The Jude Project
by Edward Kyle Stokes
Chapter 6
Jude's Place
Another weekend, another sleepover, but this time, it was a totally different world. The walk to his house was silent and charged, the air thick with unspoken questions. Jude's neighborhood was a stark contrast to my own, the houses a little more run-down, lawns untended, and fences in need of a coat of paint. His house was the same—the yard was a mess, and the front door, with its peeling paint, was slightly ajar.
Inside, the living room was cluttered, a silent testament to a life lived without much order. Piles of clothes were scattered on the couch, and a faint smell of stale food hung in the air. I had only just stepped inside when a voice from the stairs made me jump.
"Well, well, well," his older brother, Jacob, sneered from the top of the stairs. He was older than Jude, bigger, and with a sneer that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face. He looked at me with open contempt. "This your new bum boy you brought home, Jude?"
My face burned with humiliation. I braced myself for Jude's reaction, I didn't have to wait long.
"Fuck off, Jacob," Jude snarled, his voice a low, menacing growl. The menace I had come to know so well was now turned on his own brother.
As Jacob looked at me, I caught a glimpse of someone else behind him. It was Damien. He stood in the shadows at the top of the stairs, a silent, watchful figure.
"Why don't you just get back to your little friend there?" Jude told Jacob, his eyes fixed on the figure standing just beyond his brother's shoulder. Jacob's sneer faltered as he glanced back and saw Damien. He said no more, turning and disappearing back down the hallway, leaving me in a sea of confusion.
"What's Damien doing here?" I finally asked, my voice a whisper.
"He's our cousin," Jude said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He turned to me, his enigmatic grin back in place. "You see," he said, "things aren't always what they seem."
He was being enigmatic again, but it made me wonder what Damien was doing there, and more importantly, what was he doing with Jacob? The game was getting more complicated, and I had a feeling the answers were only going to lead to more questions.
Jude led me out into the yard. A small shed, leaning a little to one side, served as his and Jacob's den. The door creaked as he pushed it open, revealing a cluttered space filled with old crates, a beat-up couch, and a small space heater. It was a chaotic hideout, a stark contrast to the perfect image Jude projected at school. With his brother still upstairs, we had the place to ourselves.
I knew I had to ask. "What's going on with Damien?" I said, my voice barely a whisper.
For once, Jude didn't deflect. Maybe it was being on his home turf, maybe it was a need to have me to see his world, all of it. He sat on the couch and gestured for me to join him.
"Damien makes cash giving guys blow jobs," he said, matter-of-factly. My blood ran cold, but I didn't say anything, just stared at him, waiting for more.
He explained how it started. His brother, Jacob, had been the one who found Damien first. After using Damien himself, he had shared him with his best friend. Jacob had discovered that Damien was a natural at it. When they realised they could make money from it, it all just fell into place.
My mind reeled. The sickening scene I'd witnessed in the washroom now made sense, and the humiliation I had felt was nothing compared to the reality of what Damien was enduring. I looked at Jude, at the calm, detached way he was telling me this story.
"So your brother's a pimp," I remarked, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
Jude just smiled that half-knowing grin. "Sure is."
"And you?" I asked him, the words a raw whisper. "Why were you angry with Damien, and why were you there watching in the washroom?"
Jude looked like he was thinking, his gaze unfocused. A heavy silence hung in the air, broken only by the hum of the small space heater. Would he tell me? I wondered. Was I finally getting a glimpse behind the curtain, a look at the real Jude, the one who wasn't just a master of games?
Eventually, he must have decided something. His eyes met mine, and there was a vulnerability in them that I had never seen before. "Damien actually started it all himself," he told me.
I was taken aback. "That you've got to explain," I insisted. "How does a twelve-year-old decide to start giving guys, or your brother—because you said it started with him—how did the kid decide to do that?"
Jude looked like he was thinking hard, chewing on the inside of his cheek before he made his reply. "He saw me."
"He saw you what?" I didn't understand what he was saying.
"Are you being intentionally thick, or what?" He stood up, his voice and posture suddenly angry. The vulnerability was gone, replaced by a familiar, menacing anger.
"No, no... calm down," I tried to diffuse things, raising my hands in a placating gesture.
Jude walked around the shed, his hands shoved into his pockets. He paced in a tight circle before finally turning to face me. The words, when they came, were spat out with a venomous force. "He fucking saw me sucking off Jacob. Got it?"
My face burned with a blush I couldn't control. I got it. I had never expected that revelation, but in a horrible, sickening way, it made sense. I decided it was best to say no more. Eventually, Jude stopped moving around and sat back down. The anger seemed to drain out of him as quickly as it had appeared.
"You want a beer?" he asked.
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak. He opened a little fridge and pulled out two bottles, fetched an opener, and flipped off the tops, handing me one.
"Cheers," he said, and he drank.
I followed, the cold, bitter liquid a shock to my system. Cheers, I thought. This really was getting weird.
We were about halfway through our beers. At least, I was. Jude drank quicker, his bottle already nearly empty. The alcohol had loosened my tongue, or maybe it was the revelation about him and his brother that made me bold.
"You did stuff with your brother?" I asked.
I got to admit, picturing him on his knees, his brother's cock in his mouth, was hot. And what if he was stripped naked, like he made me do? Fuck, I was getting really hard.
He looked at me, a sharp glint in his eyes. "Yeah, why?" he challenged.
I didn't answer right away. The image in my head was so vivid, so all-consuming, that I couldn't speak. I could see him, a mirror image of me, naked and kneeling. I felt a hot, confusing flush spread across my body. I wanted to touch myself right there, right in front of him. I wanted to ask him if he had enjoyed it, if he had liked it as much as I had.
"Does that bother you?" he asked, his voice low.
"No," I managed to say, my voice a shaky whisper. "No, it doesn't."
He just watched me, a slow, knowing smile spreading across his face. He knew. He always knew. He took another long swig of his beer, then set the bottle down on a crate. The sound was a loud punctuation mark in the silence.
"Good," he said simply. "Because that's how this all works."
"How this all works." What exactly did he mean? My thoughts were tumbling, a chaotic mess of questions. Was he still playing his game? Or was this a confession, a genuine attempt at sharing something about himself? I was leaning toward the latter when he announced, "Let's go get the supper."
We walked back to the house, and he shouted up the stairs to his brother before calling for a pizza. In the time it took for the pizzas to arrive, we'd cleared the kitchen table a bit, drunk another two beers, and were joined by Jacob and Damien.
I'd seen Jacob around at school, but never this close. A little under the influence of the alcohol, I stared at him, taking a really good look. He noticed, of course. He gave me the same knowing smirk that Jude had perfected.
I turned my attention to Damien, the thought of what he and Jacob had been up to zooming into my brain. My imagination conjured all kinds of scenarios, all kinds of images, and I felt a familiar, sickening excitement.
Jacob noticed everything, just like Jude. As I was looking at Damien, he slung an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close, ruffling his hair.
Damien gave a weak, half-protesting, "Hey, let me go!"
The pizza was greasy and hot, but I barely tasted it. The conversation around the table was a chaotic mess of inside jokes and half-finished sentences. Jude was mostly silent, sitting back in his chair and watching, a half-smile on his face, as if he were enjoying a show he'd staged himself.
"So, you two a thing then?" Jacob said, his eyes on me as he bit into a slice.
I felt a hot blush creep up my neck. "We're just... friends," I mumbled, the lie feeling pathetic even to my own ears.
"Sure you are," Jacob snorted. He leaned forward, his voice a low drawl. "Don't get any ideas, though. This one," he said, gesturing to Jude with a slice of pizza, "he's particular."
Damien, who had been sitting quietly beside Jacob, gave me a quick, meaningful glance. He licked his lips slowly, a silent, unsettling gesture that made my stomach churn. It was a look that confirmed my worst fears and my most forbidden fantasies.
"Sometimes," Jacob continued, "I leave my door open. Just in case he gets lonely." He looked at Jude, a knowing smirk on his face, and then he looked back at me. "But you know, he's more of a user than a giver."
Jude just watched, saying nothing, his eyes glinting with an unreadable amusement. The conversation was a twisted kind of code. Jacob was telling me, in no uncertain terms, what to expect. He was hinting at a game of desire, of access, and of power that went far beyond what I had already experienced.
When we finished eating, the boys disappeared upstairs, leaving me alone in the messy kitchen. The plates of pizza, the empty beer bottles, and the lingering scent of stale food all felt like a backdrop to a scene I was a part of, but didn't fully understand. I knew where this was leading. The "sleepover" wasn't just about me and Jude. It was about all of us, and I was just a new player in a very old, very complicated game. The next step was bedtime, and I was fairly certain Jacob's door would be left open.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
