Page 69 of Unbound
The seven hour flight to Montana. Suffocating silence broken only by my mother's occasional prayers and my father's angry muttering about "nipping this in the bud."
Restoration Ridge from the outside looked like a church camp—log buildings nestled in pine trees, a welcome sign proclaiming "Hope and Healing for Families."
The locked doors only became apparent once you were inside.
Intake process. Stripped, examined, humiliated. Doctors poking and prodding while I shook with shame and terror.
"You're sick son,” Dr. Harrison explained kindly, like he was diagnosing the flu. "But we're going to make you well."
The memories kept coming, each one a fresh wound.
The first thing they took was sleep. Seventy-two hours of forced wakefulness, my eyelids sandpaper-raw, propped up in a chair while sermons blared from cracked speakers. "You are an abomination." "God hates what you are becoming." The words carved into me, relentless, until I could mouth them along with the recording, until they coiled like barbed wire around every thought. When my head finally slumped, an orderly’s hand would crack against my cheek, jerking me back to the nightmare. "No rest for the wicked."
Then came the ice baths—punishment for impure thoughts, thoughthey never specified how they knew. Maybe my gaze lingered too long on another boy’s collarbone. Maybe I flinched when they made us shower together. They’d drag me to the steel tub, its water black with ice, and shove me under before I could beg. The cold was a living thing, gnawing through muscle, seizing my lungs. I’d thrash, swallowing mouthfuls of freezing water, but the orderlies held me down with bored strength. "Count your sins," one muttered as my vision tunnelled. "Maybe you’ll drown before you hit ten."
But nothing compared to the electroshock.
They strapped me to a chair, shaving my temples roughly, the razor nicking skin. The clamps bit into the raw spots, cold and rust-flecked. Dr. Harrison adjusted the projector with the detached focus of a man tuning a radio. "This will rewire your sickness," he said, and then the screen flickered to life.
It wasn’t just images. It was porn—two men tangled together, gasping, touching, loving. My pulse spiked before the first shock hit.
Crack.
Lightning split my skull. My back arched against the restraints, teeth grinding hard enough to chip enamel. The video kept playing—moans, sweat-slick skin, fingers clutching sheets—while the current turned my nerves to fire. "Watch," the doctor ordered. "This is your sin made flesh." Another jolt. The men onscreen were kissing now, one rolling his hips, and my body reacted even as the electricity seared me. The agony was unbearable, but worse was the shame—pleasure and pain fused into something monstrous, until I didn’t know if I was screaming from the shocks or the horror of wanting what I saw. They only stopped when I vomited down my own shirt.
The accountability partners were worse in their own way. Andrew—sixteen, hollow-eyed—was assigned to report my every glance, every stuttered breath. We whispered sometimes, late at night, about the lives we'd had before. Then he ran. They brought him back within hours, his wrists already bruising from the restraints. He never spoke again. Three weeks later, they found him hanging in the shower room, his note smeared in blood: "I'd rather burn than lie one more day."
At his funeral, his parents thanked Dr. Harrison. "At least he's free from sin now," his mother sobbed. "He can be with the Lord."
For weeks, I envied him.
After Andrew died, there was another boy. Daniel, maybe? Or David? I couldn't remember his name anymore, couldn't quite picture his face. But I remembered his voice in the dark, whispering that someone would come for us. That we just had to hold on.
Except when I searched for him at meals, at group sessions, I could never find him. The other boys looked at me strangely when I asked about him.
"There's no Daniel here," one muttered. "You feeling okay, Miller?"
I stopped asking after that. Told myself I must have been confused, must have mixed him up with someone from before. The sleep deprivation made everything hazy.
But sometimes, late at night, I still heard that voice. Telling me to survive.
I learned to survive. Memorized the script—"I’m healed, I’m clean"—and performed it perfectly. Lowered my voice. Walked without swaying my hips. Forced myself to stare at girls in the cafeteria until my eyes ached, manufacturing interest like a bad actor in a school play. At my graduation, my father wept with pride. I threw up in the parking lot afterward, retching bile onto the asphalt while my mother rubbed my back and my father wasn't looking, murmuring, "It’s okay, baby. It’s over now."
But it wasn’t.
Eight months of hell had hollowed me out, left me a husk that looked like Jesse Miller. And now they wanted a year.
This time, I knew, it would finish the job.
I came back to myself slowly, realizing hours had passed. The room was darker now, late evening settling over the house. I could hear voices through the door—my parents making arrangements.
The panic returned like a physical blow. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see past the black spots dancing in my vision. My chest felt crushed, my throat closed.
A year. A full year of what I'd barely survived at fourteen. Older now, stronger perhaps, but also more aware of what they'd be doing to me. More conscious of each piece of myself they'd strip away, more-so now that I’d experienced what it felt like to get so close to something you desperately wanted just to have it taken away.
It would kill me. Maybe not literally, but it would destroy whatever was left of Jesse Miller—the Jesse who'd argued passionately for love and dignity, who'd kissed Adrian Costas in front of the world.
For the first time, I really understood what Adrian had meant about walls. About being trapped in a life that wasn't living.
