Kyle From High School

by Jeremy Jenkins

“I thought you wouldn’t,” he said with a half-grin. “And the reason it doesn’t surprise me that Inferno’s one of your favorites is because you have that whole, ‘I’m the Prince of Darkness’ vibe going on.”

  Another genuine smile spread across my face. “I do not have a Prince of Darkness vibe. It’s not like I’m one of the goth kids or anything—”

  “Do you honestly think the Prince of Hell would choose to look like a goth kid? No. He would have some style. He is a prince, after all.”

  I blushed. Fuck, I was flattered.

  Why was I so easily flattered?! Damn my vanity…

  Kyle spoke again. “He would dress like you. Know all the right moves to make, just like you. He would play electric guitar in his room all day—”

  “Well, there’s the flaw in your logic,” I pointed out. “I don’t play guitar.”

  “You will,” he said simply.

  I scrunched up my face. “What?”

  His lips stretched into a shit-eating grin. “I can see it now—in college, you’re going to evolve into a guitar-playing hipster. Might even join a band. It’s the next stage for you, you know.”

  I chuckled. “I don’t think I’ll play guitar. It’s not my style.”

  “Right,” he said, that grin spreading wider. “So, you’re missing that part of your whole hell vibe. Big deal.”

  “You’re thinking of that scene from Little Nicky, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Adam Sandler’s finest work.”

  “Such an underrated movie,” I said, smiling wide.

  I could close my eyes and think of all the times Kyle would come over, we’d hang out in the basement, and watch that movie. I like to fantasize about being the son of Satan. It made me feel powerful, invincible.

  And it was easy enough to think of my dad as—

  “Yeah, I can totally see you jamming out in that dark little castle at the center of hell,” Kyle said. “But fun fact that I learned today, courtesy of Mr. Vale—there’s an ice lake at the bottom of hell, not a castle.”

  “According to Dante,” I said, remembering my Inferno. “That’s his version of hell. Hell is up for interpretation.”

  “Then how do you imagine hell?” Kyle asked with a goofy grin. “Tell me, oh Prince of Darkness.”

  I chuckled, flattered again.

  Dammit.

  “Hell? Well, first I think we have to define evil—”

  I stopped in my tracks as my eyes traced the dark shape in the distance. I whipped around and took in our surroundings.

  We’d passed Farmer Braam’s fields.

  We’d wandered down the dark, deserted dirt roads, following intuition.

  And it led us right to this place.

  The barn where all of it… all of that stuff happened, loomed out over the field.

  A single window shone bright orange over the landscape.

  Kyle and I shared a look.

  We both understood.

  We stepped over the fence, just like we did all those years ago.

  Only this time, things were different.

  We were holding hands.

  8

  Kyle

  “Someone’s in there,” I said as I stepped through the grassy field.

  “You think so?” Phil asked.

  I stole a glance at him. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic.”

  “Me neither.”

  I let out a “pfft” sound, and I was scared, but I couldn’t deny that his touch of dark humor seemed to lighten the situation.

  “Did you lead us here?” he asked.

  “No, I swear,” I said with a shake of my head. “Our feet led us here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever. You’re so full of shit—”

  “Shh,” I said, pressing a finger to my lips.

  Voices chattered softly in the distance.

  We jumped behind a tall, cylindrical roll of hay sitting in the middle of the field like a barrel.

  Phil leaned close and whispered, “Do you think it’s the same—?”

  I inhaled, and his familiar scent swirled through my nose and into my lungs. “Might be,” I said, trying to keep a clear head. But it was so… so difficult to do when he was so close like this. My eyes landed on that patch of skin below his ear, and all I wanted to do was plant my lips there and kiss it.

  Was it fucked up that this adrenaline made me horny? Was a fear-boner a thing?

  “Someone’s coming out!” Phil whispered.

  We ducked down.

  The sharp straws of hay prickled my cheek, poking me like a zillion little demons with pitchforks.

  I craned my head over the side of our shield and saw a dark figure slip out from the barn door.

  “Dude, I think it’s those same people!” Phil whispered.

  I frowned. Even in this adrenaline-charged situation, I didn’t like that he called me ‘Dude.’ It normalized us. Put me in the friend zone. Threw a blanket over our interwoven orchids, which were finally blooming at the same time.

  But he squeezed my hand and the thought vanished.

  We watched as the dark figure hurried across the field and vanished into the night.

  “Do you think they’re… they’re doing the same thing?” I asked.

  For some reason, it felt like Phil had the answers.

  Phil always had the answers.

  “I don’t know.” Then he turned to me, his dark, intelligent eyes shining in the night like beetles. “Only one way to find out.”

  I nodded and he took my hand.

  We both stood up, gave a quick look around, and hurried across the field.

  My heart raced as we crouched and crossed the field.

  And as the barn rose up over us, towering like some dark cathedral in the night, that same old fear came over me.

  I felt that curious sensation of time doubling over on itself; threads of experiences getting caught in the great machine. It felt like my mind was lining up patterns, lighting up as everything converged onto this one moment.

  This moment I was destined to return to.

  But with Phil’s hand in mine, I didn’t feel so alone. We needed to face the past together; that much was clear. That old moment in time that set everything in motion? We needed to face it again.

  Only then could we move forward. Get on with things.

  Because as long as this place hung in our memories like a phantom, we couldn’t move past it. We were caught in this dream catcher, tying us to the past.

  I glanced at Phil, crouched down next to me. My eyes traced his biceps; the way the sinew from his shoulders corded in his neck, erupted into the globe of his head…

  Was he still stuck in the past, too? It felt like my mind was tangled in some kind of insidious web; trapped in that moment all those years ago. The memory of seeing something so awful had seared itself on my brain, stunted me.

  And the more I tried not to think about it, the more I pushed it into the shadows of my mind. Sure, Phil and I had different ways of dealing with it. He expressed it outwardly with the way he’d changed; he’d become the manipulator. The puppet master. He started to dress a certain way; his posture got straighter. He’d been moving himself around in his life like he was a chess piece in his own games; controlling his perception like some kind of puppet master lurked behind the scenes.

  Behind his shields.

  We snuck closer to the barn.

  I think being here with him, revisiting this place, made me understand Phil a little more. It was almost like I could hear the click of things falling into place.

  And I hadn’t realized how much of a stranger Phil had become.

  To me, and to himself.

  But I still knew who he was. I knew his heart was good, no matter how far he sank into the recesses of his own mind.

  We hurried closer to the ghosts of our past. The orange windows peeked out across the field like yellow jewels in the night.

  I wondered… when we got there, would anything be resolved? There was a
n intuitive part of me that urged me to head toward it; like I was pulling on the threads of time and memory, finding where the knot was.

  Maybe when we got there, we’d be able to undo it…

  Start over.

  Exercise the ghosts of the past.

  Because hell, running toward the barn like this felt like I wasn’t the one giving the orders. It was like I was drawn to it. The feeling was impossible to describe to anyone else, but it was there all the same:

  Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to stop my legs from scrambling across the field, carrying me closer and closer to the black stain on my childhood.

  I kept having to look down at the ground, careful not to step in any cow pies or trip over the mounds of loose grass.

  Phil navigated it easily; stepping this way and that without even having to look. He had all the grace of a cat.

  Now that I thought about it, everything about Phil reminded me of a cat. There was this quiet pride about him. This whole misunderstood genius vibe.

  In that moment, one sentiment drifted to the surface and shone with silvery clarity:

  I trusted Phil.

  What I said to him on Saturday after we hooked up no longer applied. In situations where it counted; situations like this, I could depend on him to take the lead.

  I felt… I felt safe around him.

  And it was the kind of safety that you didn’t know you needed until you really needed it.

  I recognized that in that moment, all of my mistrust in him boiled down to one thing:

  My own fear.

  We finally got to the side of the barn and crouched down near a window.

  I was panting as I leaned against it, trying to make myself one with the red paint.

  My gaze met Phil’s.

  He brought an index finger to his lips, hushing me.

  I could hear voices inside…

  My heart hammered against the insides of my ribcage, urging me to run. But there was a stronger part of me that compelled me to stay; that I needed to see what was at the end of this segment of time.

  I needed it for my own sanity.

  A voice drifted out from the window.

  Was that Latin?

  It sounded… ancient, and foreign, and… and…

  And evil.

  Phil’s dark eyes flicked up to mine.

  I saw something there that I hadn’t seen in a long time: fear.

  Pure, unadulterated fear.

  And all at once, it felt like I saw him as that awkward middle schooler again. All innocent and lost and… and…

  His eyes were endless.

  I wanted nothing more in that moment than to kiss him. To throw all caution to the wind and let him know that I was here.

  Here not just physically. But here in all the ways that mattered.

  But I bit my lip and held my tongue.

  We listened there at the window for what felt like an eternity, procrastinating the inevitable:

  Sooner or later, one of us was going to have to look.

  But how did we know when the right time was? How did we know any of the people in there wouldn’t be looking when we did it?

  I watched Phil’s adam’s apple bob up and down.

  I squeezed his hand.

  His lips pulled up into the smallest smile I’d ever seen; promising that it wasn’t all bad.

  And then I felt it too:

  Underneath all the fear, underneath all this uncertainty and hair-raising spookiness, it was…

  Well, it was fun.

  Phil must’ve felt it too, because he looked at me and smiled.

  My eyes traced the sheen of sweat on his brow; the way his knuckles flexed as he tightened my grip.

  I tightened mine, too.

  I’m here, I tried to say. I’ll always be here.

  And then, as if a telepathic understanding passed between us, we both rose to either side of the window and peeked inside.

  There in the main area of the barn, about a dozen or so tall hooded figures in cloaks gathered around in a circle. Orange light from hundreds of candles filled the space, flickering with the ghosts of the past.

  And in the middle of the circle was the same thing we saw all those years ago:

  A young man on his hands and knees, buck-ass naked, getting railed in the ass by another hooded figure.

  “Fuck,” Phil hissed, his eyes wide. “They’re still doing it.”

  “All these years later,” I said softly.

  We watched the sheen of sweat glint on the guy’s back. The light slid over the contours of his naked body and rounded over his ass, which jiggled with every thrust.

  With horror, I realized that I was hard.

  Hard as a fucking rock.

  Just like back then, when I’d first witnessed it.

  Though unlike the first time I saw this, the guy didn’t look like he was there unwillingly. A blindfold covered his eyes and a ball gag sat securely in his mouth, but I could just make out a smile curling across his face. His hands dug into the mattress beneath him, and with each thrust his body lurched forward.

  I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even look at Phil.

  There was something so… so hypnotizing about it…

  “Shit,” Phil hissed, cupping a hand over his mouth.

  I could tell he wanted to look at me to check my reaction, but he was also hypnotized.

  We watched as the mysterious cloaked, hooded figure plowed the blond guy in the ass.

  Finally, I managed to clamp down on some words and whisper them. “Are they… are they doing bareback?”

  “Hard to tell,” Phil whispered back.

  But his hand was still in mine.

  I felt all of those old emotions rush me again. This was wrong. Forbidden. Something satanic. Only, unlike all those years ago, it was clear the guy in the center was doing it and liking it.

  Back when me and Phil saw this as kids, it was clear the guy was getting raped. He tried to get away, crawling on his hands and knees, but all the other dudes in the circle grabbed him and dragged him back to the center…

  But this guy… this guy was loving it. Though the ball gag stayed securely in his mouth, he backed his ass up against the shining cock pummeling his ass.

  My cock strained against the front of my pants, begging for release.

  This was… this was like the things I’d seen in the most depraved porn I had the gall to watch. The kind of porn where they strap a guy to a bald mattress in a basement somewhere, make him beg for it…

  I bit my lip.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  Phil squeezed my hand.

  I tore my gaze from the scene and looked Phil in the eye.

  “This time… this time’s different,” he said.

  A small prickle of resentment curled through me as I thought, No shit, Sherlock. But then my gaze went back to the scene in front of me.

  “Yeah,” I said, the word coming out of my mouth all breathy. “You think they’re… they’re doing some kind of ritual?”

  “Summoning Satan or whatever?” Phil asked. His gaze hardened. “Maybe. I always thought that’s what they were doing last time…”

  “Same,” I admitted, watching the hypnotic gyration of the guy on his hands and knees.

  The man tilted his head back and the cords of his neck highlighted his sexual strain.

  I traced the line of his jaw with my eyes, feeling suddenly guilty that I was checking out a guy other than Phil.

  Phil, my new boyfriend. It still didn’t feel real.

  Nothing about tonight felt real.

  Would he be jealous? Was I breaking some kind of rule or whatever?

  I peeked at him.

  He bit his lip a little, distorting the shape of his mouth.

  No; this didn’t feel like cheating, or doing anything wrong. Watching this together and getting turned on by it—it was pretty much like watching a porn together.

  And that was a normal thing to do, right?


  My mouth came open a little bit as I took in the scene; the guy on his hands and knees, the other guy completely obscured by his cloak—save for his long pink cock poking out from the folds, of course—

  Slamming into the guy in front of him over and over.

  Squelching sounds with the lube. Moans leaking through the edges of the window, and I, too, bit my lip.

  Together, Phil and I watched a rehashing of what we’d seen all those years ago as kids. Only now, we could look through the lenses of horny teenagers and understand a little better.

  I didn’t feel so awful to witness this. I mean, sure, at first it was a huge shock to come across this scene… but here with Phil?

  I glanced at him again—took in his bird-of-prey profile.

  Anything was possible with him at my side.

  I couldn’t get into trouble, because I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

  Next to him, with his hand in mine.

  It just… it just made sense.

  Together we watched in awe as the guy in the middle of the circle got pounded over and over; digging his fingers into the bald mattress.

  Phil spoke softly: “Is it just me, or is this a huge turn on?”

  “It’s not just you,” I said, hypnotized.

  Together, we watched the cloaked guy slam his dick into the blond guy’s ass, the light along his shaft winking in the candlelight. Promising that this kind of salacious pleasure wasn’t unwanted; in fact, it was needed.

  There was something in the way that guy’s neck tendons stretched that gave him away; let us know that he wanted it; wanted it more than anything.

  This was completely different than what we witnessed as kids.

  Back then, the scene was the same, but it was clear the guy didn’t want it…

  A shudder passed through me.

  I glanced at Phil and could immediately guess that he was thinking about the same thing.

  It was impossible to look at the pleasure happening in front of us without thinking of the pain of the past guy—

  “What do you think you’re doing?!”

  We whipped around, but it was too late.

  My vision went black.

  I tried to scream, but fabric clouded my mouth and muffled all sound.

  I struggled, but strong arms wrapped around my limbs, holding me in place.

  “PHIL!” I screamed, but all that came out was “MMRPH!”