Page 3 of Beneath the Surface

Quinn found out an instant later.

The men came at him; all pretensions dropped in the instant it took them to close the few feet still between them. Quinn dropped the soggy bag and stumbled further into the water, panic bubbling up so fast his head went light, and he nearly lost his balance as a wave of dizziness swept over him.

“Nowhere to run, faggot,” the first guy sneered, wading in after him.

The water shimmered with a restless energy, rippling and churning around Quinn as he waded further into the lake's depths. The icy embrace of the lake crept up his body, engulfing his thighs again before climbing back up to his crotch and wrapping around his waist like a frigid vise. The cold was so intense it felt as if it were compressing hisskin, clenching tightly at his crotch as his body instinctively recoiled from the freezing touch. For a fleeting moment, he was paralyzed by the numbing grasp of the water, as it seemed to seize him with invisible hands.

Beneath him, his bare feet sank into the soft, yielding mud of the lakebed, the silt oozing between his toes in a strangely intimate caress. As he attempted to move, to retreat further into the depths and escape his pursuers, his feet became ensnared, the mud's suction clinging to him like a relentless quicksand, refusing to let go.

The men lunged, splashing through the shallows—one gripping Quinn’s shoulder and wrenching him back, the other grabbing fistfuls of his hair and shoving him under. Lake water surged into Quinn’s mouth and nose, filling his sinuses with a cold so absolute it was less a sensation than an erasure, a blankness where his thoughts ought to be. His ears rang with their laughter, their shouts, muffled underwater: “Take it, you little bitch!”—“Fucking queer!” Their fists beat against him, pummeling his back, the pain of it dull and distant through the shock of the water.

He surfaced, sputtering, and clawed at the mud to get away, but the broader man hauled him upright by the hair and spun him around. The world tilted, a slurry of sky and water and leering faces. The tall one yanked Quinn’s arms behind his back and pinned them in place, his breath hot in Quinn’s face. Then, together, they forced him to his knees in the mud.

“You like that position, don’t you?” the tall one hissed, spit flecking Quinn’s cheek. “Bet you do, you fucking cocksucker.”

Quinn gasped, the air searing his lungs. He tried to twist away, but their grip only tightened. His head was forced down, nearly submerged, the reek of algae and stagnant water filling his nostrils. The men’s laughter was a low,rolling mockery behind him, and Quinn’s voice caught in his throat—no scream, not even a protest, just the raw rasp of his own panic as cold hands pawed at his waist, fingers bruising flesh through soaked cotton.

“I bet you think about this shit all the time,” the broad guy growled, jerking Quinn’s boxers down. “You wanna get fucked, right? That’s what you disgusting faggots do—get off on ass fucking.”

Some frantic animal in Quinn shrieked at him to fight, but the lakebed held him fast, and the men had the leverage, pressing him face-first into the water so that the icy lake flooded his mouth and nose. His vision sparkled, black at the edges; for a moment, he thought he might simply drown, which would be better than whatever was about to happen.

But they wanted him alive and squirming. The big guy jerked him upright by the hair, water streaming from Quinn’s nose as he spluttered and coughed for air. His boxers were gone. He was naked, balls and cock shriveled to nothing in the frigid water, every inch of his exposed skin a pinprick of agony. He tried to cover himself, only to have his wrists seized and twisted behind him, pinning him in place.

“Jesus, look at him,” the tall one laughed, voice high and wild. “You ever seen a faggot so scared?”

The broad one grinned, teeth clenched. “Bet he thinks we’re gonnafuckhim.”

The tall one leaned down, wrenching Quinn’s head back at a painful angle and hissed in his ear, “We ain’t no faggots, you fuck. You’re gonna get what your kind deserves.” He snapped his fingers at his buddy. “Check his pack for rope or wire or something to tie his hands.”

The other man emerged from the shimmering lake, droplets cascading down his skin, and began rummaging through what was left inside Quinn's backpack with adetermined urgency. Items sailed through the air, landing haphazardly on the ground until he unearthed his prize: a tightly wound ball of twine. He returned to the lake, the water lapping at his legs, and started unraveling the twine, each spin of the thread pulling it taut until he snapped it free from the ball.

Quinn inhaled sharply, a cry of agony escaping his lips as the towering figure behind him twisted his arms with merciless precision, securing them tightly behind his back with deft fingers. “Give me another one,” the man barked, his voice cold and commanding, before shoving Quinn face-first into the chilling embrace of the water. Quinn's ankles were seized, the pressure grinding them together as he struggled in vain.

The icy lake water surged into Quinn's nose, a suffocating torrent that invaded his throat. He retched and convulsed beneath the surface, his body a frantic blur of motion as the two men held him fast, binding his ankles with swift, unyielding efficiency. The murky depths began to close in, darkness creeping into his fading vision as his breath slipped away—until, with a suddenness that jolted his senses, he was hauled upright. Quinn gasped desperately, coughing and hacking up the gritty water that choked him, his lungs aflame and his throat raw, each breath a painful reminder of his ordeal.

A sudden blow caught him blindside—a fist meeting temple with a bright, starburst of pain that detonated behind his eyes. His head snapped sideways, mouth filling with the metallic tang of blood as his cheek split against the man’s knuckles. The lake became a blur of blue above, brown below, and the two men’s faces twisting in and out of focus. Quinn’s ears rang, the shrill whine of a dentist’s drill, nearly drowning out the guttural curses slung at him.

4

They dragged him forward, water sloshing at his hips, his knees gouging furrows through the silt. The tall one pinned his arms behind his back, using the twine as a leash, yanking until Quinn’s shoulders screamed in their sockets. The broad man worked him over with methodical cruelty: fists to the ribs, open palms to the ears, a knee jammed into his gut hard enough to make him retch up lake water and bile.

He tasted blood—iron and copper, thick on his tongue, mixing with lake water and the bile rising from his gut. Their voices receded, replaced by a dull ringing, each syllable warped as if underwater:

“Fucking stay down—”

“Hold him—”

“Let go—”

“Don’t let the faggot up—”

Quinn’s head burst above the surface, vision a wash of hot red. The air rattled with his gasps, snot and spit stringing from his lips. His lungs shuddered, seized in a fit of coughing that made his chest blaze. Then—WHAM—another hit, this time from behind, a paddle of bone and muscle slamming into the base of his skull. For a split second, he felt his jaw go numb, his eyes rolling up, a thin white haze crawling across his sight.

Sound wilted. The world snapped tight to a single point: the pain, sharp and radiant, blooming through him inconcentric rings. Each time they hit him—a punch to the side of his face, a boot in his ribs, the slap of cold water as they forced his head under—his body shrank inward, curling to a hard, bright core.

He heard teeth crack. Then the taste of blood moved from his mouth to the back of his nose, bright and electric. He gagged, unable to catch breath—his hands useless, legs splayed, body twisting as they worked him with a bleak, industrial rhythm. Blows landed not with thuds—he could only hear the distant ringing—but with wet, vibrating shocks that traveled through his skull and into his teeth, as if his jaw held a tuning fork. His gums split somewhere, and blood ran down his chin, hot even as the rest of him numbed.

He was shivering so hard it made the pain scatter, the nerves stuttering and spasming even where the fists didn’t land. At some point, the big guy grabbed his head and dunked it under again, holding it down until he thrashed, a single panicked animal, the lake water freezing his sinuses, the silt scraping at his eyeballs, the wet slap of the surface above his ears like the world was laughing at him. He felt his pulse stutter, then surge, then dim, a cheap radio losing reception as his body sucked deeper into the freezing mud.

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