I Hear They Burn for Murder

by J L Aarne

  He pushed against Ezekiel’s chest to put a little space between them then slipped out of his grasp and yanked open the elevator door. Ezekiel reached for him automatically and grabbed his arm and Rainer turned back to him and pulled him close again even as he was taking his car keys from his pocket. Ezekiel’s lips parted in expectation of another kiss, but Rainer only smiled.

  “You might not be married and maybe you don’t have kids, but you’ve got someone, don’t you?” Rainer asked.

  Ezekiel’s face revealed nothing, but he felt like he’d been slapped. “What makes you think that?”

  Instead of answering him, Rainer leaned closer until their lips nearly touched. He shivered and let his breath out on a sigh. “God, I want to give you to myself for Christmas,” he whispered. He lifted a hand to touch his fingers to Ezekiel’s mouth and gently pulled away from him. “But I won’t be forgettable—or worse—regrettable. You know where you can find me, Ezekiel.”

  Ezekiel let him go, angry and frustrated when he pulled away, and watched him walk to the exit door. “You—You fucking tease!” he called after Rainer.

  The anger was slow, but he could feel it growing inside him as Rainer let the door close between them. Ezekiel grabbed it and pulled it open again, the cat hissing with rage in the back of his mind. He felt like he was being toyed with more acutely then than he had ever felt with Rainer before and it washed away his desire for him more cleanly than an ice cold shower. For a brief moment, he was mad enough to murder him.

  “Rainer!” he shouted. There was a rumbling touch of the beast in his voice as he fairly snarled his name. “Rainer!”

  Rainer paused with his car door open and looked back at him. Ezekiel had followed him out of the building, but he had stopped outside the door and he stood beneath the cone of light cast by a florescent bulb above the door. He looked ferocious and Rainer didn’t think it was only the dark shadows the light cast across his face making him appear that way. His eyes seemed to glint and shine out of the dark.

  “Beautiful,” Rainer whispered. He raised his voice and called, “I’ll see you later, Ezekiel. Merry Christmas.”

  Then he got in his car and drove away.

  Chapter 34

  On Christmas Eve, Rainer woke up with a wretched hangover when Thomas yanked open the blinds and the sun pierced his eyelids with burning red light. He groaned and tried to tunnel back under the covers into the relatively painless safety of the dark.

  Thomas snatched the blanket and sheet away from him. “Rainer, get up,” he said.

  He sounded angry and Rainer tried to remember anything he might have done to piss him off as he rolled over to get away from him. “Leave me alone, Thomas. I’m in pain. Go away.”

  “Good, I hope it really hurts,” Thomas said. “You drove your car into my porch last night and parked it on my lawn. I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking, but you ran into the porch… then you backed up and just parked it.”

  Rainer sighed and scrubbed at his face with one hand. “I did what?”

  “Your car is parked in the middle of my front yard with the hood right up against the side of the porch,” Thomas said. “A little farther in and it would have taken the damn thing out. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I was drunk,” Rainer said.

  “Obviously. You smell like booze sweat,” Thomas said. “Get up. We have to move your car.”

  “Can we do it later?”

  “No, we can not do it later. We are doing it now. Oh and by the way, you left the door hanging open so the battery’s dead.”

  “Fuck. Fine. I’ll get up. Now go away. You’re making my head hurt.”

  “Don’t go back to sleep,” Thomas said. He left.

  Rainer lay there a few more minutes then sat up, put his clothes on from the day before and stumbled out of the bedroom to find Thomas and help him move the car. Thomas was on the porch with a cup of coffee looking with disgust at Rainer’s little Dodge Dart.

  The car had left mud tracks in the grass where Rainer had turned to go up the driveway and missed it completely. The trail led from the sidewalk all the way to the wood porch, where he had braked with the nose of the car pushed right up against it. If he had stepped on the brake even a second later, the car would have been parked in the middle of the porch and Thomas would have likely woke him up with a kick to the head.

  The door did indeed stand ajar and the light inside the car had gone out.

  “How are we going to move it?” Rainer asked.

  “Hell if I know, but it can’t stay there,” Thomas said.

  Rainer sighed and turned to go back inside. “I’ll call for a tow truck.”

  “A tow truck? No,” Thomas said. “That really will fuck up my lawn.” He set his coffee down on the railing and went down the steps, gesturing for Rainer to follow him. “Get in, put it in neutral and steer. I’ll push it.”

  They moved the car and used jumper cables and Thomas’s car to charge the battery. Thomas went to the restaurant that afternoon and Rainer finished his grades while he was gone and sent them off. The restaurant closed early because it was Christmas Eve and Thomas came home to Rainer. They had dinner—cooked at the restaurant before Thomas left—and watched the dogs play together while they talked and eventually they went to bed.

  Rainer had teased and tortured Ezekiel the night before, but the frustration went both ways. It was dragging out and there was a chance that Ezekiel would disappoint him and nothing would come of it and he could not stop thinking about that. He did not really worry or think too much about what ifs, about things that had not happened or might happen, but he thought about that and it annoyed him. It started to affect his mood.

  He took his sexual frustration out on Thomas and that helped, but it didn’t really satisfy. It didn’t scratch the itch.

  They spent Christmas Day together. In the morning, they exchanged gifts and opened those they had brought home with them from San Francisco.

  Rainer gave Thomas a new set of flatware, which he liked. It was silver and he admired it, but he left it in the box. Thomas gave Rainer a small stack of records: Patti Smith, Matthew Sweet, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Velvet Underground and The Cure. Their mother had bought them both ties, which were nice, though Rainer liked Thomas’s better, so they traded. Their father gave them each a bottle of Bordeaux.

  They took a bottle with them to Cosra’s that evening, but they ended up drinking most of it themselves while Thomas cooked dinner. Cosra was a whiskey man, not a wino, he told them while toasting their good health with a strong swig of Jack Daniel’s. Thomas and Cosra got along surprisingly well, which pleased Rainer. Both of them were such disagreeable people that they rarely got along with anyone, which might have had something to do with why they got along with each other. Thomas left shortly after they ate to go to work. He had promised Mr. Gold he would cover the dinner shift for him so he could stay home with his family.

  They spent the next week together off and on, but Rainer went home to his apartment after Christmas. Thomas was dear to him, but he got bored without him and he missed his TV. Besides, he had told Ezekiel that he knew where to find him, so it was important for him to actually be there when and if he ever decided to show up.

  But he didn’t.

  Rainer didn’t see him after the party at Mary’s. He wasn’t even following Rainer around anymore. He didn’t drop by to watch TV with him and trade veiled threats and insults with him anymore. He didn’t even sit outside in his car eating bad truck stop food, drinking coffee and watching his building.

  The new semester started after New Year’s and Rainer had all new classes full of a brand new crop of students, but Ezekiel didn’t sit in on them. Ever. He wasn’t parked outside Rainer’s office building anymore and he didn’t stop by his office.

  He was gone.

  Rainer had a class on epic poetry that semester. They started with The Epic of Gilgamesh and Beowulf and he had plans to move on to Paradise Lost and The Divine
Comedy in February. He was thinking about the lecture he had just given discussing sex and sexuality in Gilgamesh and trying very hard not to think too much about Ezekiel and their last exchange in the elevator when his bracelet broke.

  He was walking down a hallway, passing through groups of students when the string popped and the little white beads of polished teeth spilled across the carpet and went flying. Students’ feet scattered them and Rainer started to drop and grab for them, but they were gone too fast. There were too many people, their legs moving, their feet stepping and kicking. He caught a couple of them, but they were the only ones he could get, the others were lost.

  He stopped and took a deep breath, told himself to remain calm, though he could feel the rage brewing to the surface as he cautioned himself against an outburst. It made no difference. With a wordless shout, he hurled the two teeth he had managed to catch blindly down the hallway. Students looked around, wide-eyed with surprise and a few of them stopped to stare.

  Cosra stepped between two girls and grabbed Rainer, turned him and pushed him through the door of an empty classroom. “Come on, Rainer. That’s it, not out here.” He pulled the door closed and locked it then released Rainer, who jerked away from him and stalked a few feet away. “Take a deep breath, boy. No screaming either, unless you want someone getting campus security out this way.”

  “Goddamn it. Goddamn it!” Rainer stormed. “You don’t understand. You don’t—They’re mine! They’re important!”

  Cosra raised a finger. “What did I say about the screaming?”

  Rainer turned away from him and hit the wall.

  Cosra walked over and pulled him away. “No you don’t. Go knocking fist-sized craters in the fucking wall or break your hand and the dean will have your ass. Sit down.”

  Cosra shoved him into the chair at a desk. Rainer tried immediately to stand, but Cosra pushed him back down and stood in front of him. Hands shaking, Rainer made himself stay. He dragged both hands through his hair and took deep breaths, told himself to stop it, to get control of himself, to calm down.

  It worked a little, but then he thought about the white beads of teeth skipping between the feet of passing students, disappearing and he wasn’t that calm. He had at least one for nearly every man or woman he’d ever killed in his life threaded on that damn cord. It had been the work of a lifetime, imbued with deep, personal meaning for him as very few things were.

  “I’d offer you a drink, but I was just on my way to get one,” Cosra said. “What the hell was that about anyway?”

  “Nothing,” Rainer said.

  “Bullshit. You’ve got some loose screws, sure, don’t think I haven’t noticed it, but you’re not totally unstable or you wouldn’t be here, would you? Be one of those smelly homeless people living in refrigerator boxes and eating cat food down on Skid Row, that’s what you’d be.”

  Probably not. Because his family had money, Rainer would have been more likely to end up in some kind of posh resort for rich crazy people. Still not an ideal scenario; a cage was still a cage, after all.

  “You need to calm down,” Cosra said.

  Rainer was already starting to calm down. His rages were like that, like a flash burn, intense and violent, but they died down quickly. “I’m fine,” he said.

  Cosra eyed him doubtfully. “You have more classes today?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s good. Mind telling me what in the hell that was about?”

  Rainer shook his head.

  Cosra frowned at him. “Haven’t seen Mr. FBI Man around here of late,” he said.

  Rainer looked at him blankly.

  “Just seems like you were more of a sunny disposition when he was in the annoying habit of dropping by, that’s all.”

  “I’m fine,” Rainer repeated. “I’m just… stressed.”

  “Aye. Bit early in the semester to be losing your shit though, so I have to guess it isn’t work related.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Bit much over a goddamn bracelet, too.”

  “I’m going home,” Rainer decided. He stood up and that time Cosra didn’t try to stop him. He paused before leaving and looked back at him. Largely thanks to Thomas he had developed a pretty good understanding of social etiquette and it felt like something more was needed. He considered it and said, “Thanks.”

  “Oh, don’t mention it,” Cosra said. “It’s what I’m here for. When I’m not toughening the skins of innocent youngsters, I’m wrangling the crazies.”

  Rainer’s lips twitched in a faint smile. “Yeah. I remember.”

  “Off with you,” Cosra said, waving his hands toward the door as he approached it like he was shooing away a stray dog. “You’re fine now and you’re standing between me and my office. Inside of which sits a desk, within the left-hand drawer of which is concealed a damn near full bottle of fine whiskey. Get ye gone.”

  Rainer was already leaving.

  He rubbed his wrist as he walked down the hallway and out of the building, feeling the strange absence. It made him angry all over again when he thought about it, but he pushed the emotion down, smoothed his mask back into place and hurried home. It was not Ezekiel’s fault, of course not, but he was more than willing to blame him for it. He couldn’t shake the idea that he was doing it on purpose; staying away to punish him.

  Or maybe this time he truly was gone and that would never do. Rainer had stayed out of Ezekiel’s life thus far—for the sake of playing fair—but if he was pulling a genuine disappearing act, that was going to change and the gloves might have to come off.

  On one hand, that would be a shame. There would be no going back from that. Not if he made it personal. Not if he did real damage. They were not the same, but they were enough alike that he knew Ezekiel would not forgive it and they really would be enemies then.

  On the other hand, he had to admit to a searing little thrill of excitement at the idea. What they had been doing so far was equivalent to pigtail pulling, to a morbid kind of hide-and-seek. Ezekiel had friends though, colleagues and quite possibly family or someone he cared about, someone he dated when he wasn’t working or stalking Rainer. Unlike Rainer, he still had morals, lines he would not cross, strong even if they were imaginary. If he couldn’t tempt him across, perhaps Ezekiel could be pushed. Just a little shove. All it would take was one death that twisted the screws in where it really mattered and the game would change, become darker, the stakes higher.

  Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

  They had been dancing around each other like fighting dogs for too long anyway. The flirtation was getting tiresome. It was time for a change, one way or another.

  He would give it a little more time. Wait a little longer and see which way Ezekiel decided to take things. Not too much longer though.

  Chapter 35

  When Ezekiel left the sweater party, he was so angry he was seeing red. It was almost blind rage of the sort he hadn’t experienced in a long time. It was also amazing he made it home in one piece because he remembered nearly nothing of the drive. The entire way, he was playing what had happened with Rainer in the elevator over and over in his mind.

  He cursed himself for his weakness, for the slip. Telling Rainer what he had, confessing had been a mistake and worse, it was sloppy. It was how people with appetites like theirs got caught. Rainer probably wouldn’t use it against him. He didn’t seem the type to tattle to the police or call in anonymous tips to the FBI, but he could if he chose to and it might not ruin Ezekiel—they could never prove it—but it would shine suspicion on him, it would make people wonder. There would be gossip and no one would admit to it, but it would affect his career. He had not only handed Rainer the gun to shoot him with, he had loaded it for him first.

  If that had been the only problem to come from that trip down the elevator, the solution would have been a simple one: Kill him. Kill him and be done with it, like he should have done from the start.

  He didn’t want to kill him though. N
o, he did, that wasn’t quite true. He desperately did want to kill him. He wanted to kill him so badly that his dick got hard thinking about killing him. Except he didn’t want to either and he was torn by the conflicting desires. He wanted him and he wanted to kill him, but if he killed him, Rainer would be dead and no amount of wishing and wanting in the world would reverse it.

  He could only kill him once and that was the crux of the matter.

  Rainer had drawn the truth out of him and Ezekiel had been stupid and weak enough to let him. He was furious about the way Rainer had played with him, but he was ashamed of himself for falling for it and that was worse. He damn well knew better than that. He had studied these people and what they did, how they thought, their behaviors and motives most of his life and he had been weak for just a moment. He hadn’t forgotten the monster he was holding, but he had dismissed the knowledge as inconsequential before his own desires.

  Now Rainer was out there, armed with damaging if not damning knowledge of Ezekiel, and what if he did decide to use it? That couldn’t be allowed.

  But what was he going to do about it? He could kill him, but he didn’t want to. Or rather, he did, but he wasn’t committed to it and deny it as he would have liked, he still wanted something more from Rainer. He could fuck him then kill him, which would solve both of Ezekiel’s problems and was the simplest and perhaps most logical solution, but something about it rubbed him the wrong way. If he didn’t kill him though, what could he do to silence him? Not much. As a psychopath, he would not respond to pleading or reason when he had the upper hand, even were Ezekiel inclined to don the mask of a man who begged and pleaded, which he was not.