Part XIII - 14: Joey's Darkest Hour

Joey had lied. Joey had deceived me. Joey had taken advantage of my trust and my love. Joey had endangered his own quest for his sister in pleasing his own selfish sexual whims and cravings.

These thoughts kept spinning around my head as I swallowed the aspirin and started getting dressed.

Joey couldn't be trusted. Joey was a danger to himself, and to me, while we are here undercover. Either I quit and go home or...

"Shit," I gasped painfully when my swollen knuckles accidentally slapped against the wooden frame of our bunk beds.

I wanted to cry, but somehow I kept myself from starting, knowing I needed to have my hand looked at and then deal with Joey's betrayal.

As I made my way towards the medical center, I went over the things Joey had been doing behind my back with the powers I had shared with him.

Ever since the afternoon Alicia had seduced him, Joey had been building up his anger over her using him on her quest for stealing the innocence from young innocent looking guys. He desired to get even with her by stealing her own innocence, and had looked for a way to achieve it.

Now I understood his sudden desire to play poker again. After playing Nick and Lenny a few times the week after he started classes, Joey had refused to join in until suddenly he was all for it and somehow talked me into playing too. I realized that Joey was in fact practicing his mental and emotional "poker face" in order to conceal the truth from me like he had done before, and his strategy worked since even my empathic senses had been fooled by his cool calm poker face.

About two weeks after I had relented to let him satisfy his sexual cravings on me, Joey gave in to his other cravings for revenge and lust, and on the second Thursday before the party, on the day of the week he only had one class, he sought Alicia out and raped her. And after he had taken more than just his revenge out on her, he installed his own version of my dad's slave program and had repeatedly raped her again over the past two weeks.

Alicia was only one of five girls which Joey had raped and installed his slave program in. One of his modifications automatically hid the rape events from their normal conscious selves, allowing him to rape and re-rape the same girl without losing the... "satisfaction" he got from raping a girl for the first time. So during the period that I was becoming used to the sex he had us do, Joey was exploring even darker sides of his sexual pallet, going far beyond the perversions I thought he could ever possibly have.

What I had considered some of the worst aspects of Steven's Joseph had somehow leaked into becoming a part of my Joey. It was a strange merger, but the Joey I knew and loved was still inside him, rationalizing everything he did with the knowledge that his victims didn't know it happened, and so it didn't change their personal lives.

That was the same logic he had used when he had enslaved the girls at his cousin's school. He took thirteen girls' virginities that night (not fifty like he had said), but because they didn't remember it happening later, they still believed they were virgins and lived exactly the way they would have if he hadn't touched them.

But he didn't follow that logic when he made some of those girls desire him whenever he scratched himself in their presence. And Joey didn't have the experience I had to program a person's mind to trigger from a simple act. Joey's programming probably would have side effects, the least of which would be the releasing of their sexual desires whenever ANY guy scratched themselves and they witness it.

The one thing I did find relieving was the fact that he never had anyone eat his shit like he had exclaimed wanting Alicia to do. And while Joey did very much get off on the concepts of controlling people, he never applied it to the people he cared about, only strangers or someone who he felt had wronged him. That is with one very important exception: me.

His feelings for me were a completely different than for anyone else. Even before Steven had gotten a hold of him, Joey had been feeling a special attraction for me and me alone. I had openly shared my abilities with him, and this he was always grateful for. But Joey had a independent nature that resented having to follow my rules. This caused a conflict within him, and it was this and his love that eventually caused his attraction to me personally.

Subconsciously he wished to extend our special relationship through the sex which we had shared with each other. Part of him wanted to give back what I shared with him, and part of him wanted to secure our relationship so I would continue sharing my abilities with him. It was greed and love compromising for sex, and even Steven's meddling hadn't tipped the scales in their struggle. While Steven's ways may have had corrupted his sexual appetite, my sacrifices for his happiness had strengthened his loving feelings for me.

But I had no reason or explanation for the thing that hurt me the most. The one thing Joey had been plotting and gathering information about doing. The one thing that was the ultimate betrayal. The one thing which had made me limit my choices down to two things.

While the nurse x-rayed my hand, I defined those two choices in my mind. I could either refuse to share my abilities with him ever again, literally abandoning him and his quest for his sister, or do the thing I had sworn I'd never do to anyone I cared about. To alter his mind and make him into something else other than the person he truly was. To make Joey believe in the things I did so I could trust him like I once had.

While I waited for the doctor to see me, I made a list in my head of the things I would have to change about Joey, but after the list grew too long I threw it out and tried it again. After a third try failed, I reconsidered my requirements, but then found a different answer than what I had been looking for.

I walked back to the dorms after receiving nothing more than a bill and instructions to keep an ice pack on my hand until the swelling subsides. But all in all I felt better. I knew what I had to do, even though it still meant doing something I didn't want to, but the weight of the decision about which of the two choices I would do was no longer on my shoulders. Or so I believed.

When I got back to the room, I wasn't surprise to find Joey there waiting since I had programmed that the night before. But the anger he was feeling did surprise me, for I felt I had been the one betrayed.

"You son of bitch! You just couldn't trust me, could you? You had to interfere with my life. MY SLAVES! You won't let me have ANYTHING of my own!" he screamed as soon as I walked in.

"Fuck you, Joey. I did trust you. And you used me. You deliberately deceived me. You... used me." I said ending in a whisper.

"The hell I did," he said only slightly louder than his normal speaking voice.

"I came here to help you find your sister. I shared everything I had with you. When you couldn't control you own sex drive, I GAVE MYSELF to you to USE as your PLAYTHING! But even that wasn't enough, was it Joey. Even after you got me used to licking your FUCKING ass every GOD DAMN NIGHT, you went and started RAPING girls?! BUT WHAT REALLY TOPS IT ALL IS THAT YOU PLANNED TO ENSLAVE ME! ME! THE ONLY FUCKING PERSON WHO WOULD <GAG> WHO WOULD HAVE GIVEN UP HIS <CHOKE> IMMORTAL SOUL FOR YOURS!"