Story code: ST-000471
Part 3: The Decoy
Marcus and David didn’t bother letting me walk. They hauled me by my armpits across the meticulously landscaped courtyard, the toes of my sneakers carving twin trenches in the crushed white gravel. The high-altitude mountain sun was a blinding, physical force, but it was nothing compared to the wall of absolute, suffocating heat that slammed into me when they shoved open the heavy doors to the Solarium.
It was a massive geodesic dome constructed of thick, industrial glass and dark steel framing. The climate control vents had been deliberately bolted shut. The air inside tasted like baked dust and desperate sweat.
A dozen teenagers were already inside, sitting cross-legged in a wide circle on the scorching terra-cotta tiles. They were drenched, their faces flushed bright red, heads bowed in terrified submission. This was the group circle, the ultimate public shaming arena for anyone who stepped out of line.
I was thrown onto the blazing tiles in the center. I gasped, the 115-degree air immediately searing my throat.
Pastor Blake strolled through the glass doors a moment later. He wasn’t sweating. He had casually draped his ruined, espresso-stained cashmere sweater over his shoulders, looking like he was stepping onto a yacht rather than into an oven. In his right hand, he carried my heavy, duct-taped lockbox. In his left, a pair of massive, yellow-handled aviation shears.
“Look at him,” Blake commanded. Twelve exhausted heads slowly rose. “Julian has brought his sickness into our sanctuary. He clings to the material world. He clings to this…” He dropped the lockbox onto the terra-cotta with a heavy, metallic clang that made several kids flinch. “…this rusted tomb of worldly sin. Today, as a family, we expose the rot.”
He knelt gracefully, jamming the blades of the shears beneath the thick silver duct tape.
*Bzzzt. Bzzzt.*
The vibration against my left ankle bone was muffled by my sock, but in the dead, stifling silence of the greenhouse, the mechanical hum sounded like a chainsaw.
Blake froze. The shears hovered inches from the rusty steel. He tilted his head, his perfectly styled brow furrowing.
*Bzzzt. Bzzzt.*
“What was that?” Blake whispered. He stared at the heavy lockbox. Then, very slowly, his gaze shifted to my leg.
The serene, philosophical mask didn’t just slip; it shattered. I watched the realization hit him. The twenty pounds of heavy, rusted iron inside that box was nothing but rocks. It was a decoy. A magic trick designed to draw every ounce of his staff’s attention during intake so they wouldn’t bother checking the thick, double-layered seam of my wool hiking socks.
“Check his legs,” Blake snapped, his voice suddenly harsh and reedy.
David lunged forward, but I was already scrambling backward across the blistering tiles. I tore at the elastic of my sock, ripping the tiny, two-inch plastic burner phone from its hiding place just before the orderly’s massive hand clamped onto my calf.
“Well, well,” Blake said, standing up and dropping the shears. The loud clatter echoed against the glass. He took a slow step toward me, his lips curling into a sneer of pure, undisguised malice. “A phone. How incredibly pathetic.”
He looked down at me, his eyes gleaming with a vicious superiority. “Is that what this grand, theatrical defiance is really about? You smuggled a device into my camp just to talk to him? That little boy back home?”
I gripped the warm plastic of the phone, my thumb frantically navigating the clunky interface. My friend on the outside, Maya, had finally broken through his holding company’s firewall. The vibration was the delivery confirmation I had been praying for.
“You think you’re a martyr, Julian?” Blake loomed over me, his voice booming in the stifling dome. The homophobic venom spilled out of him effortlessly, exposing the true nature of his so-called spiritual guidance. “You think holding onto your aberrant, unnatural desires makes you brave? You’re a sick, twisted faggot, and your parents signed you over to me. Do you have any idea what that legal authority actually means?”
He took another step, towering over my trembling form. “I can keep you in this greenhouse until your brain literally boils. I will tell your parents you are unredeemable. I will keep you trapped on this mountain until you are twenty-one, crying in the dirt for a boy who will forget you even exist.”
The kids in the circle shrank back, pulling their knees to their chests in horror. The holy man of the mountain had vanished.
“Give me the phone, Julian. Now.” Blake extended his manicured hand. “Before I have Marcus break your wrist to get it.”
“I’m not texting my boyfriend, Blake,” I rasped, locking eyes with him. I opened the encrypted audio file Maya had just sent. “I’m checking my email.”
I cranked the burner’s tiny speaker volume to maximum and pressed play.
The sound was tinny, but in the suffocating quiet of the Solarium, it carried perfectly. Pastor Blake’s voice echoed against the glass. But it wasn’t the measured, serene tone he used in his glossy brochures. It was sharp, arrogant, and echoing over the clinking of expensive crystal glassware.
*”I don’t give a damn if they have to sleep on concrete, Richard,”* the recorded Blake spat. *”Cut the food budget again. It’s a wilderness endurance camp, just spin it to the parents as a fasting exercise.”*
A second voice on the recording-an older man-replied nervously. *”If state regulators look too closely at these physical punishments…”*
*”Let them look!”* the recorded Blake laughed sharply. *”My grandfather’s trust explicitly dictates I maintain active, on-site directorship of a ‘moral rehabilitation facility’ to receive the quarterly disbursements. That’s seventy million dollars, Richard. As long as these rich, desperate parents keep dropping off their defective kids and paying tuition, the board stays happy. I am not losing my inheritance just because a few pathetic teenagers can’t handle the heat. Keep the gates locked.”*
The recording hissed to a stop.
The brutal, heavy silence returned to the Solarium, broken only by the ragged breathing of the dozen kids in the circle. Every single pair of widened, shocked eyes was now locked directly on the pastor.
Blake stood completely frozen in the center of the terra-cotta tiles. His manicured hand was still outstretched. The aviation shears lay forgotten next to the decoy lockbox. The blood had entirely drained from his perfectly moisturized face, leaving him pale, hollow, and trapped in his own glass cage.