Excerpt/Short Story: Trolley Problem
A woman takes a boy to a house party. They meet a man who brought a girl.
From my novel-in-progress: Miyagi the Hard Way
Note and warning: this is a chapter from my novel that works as a stand-alone short story. It features the orchestrated sexual assault of a minor. I think it’s the most harrowing thing I’ve ever written.
It’s medium night and we’re both wearing medium jackets. My plus one and I are standing at the front door of an apartment building, waiting to be buzzed in. My plus one is this 15 year old with smooth skin and big round eyes. Soft, thick, pink lips and a little baby fat still filling out his cheeks. No traces of anything that would indicate facial hair in his near future.
He’d be perfect for child porn, I think. Not real CP, not the stuff that people get their devices seized for. I mean the soft core stuff, the stuff they broadcast on network television. Tween shows with porn-type plots as an excuse to make kids make out.
We’re buzzed in and walk up the stairs. This boy has been yapping away about something. I have not listened to a word of it. Physically, my attention is turned to him. I’m nodding, I’m making listening noises, I’m acting engaged. I’m making eye contact, but I’m placing bets with myself about how much sexual experience I think he has. How much alcohol experience does he have? Drugs?
Baggy jeans but boring shirt, fast fashion with a soulless print on the front. His pants look worn, but based on the shirt, it’s probably new and made in a sweatshop, Urban Outfitters or something. He wants to be cool, he knows the trends well enough to mimic them, but isn’t actually part of them. He probably watches Reels but calls them TikToks.
This is, I think back to calculate, our third meeting? Once at a basement lounge party at the start of the semester, him ill-fitting and nervous amongst a bunch of his classmates, all getting drunk on the thrill of teenage rebellion. Oh, how he looked at the others, wanting to be them so badly, yet being so nervous. That was an easy one. Nervous, lonely boys are always so easy to put at ease. The second time, it was just the two of us alone. We took a walk down the shopping street and I awed and guffawed at all the things in my life he’d been so young for.
What do you mean you were eight when Stranger Things came out?
He opened up to me about something. Damn it, what was it? Did I forget it or never bother to listen.
We’ve arrived at the front door, he’s rung the doorbell, and it’s already opening when I’m searching the archive of my mind, just as chaotic and unorganised as my hard drive.
“Hi!” I call out to the person who opens the door. Alex… Adam… Allen? A man, mid-20s, barefoot, ragged hair, authentic baggy worn pants.
“Hi!” He spreads his arms out, and I go in for the hug. He smells like Amsterdam.
When I’m pulling back, he’s looking next to me.
“And this is?”
Oh fuck, what was this kid’s name?
“Lucas,” he smiles.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Noah.”
Not even close.
He opens his arms in offer. Lucas shrugs and takes it, going in for a hug too. When he pulls out of it, he’s smiling wide, eyes filled with life and excitement.
Oh, you stupid helpless thing. This is the last time your eyes will sparkle like that for a very long time, if they’ll ever even be able to sparkle the same again.
Man, somewhere in my mind is that information he gave me. I really need to stop throwing away important notes. I need to start making notes, at the rate I’m collecting them. It’s become impossible to keep track.
Noah lets us into the apartment, foggy with second-hand marijuana. Tobacco smoking strictly on the balcony, I remember suddenly, from the last time I was here. When the fuck was I here?
We follow Noah into the living room, walls full of beads and quilts, floor full of bean bags and a scatter of people. I spot someone I know. A man about my age, maybe a year or two older, tall, medium broad, dressed nice but not fancy or tacky. I spark excited at the recognition before I remember where I know him from. He sees me, too, and gets up to approach me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi,” I reply.
He takes my right hand in his and wraps his other arm around me, pulling me into a bro-type half hug, a pat on my back to seal it. His eyes wander to my accessory and his expression grows warm.
With a disarming smile, he asks, “and you are?”
“Lucas,” I say, wrapping one arm around the boy. The boy is startled by it, but happily, looking at me with a puppy type of eager disbelief.
“Where’s yours?” I ask. The guy, what the fuck was his name, Tom? Theo? He nicks his head back over his shoulder. On the couch there’s a girl-
holy fuck she’s young
There’s this young girl, wearing mature make up that only fools those who want to be fooled about how young she really is.
I lean in closer to the guy, pulling slightly away from Luke, my arm slipping off his shoulders, my hand running down his arm to find hold of his, and whisper, “how old is she?”
He bounces his eyebrows and grins proudly, “Fourteen. Fresh.”
I swallow his answer and move on. I follow him back to the couch, pulling my boy along by the hand, and I don’t reflect on my situation. I don’t start questioning ethics, despairing at my broken morals, I don’t. I just sit down on the floor by the foot of the couch and do another round of these stupid introductions.
The girl, with the most well-meaning energy I’ve encountered in a very long time, reaches her hand out to me. Eagerly, she asks my name. Tells me her’s is Allison.
We, the four of us, fill the awkward early stage of party socialising with conversation that I forget the moment it happens. My attention is elsewhere. It’s on the way Terry? Is rubbing his hand up and down her thigh while he’s chatting and making eye contact with Leo. I’m still flicking through my mental inventory. I’m picking up the way Liam’s looking a little bit flushed. I’m saying things, but I can’t tell you what. I’m so zoned out that I get spooked by Noah’s voice behind me.
“By the way, guys, if you want a drink, go ahead and grab something from the kitchen. Weed, too. Anything you like, this is an open communal home.”
We all chirp ‘thank you’s in reply, and when I look back at Luis, his face is filled with more eager excitement and disbelief.
“I’m gonna get a drink,” I say, getting up, “L-”
Wait shit his name isn’t Luis it’s—
“I’ll join you,” he saves me from having to heel him, getting up as well.
“You guys want anything?” I ask the couch.
“No thanks,” the man whose name starts with T and who I wish I didn’t know but I do says, wiggling a bottle, “we’re good.”
My boy is practically bouncing as we walk toward the kitchen.
“Wow, your friends are so nice!” He says, a little too loud a little too close to my ear. I smile wide in return.
“I’m careful to only keep good people in my life,” I reply.
He learns, eagerly, then processes that he’s in my life, too. I smile and nod my head a little at him.
“Yeah, that includes you. You’re good people.”
His face goes red almost instantly. This shit is so easy.
I pour myself a drink, I playfully mentor him on how to pour a drink, what a long drink is, how much of what to add, getting unnecessarily close to help him pour the right serving size of whiskey.
So not much alcohol experience, then.
When we return to the couch, the guy I know. Toby? He’s holding out his hand, flat, nesting a scatter of pills in his palm.
My boy’s eyes grow wide. The girl on the couch catches this, leans back, and giggles. She’s got an air of worldliness that is not entirely unearned but mainly a performance based on a misjudged belief.
“Is that…?” He, my boy, asks.
“Drugs,” the girl finishes for him, wagging her eyebrows and giggling some more. “Yeah, ecstasy.”
The man, the guy I know, to establish his air of trustable maturity, says, “MDMA.”
Looking at my boy—Lucas! Right?—Returning Lucas’s locked curious gaze while he sits back down, he tells him, “It’s a psychoactive drug with strong stimulant and mild psychedelic effect.”
I lean in to Luke, and say playfully, “Street drug, not prescription.”
He throws his head to face me, then back to the man who’s saying, “Not yet, anyway. It’s showing beneficial effects for PTSD, social anxiety, and autism in some early trials.”
“Wow,” Lucas says, “what does it feel like?”
“You wanna try?” I ask him.
“Hey now,” the guy, on cue, replies to me. This is why I know him. Reckless adult, responsible adult. An effective two-man set up to make them feel at ease and like they’re choosing to carpe diem. Like they’re safe and old enough, and in control.
The man turns to the boy, “do you have any experience with things like this?”
He shrugs, a little embarrassed, “some.”
The man leans back hesitantly, face like he’s debating with himself.
“Oh, come on,” the girl beside him says, taking one right out of his palm and throwing it into her mouth, washing it down with whatever’s in that bottle. She’s got her legs up on the couch with her, bent, her bare feet leaning against the man’s lap, herself leaning against the armrest.
She kicks him playfully, and says, “if I can do it, so can he.”
From where does she feel so comfortable with him?
The man looks to her as if her words actually hold weight for him. He makes a face as if he actually listens to her. Then shrugs and holds his hand out to the boy. The boy looks to me for guidance.
The boy looks to me for guidance.
I give him an assuring smile and a nod. He takes one of the pills, swallows it with a sip of his drink and chokes a little. He’s coughing and the girl’s giggling and this asshole acquaintance offers his palm to me.
I shake my head, “no thanks.”
The boy, still catching his breath, looks to me with concern.
“Don’t worry, it’s good stuff,” I assure him, “I promise. Feels like heaven. I just don’t feel like it tonight.”
I wiggle my cup, “I’m gonna stick to drinking tonight.”
“Okay,” he says, hesitantly, starting to question his situation.
I put a grounding hand on his knee, a firm but not painful grip. I look him dead in the eye.
“I’m going to be here. I’ll keep an eye on you. I’ll take care of you. It’s very hard to have a bad time on ecstasy, anyway. But I’ll be here with you through it and I’ll make sure nothing happens.”
His tensions dissipates and he nods determinedly. Like taking candy from a baby.
“Plus,” the girl brings a foot down to nudge his other knee, “I’m here, right? If this was a weird space, I wouldn’t be here, would I? Because it would be full of creepy adults.”
The boys eyes go wide at that, flitting between me and the man on the couch.
“I don’t think you’re creepy!”
Aww, he doesn’t want us to stop hanging out with him. He wants to prove that he deserves to be here.
“Don’t worry,” I say, throwing an arm around him, pulling him close, ruffling his hair, “I know you don’t.”
Half an hour of foursome conversation later, I notice he’s gone quiet beside me. He turns to me, pupils devouring his eyes. That’s when it finally hits me.
He’s bi. That was it. That was the big confession. He likes boys and he hasn’t told anyone yet and he knows it’s stupid because it’s not the 2000s anymore and it’s fine now, it’s even popular now, and his parents are super liberal so he knows he doesn’t have reason to feel so shy about it but he does. Ha!
My excitement at remembering this helpful strategical tool reads to him as me joining in his joy. Up on the couch, the girl has begun rubbing her body up and down against it.
“Lucas,” she says, reaching forward to take his hand. He lets her, and she guides it towards the couch, “you gotta feel this couch, it’s the softest thing I’ve ever felt, I swear.”
She rubs his hand against the texture. She leans back again. He stares in reverence at his hand pressed against the couch.
“You’re right,” he says, softly.
She’s giggling. In a pitch annoyingly high, she says, “oh, man, life is beautiful, isn’t it? The world is such a wide and welcoming place. They always said stranger danger, but strangers are the kindest people I have ever met. People tell me, listen to my parents, but my parents hurt me constantly, and strangers have never hurt me, so fuck what people think they know. They’re wrong.”
I’m gonna be sick.
And I’ve barely even finished my drink.
The way the man I know—Tony! The way he’s staring at her, like he’s going to rip into her and feast on her guts, it’s viscerally disturbing.
He reaches his hand over to touch her, about to say something, when I call out.
“Tony!”
He turns to me curiously. I wave my finger, indicating to come closer. He pulls away from her and leans down toward me.
“Listen,” I say silently, “wanna trade?”
He looks over at my kid, then at his, then back at me, cheeky, cocky, crap-munching grin on his face.
“Didn’t know you liked girls.”
He leans back, readjusts to face me properly, and leans back in.
“Good to know,” he punctuates, with a sly nod like he’s uncovered a dirty secret, like this is the equivalent of having found me on a porn site. I want to roll my eyes so badly right now. Instead, I keep them firm on his.
“So?”
He looks at my boy again.
“And he…?”
At this point, I wonder to myself, but only for a moment, how I got here. In so deep, it feels like I’m one blunt rotation away from joining a trafficking ring.
“He’s into guys, too. No experience. Blasted on his first E high, you’ll have no issue.”
“Good,” he says, leaning back, and somewhat preemptively defensively adds, “because I never go against a ‘no’.”
Eat shit.
He slides off the couch and moves in on the boy. I take his place on the couch and almost immediately there’s a hand on my arm. Her eyes are rolling and she’s repeatedly almost swallowing her tongue. How much did he give her? I cast a look at my boy. He’s faring a little better, cross-legged and leaning towards the man, one hand reaching toward him, those big brown eyes the size of the moon. The man takes a hold of the boy’s wrist in the air, wraps his hand the whole way around the tiny thing. The duckling next to me is still holding a tight grab on my lower arm and is rambling at 2x speed about some drugged up bullshit.
I try to tune her out. The man has entwined his fingers between the boy’s, and the boy is exploring the sensation, running his fingers through and across the man’s.
“The pills cost 150 bucks, each,” the man says.
The boy, with no frame of reference, believes him. He looks up at him, worried.
“Oh- sorry- I just- the drinks were free, so I-”
A beat. The three of us silent, the twirp to my left still twittering away at no one.
“I don’t have any money,” the boy admits apologetically. The man’s face is stern. Hell, even I’m intimidated by it. Then he breaks into a kind, comforting smile.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, reaching a hand up to ruffle the boy’s hair, who leans happily into the touch, “we’ll figure something out.”
It’s like out of a bad porn. The bitch is still going. I turn my attention to her, to know what the fuck she’s got so much to say about.
“-but then, like, if you don’t experience the world, then how are you ever going to learn or grow? You know, like, all of us, I know, spent two years inside, but I swear it stunted us, all of us, all of humanity lost two years, is two years immaturer. Is that a word? It is now! Words are fake anyway, just like all these other things we-”
The man is leading the boy down the hallway. I watch them. They disappear around a corner, through a door. I try to slot this into my record, wondering if this is the worst thing I’ve done.
I notice it’s disconcertingly quiet. I turn to the girl. She’s staring at me. It’s terrifying.
“What?” I ask her.
She sighs, blissfully.
“You’re so beautiful. And so kind. I can tell, I can see it. I’m really good at reading people. I love meeting strangers, you’re all so wonderful.”
I roll my eyes and swat her hand away from where it’s reaching towards me.
“Listen to me, carefully,” I tell her, staring into her eyes; her eyes, vibrating and unfocused.
“I know you’re high as hell right now but I need you to pay attention because I want you to learn something tonight, the easy way, not the hard way, the way he,” I nick my head back at the hallway, “is.”
She giggles, “oh yeah? What’s that?”
In my most serious and intense voice, I tell her, “strangers aren’t good people. Especially kind and beautiful strangers. Whatever you’ve got going on at home, strangers will hurt you tenfold. Strangers who seem the sweetest are the ones who want to do you the most harm. You’re only out here rubbing felt because I traded your fate tonight. It could be you, tonight, in the room down the hall, doing what Lucas is doing.”
She looks casually, playfully, at me, deeper lull in her tone, “yeah? What’s he doing?”
“Right now he’s on his knees, head being held in place by a fist in his hair, while the guy you came with fucks his throat until he chokes.”
She stares at me, her expression unreadable.
“…Sex?” She finally offers, “I know what sex is.”
“Not sex. Rape.”
She fidgets, mind moving to make sense of things. She’s processing what I’m saying, but there’s still a whisper of a content smile on her face. Damn these fucking drugs.
“You gotta have life experiences…” she starts justifying. Fourteen and starving for life experience.
“Trust me,” I interrupt, “this, tonight, for you, is enough life experience. I promise you, it’s enough of a story to tell.”
I almost say when you’re my age, but manage to catch myself. The moment I say that, she’ll stop caring about my words.
“Tonight, you dodged a bullet. Another night out, another night of life experience, another night added to your age. But he,” I point down the hallway, “he’s going to wake up tomorrow sore and confused, scared and ashamed, lonely and abandoned, feeling the kinds of feelings we’re only capable of because we share ancestry with field hamsters.”
I lost her with that one. I regroup.
“This is another night of your life. This is the last night of his.”
“He’s dying?” She worries.
“Not literally. But the person he was before I brought him here will never leave this party. From tomorrow on, he’ll forever be living in the ‘after’ part of his life. All his trust for people, the search for adventure, the goodness in life, all of that dies suddenly and painfully tonight.”
She’s leaning into my side. I realise I’m sitting cross-legged, facing forward, staring down the hall. She wraps her arms around mine and nuzzles against my shoulder.
She mumbles, “oh, but see, I’m right. Strangers are good and kind.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake-”
She puts a finger against my lips to shush me.
She takes her hand back, then says softly into my sleeve, “You’re a stranger. And you protected me. See?”
I almost refute. I look at her, then down the hall. Sure, had I not been here tonight, it would have been her. But had I not been here, it wouldn’t have been him. It’s not like it’s a trolley problem. It’s not like it’s even a done deal yet. I could go stop it. I could go keep the promise I made to the boy. I could take him home. If not tonight, then tomorrow.
More likely, I’m going to go alone to my own home, drink myself into coma, ignore his sad little messages looking for explanation or validation, while I let this crystallise as a deep-seeded misanthropy that’s literally just my own fault.
Humans are horrible. I know this because I am.
Oh, and if you’re wondering. Yeah. We get away with it. All the time. I’ve never faced a consequence for this hobby of mine, besides maybe a killer hangover. Ask your friends about the adults they hung out with in high school. None of you told anyone, right? It’s all just slightly disturbed girl’s night small talk.
Somebody’s got to take that role.
Fun fact: this Lucas is the same Lucas as in my substack novel “A Normal Amount of Damage” — you’ll find more of him there (eventually) if you want to know how he turns out. :( </3