply in their arms as the officers stripped away the blankets, gasping at what they saw.

There was a darker pool of blood around the man’s lower body, especially near his genital area. Trying to survey the man’s injuries, one of the officers at his feet lifted his legs up a bit to see that much of the blood was dripping from the man’s anus, his upper thighs and buttocks covered with whip-marks, some old and some fresh.

“We need some paramedics over here!” one of the officers called, and two EMTs showed up at their side immediately, taking in the sight of the injured man and quickly preparing a stretcher to lead him out. He now placidly allowed their help, letting them lift him onto the stretcher, his body staying limp all the while and his hazel-eyed gaze unfocused.

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Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick entered the front of the hospital looking frantic, dashing to the front desk. “We’re looking for our son, Jeffrey Kirkpatrick,” the middle-aged man said to the nurse behind the desk, watching as she turned to her computer to look up the information. Before she could say anything to them, a man with short brown hair and brown eyes walked up to them.

“Are you Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick?” the man asked, causing them both to turn around abruptly to face him. The two looked absolutely shocked for a second before they calmed, looking at the man.

“Can we help you?” Mr. Kirkpatrick asked warily.

The man pulled something out of the pocket of his jacket, flipping open a badge to show them. “My name is Detective Jameson,” the man told them. “I was one of the detectives in charge of investigating the people who took your son. May we speak for a moment?”

The couple nodded, Mrs. Kirkpatrick clinging onto her husband’s arm as if for dear life. The detective led them to an area of the waiting room unoccupied by anyone and gestured for them to sit, both of them doing so nervously. He sat down across from them, regarding them seriously.

“Tell us…is our son all right?” Mrs. Kirkpatrick demanded worriedly, clinging even more tightly to her husband.

Detective Jameson sighed lightly. “We’re not sure yet,” he told them carefully. “He’ll undoubtedly recover, but—mentally, he seems to be in pretty bad shape right now. It may take years of therapy before he is the same boy that you both knew.”

Mr. Kirkpatrick looked nervous before posing the next question. “How so?” he questioned finally, his tone anxious.

Detective Jameson took a deep breath before answering. “It seems that he’s grown an attachment to his kidnappers. He’s angry at us for arresting them.”

The couple’s eyes widened. “What?” they demanded simultaneously, their voices disbelieving.

“It’s a condition known as Stockholm Syndrome. It often happens to people who are held for long periods of time in captivity. It’s not his fault, and he’s obviously not thinking clearly. It will take him time to come out of it. Just don’t be alarmed by his behavior if it strikes you as strange.”

The couple stayed silent for a few moments, staring at the detective. “Can we see our son now?” Mrs. Kirkpatrick asked, looking tired and haggard. Her husband ran his hand comfortingly over her arm.

“I’m afraid that there’s one more thing that I should discuss with you before you see your son,” the detective warned, and both parents looked at him tiredly, as if unable to take any more bad news. After the disappearance of their son and now news of his numerous injuries, Detective Jameson could understand their weariness.

“What?” Mr. Kirkpatrick asked, toying with the hairs of his beard fretfully.

Detective Jameson took another deep breath, knowing that the couple would not like the news that he had for them. “Your son was repeatedly raped and brutalized by his attackers,” he said, unable to find any better words to describe what had happened. There was no gentle way to tell about a rape.

Mrs. Kirkpatrick let out a gasp and buried her face in the crook of her husband’s shoulder. He put his arm around her, trying to comfort her as quiet sobs escaped her mouth. “All right. We understand,” Mr. Kirkpatrick said, though it sounded a bit as if he was about to cry as well. “Can we see him now?”

“Of course,” the detective assented. “Let me bring you to him.”

The couple stood up, Mrs. Kirkpatrick wiping her eyes carefully as she tried to get her sobs under control. Once it seemed that she was at least a bit more composed, Detective Jameson began to lead them toward the elevator, taking them to the proper floor before leading them down a corridor toward their son’s room.

He stopped in front of the door. “He’s in there. We’ll refrain from questioning him for a couple of days because he is obviously rather traumatized, but we’ll have to come get a statement from him sooner or later,” the detective told them.

“We understand, Detective,” Mr. Kirkpatrick said. “You’re just doing your job. Thank you for bringing our son back to us.”

“I’ll pass that on to the rest of the police department,” Detective Jameson told them, making his way back to the elevator to let them have some time alone with their son. As the elevator doors closed behind him, the couple made their way to the door, pushing it open tentatively.

The two stepped inside, eyes falling on their son in his bed. He was sitting up slightly, aided by the position of the bed and a large pile of pillows. He was wearing a hospital gown, bandages around both of his wrists as he stared out the window, his face turned away from them. Other than that, he appeared relatively uninjured, an IV tube attached to his arm.

“Oh Jeff,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick breathed out in relief, making her way to the side of the bed. She didn’t want to startle her already-traumatized son. He turned slowly to face them, staring at them for a second without recognition before his vision cleared.

“Mom? Dad?” he finally said, his voice weak and hazel eyes filling with tears.

“Jeff!” his mother exclaimed excitedly, enveloping her son into a firm hug. His father came around to the other side of the bed and joined in the embrace, Jeff’s arms staying at his sides for a moment before he let his arms curl limply around his parents. Tears ran down both his parents faces as Jeff stayed stiffly in their hold.

Both of Jeff’s parents pulled away, feeling his rigidity within their embrace. “Jeff, what’s wrong honey?” Mrs. Kirkpatrick asked gently, her gaze still filled with tears of happiness at seeing her son again.

Jeff’s face was filled with whimsical confusion for a second before he answered, his voice unsteady. “Why am I here? Where’s Nigel?” he questioned, perplexed.

Having been told the names of Jeff’s captors even before the police stormed the building, his parents were not too caught off-guard by the unfamiliar name. “You’re here in the hospital because you’re injured, sweetie. And Nigel’s been taken away by the police. He can’t hurt you anymore,” she replied tenderly.

Jeff cocked his head to the side, looking at her without comprehension. “But he didn’t hurt me. He took care of me,” he insisted dully. “He’s not a bad man. Why do the police have him?”

Mrs. Kirkpatrick shook her head. “He is a bad man, Jeff. What he did to you was wrong,” she insisted as gently as she could manage. She wanted to scream about the injustice of it all—what had happened to her baby! She wanted to kill the man who had made her smiling, happy boy into this emotionless shell that sat before her. Yet she couldn’t let that show to her son; she didn’t want to scare him.

“That’s not true,” he argued mutedly. “He—he just liked things that way. He always made sure I felt good, even when he and Kenny hurt me. He took care of me afterward. He—he—”

Mrs. Kirkpatrick put a hand on her son’s arm. “Shh, baby. It’ll be all right. Things will be better soon,” she told him, although she herself did not believe her own words.

Jeff shook away from her grasp. “No…no! I want to see him! They shot him, and he was bleeding all over the place,” Jeff protested, as if he was just remembering for the first time. “I need to see him—to see if he’s okay—”

Mrs. Kirkpatrick looked at her husband helplessly, unsure of what to do. How could they let their son see the man who had raped and brutalized him for months? How could they calm him when his worry was for that same man? How could they speak kindly about him, knowing the way he had treated their son? She felt even more helpless than she had in the months Jeff had been missing, when the police had had no leads.

“I’m sure he’s fine. The hospital is probably taking good care of him,” Mr. Kirkpatrick assured his son, though internally, he wished that the man had died, and suffered painfully while doing so.

Jeff calmed a bit at his words, but not fully, shifting around on his pillows for a second. “I want to go to sleep now. I’m tired,” Jeff said listlessly. Not knowing what else to do, Mrs. Kirkpatrick quickly stood at her son’s side, as he pushed the button to ease the bed back into a lying position. Feeling rather unproductive, she repositioned the pillows behind his head as he lay all the way down, turning on his side and closing his eyes without another word.

Mrs. Kirkpatrick looked helplessly at her husband again, but he looked just as lost as she felt.

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“God damnit!” Detective Jameson yelled, slamming the phone down on the cradle. His partner looked up from what she was writing to see his angry glare.

“What is it?” Detective Hayes asked, brushing a lock of short blond hair out of her eyes.

Detective Jameson cursed under his breath for a few more seconds before looking up at her, taking a deep breath to control his anger before speaking. “That was the D.A. Some of the evidence in the Whittaker/Blake trial was suppressed by the judge by an order of illegal seizure. The judge said that because we had only an arrest warrant and not a search warrant yet, anything seized at the house before the search warrant was obtained is inadmissible.”

“What?” Detective Hayes demanded angrily. “We didn’t seize anything that wasn’t in plain view. That’s fair game. Why the hell did she suppress it?”

“Their lawyers did a run-around. Completely unconstitutional,” he grumbled. “Which means proving that they were the actual thieves will be difficult at best. We can’t pin any of the murders they’re suspected for on them without some physical evidence, a murder weapon, or a witness, and all of the victims were shot with different guns. The guns we found on them were clean. The most we can get them for is receiving stolen property and since they mostly only had cash at the house at the time of arrest, it’s a Class C misdemeanor. The only other thing we can get them on is the kidnapping and rape, and that’s only if we can get the kid to testify.”

“What about Austin Jenkins?” Detective Hayes asked. “They raped him too, and blackmailed him. Can’t we charge them for that?”

Detective Jameson sighed. “There’s no proof that they did either of those things unless he testifies to it, and he’s already refused. We can‘t say they forced him into sex unless he admits it.”
“What about the fact that they threatened a group of police officers with guns? What about all the money we found in their accounts? They have no source of income for that,” Detective Hayes insisted.

“That’s hardly a fair exchange for all the crimes they committed.”

Detective Hayes sighed. “So our last chance is the Jeff Kirkpatrick, then?” she asked dejectedly.

Detective Jameson nodded. “If he won’t testify that it was, in fact, rape and kidnapping, then we can’t make any solid case against them for either of the crimes.”

She sighed again. “Let’s go talk to him then.”

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“No.”

The five people sitting in the room stared at Jeff Kirkpatrick in disbelief. They had asked him to testify against his attackers, and he had refused without even a moment’s hesitation. A girl with blonde braids sitting next to Jeff on the sofa looked up at him in surprise.

“But Jeff, don’t you want to see them punished for what they did to you?” she asked in astonishment.

“For the thousandth time, Emily, they didn’t do anything to me!” Jeff yelled, fixing all the members of the room with a fiery gaze. “I’m not going to testify against them. Why do you want to punish them for what they did if I don’t?”

“Because what they did was a crime, Jeff,” Detective Hayes insisted, surprised by the adamance with which he was defending his captors. She had heard of cases of Stockholm Syndrome before, but she had never personally seen something this severe with the level of violence that had been inflicted upon him. She couldn’t understand, after seeing Jeff when they rescued him—bloody, torn, and bruised—why he would be defending the bastards who violated and abused him.

“They didn’t rape me!” Jeff insisted. “I consented to it!”

Detective Hayes couldn’t believe, after hearing about the severe anal tearing he had sustained, after seeing the cuts on his body and the whip marks on his back and buttocks, that there was any consent involved. She couldn’t believe that with all the restraint they had been careful to use, it had truly been consensual.

“They hurt you, Jeff. You consented to them hurting you?” she asked, trying to gently lead him to realize how wrong the whole situation was.

“It was only temporary,” Jeff mumbled quietly. “They always took care of me afterwards. It made them feel good, and they made sure I did too, if I was good. Who cares if they were rough sometimes?”

The other occupants of the room watched as Mrs. Kirkpatrick choked back tears and fled the room after hearing her son’s words. He looked up and watched her disappear emotionlessly before turning back to the detectives.

“But if you don’t testify against them, they’ll get away with all of it,” Emily protested, tugging on Jeff’s arm. He pulled away from her grasp.

“Well they should. They didn’t do anything wrong.”

“They were thieves and murderers, Jeff,” Detective Jameson pointed out.

“Only if you can prove it,” Jeff retorted. “And since you can’t, you want me to testify against them for crimes they didn’t commit? Detectives, isn’t that called perjury?”

“Whether or not you believe it, what they did to you was a crime under the law, Jeff. Please, for the sake of the criminal justice system, let them be punished under the law for their crimes.”

“Did you or did you not hear me the first time? I’m not testifying against Nigel and Kenny,” Jeff bit out, standing up and storming out of the room. The remaining occupants stared after him despondently.

Detective Hayes turned to her partner. “They’re going to get away with this,” she said, as if realizing it for the first time.

“I know,” Detective Jameson breathed out quietly, shrugging tiredly down into his seat.