Chapter 8: The Morning Protocol

Consciousness did not return as a waking, but as a drowning.

This was the second day, which was Sunday, June 14th, 1992. The date is etched not in sunshine, but in the damp, close dark of a roadside motel room. The air outside was seasonally warm, but within it was stale and recycled, thick with the shared breath of six people and the lingering ghosts of old cigarettes.

I had learned, over the past days, that nothing was left to chance. Every action was deliberate, a lesson in a silent curriculum. So as I surfaced that morning, it was into a reality where the fundamental boundary between sleep and violation had been permanently dissolved. I was born not into a new day, but into a pre-existing ritual.

The first awareness was a familiar, insistent physics: the wet, rhythmic pressure of a mouth on me. It was a mechanical suction that claimed its territory long before my mind could muster a defense. Then, the cooler air of the room whispered over newly exposed skin, a pathetic, mocking contrast to the violating heat of the act.

In the dark theatre of my closed eyelids, I tried to make it abstract. Just another thread in the grim tapestry, I told myself. This was not a nightmare, for nightmares imply an eventual escape into waking. Nor was it a dream, for dreams hold the shadow of one’s own desire. This was simply the baseline. The new fundamental law of our family.

I clung to the grey limbo of not-knowing. If I did not open my eyes, I could fracture. I could split the sensation from its source, cordon off the feeling from the fact. In that narrow, desperate space, I could almost believe it was some detached, biological process, a strange tide of the body, unrelated to them, or to me, or to the perverse unit breathing quietly in the gloom. A thing happening to my flesh, not to me.

But the sounds of the room sewed me back into horror, stitch by meticulous stitch.

The soft, strained hitch of a breath not mine, cutting the silence like a blade. The quiet, synchronized rustle of sheets, a fabric sound that spoke not of restless sleep, but of bodies shifting in concerted, practiced effort. And beneath it all, a low, steady hum of concentration. It was the sound of a grim workshop, of a necessary task being seen to with grim diligence. This was the Morning Protocol. It had its own acoustics, and I knew them by heart.

I opened my eyes. The ritual was already underway, and by witnessing it with open eyes, I felt myself become complicit in its completion.

The bedcovers had been pushed aside. I lay there, exposed, my gaze drifting down to the crest of Ashley’s head. Her face was a mask of strained obedience, her eyes squeezed shut as if to block out her own reflection in the dark mirror of this act. Her movements were not her own. On either side of me, propped on their elbows, Claire and Megan worked with a terrifying, mechanical precision. Their hands were buried in Ashley’s sleep-tangled hair, not caressing, not guiding in the hesitant, exploratory way of the previous night, but piloting. Their arms moved in a slow, deliberate, piston-like rhythm: pushing her head down, holding it for a measured three-count, then drawing it back. Down. Hold. Up. It was a brutal liturgy, recited on my body.

My gaze, swimming with sleep and dread, drifted to the other side of the room. Our parents were already up, already dressed. Dad stood by the window, peering through a slit in the curtain at the truck stop parking lot, sipping coffee from a motel plastic cup. Mom was at the dresser, calmly applying lipstick in the small, smudged mirror, her movements economical and sure. They were the picture of mundane normalcy, of morning preparedness.

They did not look at the bed. They didn’t need to.

The soft, wet sounds, the creak of springs, the shaky rhythm of Ashley’s forced breath, this was simply the expected morning chorus. The proof that their system was functioning. The quiet hum of the workshop was the sound of our family, working as designed.

Then, as if the four of us were engaged in a normal sibling activity, a board game, a whispered conspiracy, a shared comic book, our parents turned their attention to the bed. The familiarity of the motion was the most obscene part. I had seen this same casual pivot a hundred times in our old life: a glance over a shoulder, a shared smile, a walk across the room to join in or gently call a halt.

Mom simply glanced over while capping her lipstick with a soft click. Dad finished his coffee with a final, decisive sip and set the cup aside. They moved not with the shock of discovery, but with the serene timing of conductors stepping to the podium. In perfect, chilling unison, as if cued by some silent stage manager, they turned and walked toward us. Their footsteps were soft on the industrial carpet, a sound that should have been comforting.

A pathetic, desperate spark flared in my chest, the last ghost of the boy from two weeks ago. Now. They’ll stop it now. They’ve seen enough. They’ll see this and finally, finally call a halt. This is the line. Even for them, this must be the line.

Dad’s shadow fell over us, vast and cool, blocking the weak light from the bathroom. Mom, beside him, pulled the heavy drapes further apart, allowing a searing blade of morning sun to slice across the bed, illuminating the dust motes and the terrible, explicit truth. But his hands did not reach for Ashley to pull her away. They did not cup her trembling shoulders to lift her from me. Instead, he placed one broad palm firmly over Claire’s small hand, the one tangled in Ashley’s hair, and the other on the small of her back. A teacher’s correction, a coach’s guidance.

Mom’s hands mirrored his, coming to rest on Megan’s shoulders and back. Not to remove. Not to rescue. To augment.

With a gentle, inexorable pressure, they began to push in time with my sisters’ faltering rhythm. Their adult strength added a terrifying, definitive weight to the motion. The pace didn’t just quicken; it deepened, became more absolute and invasive. The mechanical liturgy was now led by a stronger, surer priesthood.

Ashley gagged, a wet, strangled sound that she fought to swallow, tears carving silent paths through the tight mask of her face. The combined force of the sheer, overwhelming orchestration of it coiled the tension in my gut into a white-hot wire. It was a horrifying fusion: the shame of exposure, the agony of her distress, and a traitorous, involuntary current of sensation that my body betrayed me with.

Four sets of hands now. A closed circuit of complicity, with me as its wretched core. My back arched off the thin mattress, a spasm I could not control. It was not a gesture of resistance, but of completion, a physical surrender to the horrific efficiency of their system. In that arched silence, broken only by ragged breath and the soft, collective shift of bodies, the final lesson was administered: there was no line. There was only the protocol, and we were all, in our various ways, its instruments.

Her head tilted, a parody of motherly tenderness. The floral ghost of her perfumesomething like lilies, clean and sharpclashed violently with the intimate, humid musk of the bed. Her voice was not a whisper, but a crisp, clear directive, devoid of warmth or anger. A manager issuing a vital procedural update.

“Everyone, listen closely. Focus.”

Her hands remained firm on Megan, her own rhythm now dictating the pace, which had become a steady, metronomic drive. Ashley’s muffled, frantic breaths hitched in time.

“Once Sam releases,” she said, the term clinical and cold, “you are not to allow Ashley to remove her mouth. You are not to let her stop. Regardless of how soft he may become afterward, you will not allow her to pull away. Ashley,” her tone shifted minutely, addressing the trembling form beneath her, “while it is soft, you will use your throat, your tongue, and the seal of your lips to bring it back to a ready position. You will continue. Do you understand?”

A faint, choked sound from Ashley. Not a word, but an acknowledgment.

Mom’s gaze swept to Claire and Megan. “Your role is to ensure Ashley’s head maintains a constant, rhythmic motion. No pauses. No hesitation. Consistency is key.”

Finally, she looked at me. Her eyes held no cruelty, only a detached expectation. “As for you, Sam, you must relax your body. Tension inhibits the process. You need to allow yourself to ... enjoy it to the fullest. It is more efficient for everyone.”

She straightened then, but only slightly, her hands leaving Megan’s shoulders only to pat them once, a supervisor’s gesture of approval. “Your father and I will be getting breakfast. We expect the exercise to continue as you all are now when we both return.”

A faint, synchronized increase in pressure from the four sets of hands still upon usDad’s on Claire, Mom’s just relinquished from Megan, was the only confirmation. A silent, unified ‘Yes, Ma’am.’ It came from Claire and Megan in their stiffened postures, from me in my frozen, arched silence, and from Ashley in another damp, swallowed sob that vibrated through my very core.

They withdrew their hands in unison, as they had placed them. The absence of their direct pressure was not a relief, but a transfer of command. The protocol was now ours to execute. Dad gave a single, approving nod toward no one in particular, then turned with Mom. Their footsteps receded, the motel door opened, and a brief rectangle of harsh, noisy world-the growl of truck engines, a distant horn invaded before being shut out again with a soft, final click.

We were left then: four instruments, one purpose. The Morning Protocol continued, now under our own power, the quiet, wet sounds in the sunlit room the only measure of our obedience. The workshop was now ours to run.

Then, they were gone.

The motel door clicked shut with a sound of profound, airlock finality, sealing us in. The sudden silence they left behind was a vacuum, instantly filled by the ragged, wet rhythm of Ashley’s efforts and the frantic drum of my own heart against my ribs.

The moment the lock engaged, the quality of the movement changed. The external pressure was gone, leaving only the ghost of its command. The robotic, collective thrusting eased. Claire’s hands loosened in Ashley’s hair, the rigid pilot’s grip becoming something else, less a harness, more of a weary cradle. Megan’s hold softened from a directive to a faint, tremulous suggestion.

A shuddering breath escaped Claire, the first sound that was purely her own. Her face, when I dared to look, was bleached of color, her eyes dark hollows of exhaustion. There was no anger there, no flicker of rebellion. Just a deep, abiding resignation, the look of a soldier in a trench after the officers have retreated to the rear.

“Sam.” Her voice was a dry rustle, scraped raw. “Close your eyes. Just ... relax your whole body. Try to think of something else. One of those girls from school, from a movie, something. Anything. Just to help you ... get there.”

I stared at her, my own disbelief a mute accusation. She met my gaze, and the utter bleakness in hers was worse than any cruelty.

“Just close them,” she repeated, her voice dropping to a near-whisper meant only for the four of us in our shared cage. “And try to let it happen. Don’t fight. It’s just a thing. A mechanical thing. A body thing. Let it be only a body thing.”

It wasn’t kindness. It was the bleakest form of battlefield triage. She was offering me the only survival tool left in our arsenal: dissociation. If I could fracture, if I could sever the wire connecting sensation to soul, then perhaps the next few minutes would be merely torturous instead of annihilating. If we could all perform our functions, if I could be a trigger, Ashley a tool, and they the operators, we could maybe, just maybe, crawl out from under the weight of what we were actively destroying.

I surrendered. I squeezed my eyes shut, retreating into the private dark behind my eyelids. But in that isolation, the physical sensation didn’t diminish; it magnified, becoming the entire universe. The warmth, the relentless, practiced rhythm, the awful, intimate texture of it. The shameful, coiled wire of tension in my gut pulled taut, vibrated, and then.

It snapped.

A short, sharp cry was torn from me, a sound that was equal parts pain, release, and utter desolation. My body convulsed, a puppet seized by a violent, final spasm that arched me off the mattress and into a shuddering climax I had neither sought nor wanted.