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Back Surrender Your Sons Save as PDF
Chapters (43)
  1. Author’s Note with Content Warnings
  2. CHAPTER ONE
  3. CHAPTER TWO
  4. CHAPTER THREE
  5. CHAPTER FOUR
  6. CHAPTER FIVE
  7. CHAPTER SIX
  8. CHAPTER SEVEN
  9. CHAPTER EIGHT
  10. CHAPTER NINE
  11. CHAPTER TEN
  12. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  13. CHAPTER TWELVE
  14. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  15. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  16. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  17. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  18. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  19. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  20. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  21. CHAPTER TWENTY
  22. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  31. CHAPTER THIRTY
  32. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  41. CHAPTER FORTY
  42. EPILOGUE
  43. Acknowledgments

Molly sends me a final, helpless look before Drew rushes her out and abandons me alone with the monster. My intestines run cold. What has my mouth done this time? Learn to shut up—that’s today’s lesson. Another lesson is that if I am going to run my mouth, I need to leave myself plenty of room to escape. My only way out is blocked by a dozen half-moon desks and one pissed-off psycho.

Briggs catches my arm with a cold, chapped hand and walks me until I hit the whiteboard ledge. Pain rushes to the soft patch of exposed skin below my shirt, which grinds into the base of the whiteboard. A terrified pitch of blood fills my head, freezing me to the spot under Briggs’s power. He’s a centimeter from me, close enough for his musky stench to invade my nostrils. A slimy sheen of sweat covers the salt-and-pepper bristles on his cheeks.

No one is here but us. I can’t think of anything else except this horrible fact.

“Not much fight in you,” Briggs snorts like a bull about to strike, and I let out a mousy squeak. He withdraws his taser from a hip holster and slides the entire device inside my gaping mouth. Instinctively, I bite down. Saliva floods my tongue as my heart scuttles to the back of my ribcage. The weapon’s dull tang soaks my taste buds, reminding me of the rotting metal of a water fountain nozzle.

Please don’t shock my mouth, please don’t shock my mouth.

“The story you just told the class,” Briggs asks, “it’s not the one you wrote in your Expulsion Diary, is it?” I shake my head, but it does nothing to loosen the device from my tongue. “Good. Smart not to write it down. Now…I want you to take that story, put it between two halves of a roll, slather on some mustard, AND EAT IT. I want you to really chow down and then shit that story out and flush it because if I ever hear you tell it again—to Drew, to anyone—you and me will have a problem.”

I don’t struggle anymore. I stare at the handsome man who looked so young this morning but whose face is now gouged with deep, mean crevasses.

This man is threatening me with my dad’s voice.