Mercy

by J L Aarne

  Jack sat up. “Steve?”

  “Yeah, Jack?”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Sitting here. What’s it look like?”

  “Okay.”

  A little disturbed by it, Jack got up and went into the bathroom to drink some water and pee. Sometimes Steve kind of tuned out like that, so maybe he hadn’t been watching Jack sleep after all, that was just the way he was facing. After he had a girl, he thought about it and played it over in his mind for a few days. Until he got the itch again and needed another one.

  It bothered Jack more to think that had been what Steve was doing than that Steve had been staring at him while he was sleeping and thinking about something else. It shouldn’t have, but it did.

  “You go fuck that Zane asshole for dope again?”

  Jack paused on his way out of the bathroom and rolled that over in his mind. Steve wasn’t jealous, he just disapproved. He was possessive and if he didn’t like Jack whoring, that was probably the only reason why.

  “No,” Jack said, walking back into the room. Then because sometimes he resented Steve a lot more than he would admit, he added, “I fucked someone else for money and bought drugs. I was tired. Zane took a suck job.”

  Steve stared at him without expression. In the dark it was hard to tell, but Jack had known him a while, he recognized the way the shadows fell on his face to mean it was blank. Then he turned his head and looked away from him at the wall; disgusted and dismissive.

  You can’t get it up for no one but dead girls, Steve. Who the hell are you to judge me? Jack thought with a rare spark of anger at him. He almost said it. Then he sighed and climbed back into bed without saying anything.

  He lay there staring up at the ceiling, listening to the rattling A/C, watching the pale blue of Steve’s cigarette smoke curl in the dark above him. After a while he said, “You always knew what I was.”

  Steve grunted in a way that conveyed both acknowledgement and irritation.

  “We need the money.”

  “Don’t do any good if you’re shooting the shit up your fucking arm,” Steve said. “You ain’t doing that ‘cause we need the money.”

  Jack shrugged. It didn’t bother him, he’d been a whore a long time. It was what it was.

  “You gonna go and get yourself killed by some sick fuck closet case faggot one of these nights, Jack, and where’s that leave me?” Steve asked. “You ever think about that?”

  “I guess not,” Jack said. It wasn’t an apology though. “Guess I always figured you’d be fine. We both know you don’t need me around, Steve.”

  Jack could feel Steve’s eyes on him again, but he didn’t take his gaze from the shadows of the ceiling to look at him. Eventually Steve made another of those dismissive sounds in his throat and stamped his cigarette out in the heavy marble ashtray on the nightstand between their beds.

  Jack closed his eyes and was soon asleep again.

  He dreamed about Shane. He dreamed about being little again and Hal taking his clothes off. He dreamed about Shane walking in and how he had flown at Hal with a plastic hockey stick like it was a sword, trying to defend Jack, his baby brother. He’d always defended Jack. He dreamed about sitting huddled over his knees and crying in the corner by the laundry hamper while Hal raped Shane and made him scream instead. Phineas was there across the room watching it all, his little teeth like pearls, his eyes like foxfire.

  Jack’s real shame about hearing and seeing his fifteen year old brother naked and crying and sweaty while Hal tore into him was that he’d been glad; glad that it wasn’t him for once.

  To purchase a copy and continue reading:

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FP1ALBG

  Other Books

  The Man in the Long Black Coat

  Dale Bruyer and James Sandover were huntsmen: monster hunting heirs to a secret legacy, self-appointed defenders of mankind, students of magic, warriors and—in James’s case—occasional chess opponent of the Devil himself. Until James died and left Dale all alone on a self-destructive path through alcoholism to an early grave.

  Then one stormy night, the giant tree that had marked James’s grave uproots and Dale finds footprints walking away from the hole beneath it. A killer begins ritualistically murdering young women in the small town of Solagrove, Louisiana where he lives, and though the man in the long black coat sounds a lot like James, it can’t be James. James is dead; there is absolutely no question about it.

  Dale is reluctantly dragged into the investigation by his neighbor, the mother of the first victim. He’s not so sure the killings are really his sort of thing, but there’s something very familiar about it all anyway and someone has to stop it. Though why does it have to be him?

  In the midst of all this chaos, he suddenly finds himself with a house full: a werewolf in the kitchen, a god crashing on his sofa and a punk rock fallen angel riding shotgun.

  To read a sample/purchase a copy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LOYM78O

  ***

  Love Song for a Vampire

  Dale Bruyer kills bad things that go bump in the night, or at least he used to. Now he owns a bar in small town Louisiana and granted, it has become a hang-out for the same creatures he used to track down, but they tip in gold and diamonds, so he can't really complain. He's retired (sort of) and out of the game until a friend starts him a blog without his permission and brings him a new case: vampires in New Orleans.

  He's skeptical at first, but he discovers vampire blood making the rounds on the street as the newest cheap thrill and comes face to face with a monster from legend, and it's not so unbelievable anymore. Except things aren't always what they seem, especially in Dale's world, and it's up to him to figure out what's actually happening and ultimately decide which side he's really on.

  To read a sample/purchase a copy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T100SMU

  ***

  The Destiny Machine

  In a world cured of death, Aarom is an outlaw.

  The world should have ended twenty years ago. Without the invention of the Destiny Machine, it would have and in a lot of ways it’s a blessing. No one goes hungry now, murder is a thing of the past and life is beautiful and peaceful. In other ways, for some people, it’s a lie and a curse that they can’t bear to live with. They sense the wrongness of their existence, but now they inhabit a world where it’s almost impossible to die.

  You can’t even kill yourself anymore.

  Aarom is a prophet, a member of a rare group of people who would have survived the Armageddon that the Destiny Machine derailed. He has the power to see behind the curtain. He can give to people the deaths they have been denied. Their true destiny.

  In his personal life, he's at a crossroad, torn between letting go of a past that made him and Jonathan, who he’s secretly loved for most of his life. Jonathan isn’t a prophet, he’s a happy, normal member of society, but he looks forward to the rare times when he sees Aarom and sadly waits for the day when he will stop visiting. Aarom ultimately has to make a choice to either be brave and honest with Jonathan or walk away completely. It’s a real life and death decision.

  To read a sample/purchase a copy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V3ZGHZ8/

  ***

  I Hear They Burn for Murder

  “We’re playing Murder in the Dark, agent.”

  Special Agent Ezekiel Herod knows the game well, but he’s never played it quite like this before.

  Rainer Bryssengur is only a professor of English and Ezekiel doesn’t expect to gain any insight from him into his case, only to cross him off the list as a person of interest. Then he meets him and gets a glimpse through the carefully crafted mask Rainer wears every day to the monster he is at heart.

  “Which one of us is the liar?”

  Sometimes even a psychopathic serial killer gets tired of killing people and that’s where Rainer is when Ezekiel walks into his office and stirs things up. The serial killer the media has dubbed The Lamplighter has been dormant because Ra
iner’s heart just isn’t in it anymore. But Ezekiel presents him with a new opportunity, a challenge… a game. Rainer sees in him the perfect adversary.

  They’re more alike than either of them suspect and soon Ezekiel gets pulled in deeper than he thought possible, past the point of no return.

  “Which one of us isn’t? That’s the real question.”

  To read a sample/purchase a copy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BN6JXAC

  ***

  Needle Freak

  Phineas first appeared to Jack as a friend and he took him away from all the horrors of his childhood. No one could see Phineas except Jack though, and more and more as the years passed he seemed less like a friend and more like a demon. At sixteen Jack ran away from home and ended up living on the street. Out there, Jack learned just what lengths he would go to in order to survive.

  Then he met Steve and Steve is a bad, bad man—one who drags Jack lower than even he imagined he could go. But that doesn't matter to Jack because he is stupidly, pathetically in love with him.

  When Jack finally starts to pull his life together and puts all of that behind him, he reconnects with the brother he used to be so close to but hasn’t seen in fourteen years and with his sweet Grandma Chloe. He gets a real job and kicks the drugs. He even believes that he’s gotten away from Phineas at long last.

  He couldn’t be more wrong and when Phineas returns to torment him, Jack becomes more desperate than ever to escape him. Jack’s secrets come out and threaten to destroy everything and a ghost from his past tracks him down and this time he may not survive. When it comes right down to it, Phineas might be a demon, but he’s one of Jack’s demons and Jack needs him if he’s going to make it out alive.

  To read a sample/purchase a copy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FP1ALBG

  About the Author

  J.L. Aarne currently lives in the Northwest United States. Aarne studied English at the University of New Orleans, but like so many people these days, could not afford to finish. Someday, perhaps. This book and others by J.L. Aarne are also available in paperback.

  Aarne blogs from time to time at http://jlaarne.tumblr.com/

  J.L. Aarne can be reached by email at jlaarne [@] outlook [dot] com

  Art by Lucy D. Sherman

  To view and/or purchase original artwork by Lucy D. Sherman, the wonderful artist who does such good things for my book covers, you can follow these links to her DeviantArt and Redbubble pages.

  On DeviantArt: http://ldsherman.deviantart.com/

  On Redbubble: http://www.redbubble.com/people/ldsherman