by Maris Black
Then the freak-out came. The inevitable second-guessing. Because what the fuck had we done? In the space of thirty seconds, everything had changed.
“Oh, God, Bain. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to—”
“I did it,” Bain said. “You didn’t do anything. Stop feeling so guilty all the time, Gavin. I’m not some little kid who can’t make his own decisions. I’m just as much of a man as you are, and just as responsible for everything we do.”
“But I’m the one inside of you.” As if on cue, my softening cock slipped from his hole, as dejected and remorseful as I was. There were no words to adequately express what I was feeling, because it didn’t matter that Bain had ultimately caused the penetration. I had started the whole thing by shoving my dick between his legs like some desperate pervert. I had woken him from a deep sleep and made him want me. I had entered his precious body and taken his virginity, and there were no take-backs on that, goddammit. No take-backs on that.
CHAPTER 16
(GAVIN)
ON THE first official day of working on our semester project in film lab, Leo announced that our group would be working on a film they had begun making at the end of the previous year. Of course Leo would be spearheading the project. Anything to assert his dominance over everyone. The others accepted the plan without question, and I held my tongue instead of voicing my opinion.
After Dr. Ray left us to our own devices for the last half of class, Leo set up his laptop on one of the counter height lab tables and everyone gathered around. Bain looked delighted, which pissed me off. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to handle this group stuff. I was used to working alone or with Bain.
“Is this the serial killer movie?” Skyy asked. “The one where you dismembered Grayson?”
“That’s the one,” Leo said, his chest puffing up with pride. “I think it’s our best work yet. I did a lot of editing over the summer, and I think you will all love what I’ve done with it.”
“Serial killer movie?” Bain asked, eyes wide. “That ought to be fun.”
“Did you keep my stalker footage?” Hadrian asked. “Grayson and I spent a shit load of time filming those sequences.”
Leo smiled. “Of course I kept it. The angles you got were brilliant. I made some tweaks, added in some fake camera movement to give it that through-the-eyes-of-the-killer effect. But if we do any more outdoor shots like the ones you did in the woods and in town, we’ll have to take into consideration the difference in seasons.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Hadrian said. “We may not even need any more. There was a lot there.”
“Is there anything left to do on this project,” I asked. “Or are Bain and I just left out in the cold?”
“Don’t worry.” Leo waved a hand at me while he worked to find the file and open it. “There’s plenty left to do. It started out as a mini project between me and Grayson and Hadrian, but I think it could be more than that. Grayson graduated last year, so he’s no longer here to film, but I think we got enough of him. Our killer hasn’t been seen yet, so it could be anybody. And he should have more than one victim, so we’ll have more stalking and killing scenes to shoot. We could use Grayson’s scenes as the intro, then flesh it out with more dialogue and interaction between our killer and the next victim. We’ll use the stalking scenes with Grayson as flashbacks or dream sequences. I don’t think the plot should be linear. This guy— our killer— is imaginative and intelligent. We should try to capture the way his mind works.”
Drake leaned on the table, his tattooed knuckles wrapping around the edge. For the first time since we’d met, I was able to read the words it spelled out: FUCK THEM. Whoever them was supposed to be. “I’ll handle the soundtrack as usual,” he said. “I collected a bunch of indie songs over the break that we can use for free. Already contacted the artists, so we’re good to go. There are a few tracks that would be super cool for a serial killer flick.”
“Oh, they really are good,” Neva said, combing the end of her red braid with her purple-painted nails. “Drake played me a bunch of them the other night in his room.”
Raven grinned. “And what were you doing in Drake’s room, little girl?”
Neva’s face went beet red. “Nothing. We were just hanging out. He wanted to run the music by me and see what I thought. Right, Drake?”
Drake nodded, suddenly finding a speck of something on the table to investigate. Their uncomfortable reactions were all the evidence needed to prove that the two of them had something going on. If it had not yet gotten physical, there was at least desire there on both their parts.
Raven and Skyy exchanged knowing looks behind Neva’s back, and Hadrian nudged Drake’s shoulder. Bain raised his eyebrows at me. Meanwhile, Leo was too wrapped up in stroking his own ego to notice there was a budding romance in the Coven.
“Alright, kids,” Leo said. “Check this out. Tell me what you think of it for an opening sequence.” He pressed play.
The movie opened on a black screen. No visuals at all, but there were noises. Muffled grunts, the vague shuffling of someone moving, and the unsettling sound of a knife blade tapping against wood. The scene faded in on a handsome young man lying on a bed. He was naked except for a pair of boxer shorts, his wrists and ankles bound by black straps at the four corners of the bed. As the camera zoomed in on his face, he blinked his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. He was groggy, as if he’d been heavily drugged.
Several choppy camera cuts later, he finally managed to croak out, “Where am I?”
A man in a ski mask and black track suit moved to the side of the bed and placed a knife on the cluttered bedside table, slipping it in between a lamp and a worn paperback of The Catcher in the Rye. “Nowhere,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
In a series of effective close-ups, he checked the captive’s wrist restraints, tugging hard on them with black-gloved fingers and finding them secure. The camera zoomed in Hitchcock-style from behind the killer until the black expanse of his back and arm took up half of the frame. Part of the bound man’s face, slightly out of focus, was visible beyond.
His partially revealed features transformed from confused to horrified as reality dawned. “Are you going to—” He stopped mid-sentence, as if not wanting to give his captor any wicked ideas that hadn’t yet occurred to him.
The camera drew back to take in the wider shot, and the killer retrieved the knife from the side table, light glinting off of the metal as he turned it over in one gloved hand. Then he bent down, completely obscuring the camera’s view of his victim. This time the camera zoomed all the way into the black of his track suit, obliterating everything on the screen like a fade-to-black, and when it drew back out, the scene was covered in blood.
The man on the bed lay still and dead-eyed with a clean slice across his throat. The gush from his carotid artery had soaked the white sheets a deep red.
A title placeholder faded onto the screen, followed by the beginning of the credits. Then the video ended.
No one spoke for a few seconds as Leo, wide-eyed and still, waited for feedback. The cocky bastard knew he had a piece of student cinema gold on his hands. I wasn’t about to compliment him aloud, but even I was impressed. He might have been at the top of my list of people I’d like to choke the life out of, but I had to admit he knew what he was doing when it came to film editing. And his director’s vision was nothing short of inspired.
“Oh my God,” Skyy said. “That was amazing. I had no idea you could do that kind of cut work, Leo. That’s the main thing we struggled with last year, but you really nailed it.”
“I’ve been practicing,” he said. “It looked pretty convincing, huh?”
“Convincing?” Hadrian laughed. “It was fucking terrifying. When we were shooting it, I thought it was going to be too cliché and amateurish, but you took that footage to a whole new level.”
“It’s like Hitchcock meets Rob Zombie,” Bain said, clearly impressed.
“The way you did that zoom on part of his face with the killer’s back blotting out the rest of the shot was priceless. And that guy Grayson is a good actor.”
“He was the best,” Raven gushed. “Nobody here could hold a candle to him when it came to acting ability. You’d think someone with that much skill would have wanted to capitalize on it, but not Grayson. He never wanted to be an actor. He was too camera shy, he said. I had to get him stoned to make him agree to do the movie, and even then he tried to back out a couple of times.”
Neva gave a sly grin. “I still think you did more than get him stoned. One day he was totally set against it, and the next he was letting Leo and Hadrian tie him up. Complete turn-around. Weed doesn’t do that.”
“Good head does,” Hadrian said, earning a punch in the arm from Raven.
“You guys stop it,” Raven pleaded, her face turning red. “It wasn’t anything like that. Grayson and I were just friends. And not even that close, apparently. The asshole hasn’t even texted me since he left school.”
Neva leaned one elbow on the counter, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, and began to draw lazy circles on the laminate surface with one blue-painted fingernail. “Raven texted him so much over the summer he changed his number.”
Raven turned a fiery glare on Neva. “Shut up, bitch. You make me sound like some kind of stalker.”
Neva fought a smile and shrugged. “Well, it’s true. And just for the record, I never used the word stalker.”
Leo cut his eyes over at Neva, radiating annoyance. “If anyone hears of a cure for diarrhea of the mouth, please see that Neva gets a prescription.” He turned his attention back to his computer screen, closing down the video before snapping the laptop shut.
Neva stuck her tongue out at Leo, but she didn’t say more. The power he held over the group was baffling, and it irritated the hell out of me every time he gave an order and they jumped.
“Grayson was different,” Skyy said, putting a hand on Raven’s shoulder. “He was socially awkward, and he didn’t make connections easily. If you tried to stay in contact and he didn’t, you can’t think it’s any reflection on you.”
“He was closed off,” Leo agreed. “His parents both died in a car accident when he was thirteen, and his grandmother passed away during his junior year at Otranto. Now he’s alone. You can’t blame the guy for being a little fucked in the head.”
“Might be a good thing,” Hadrian said. “I think you have to be a little crazy to be in the movie business. Look at all the big stars who have gone off the rails. We’ll probably see Grayson in some big blockbuster a few years from now, and he’ll be like, Oh, I always knew I’d be a famous actor someday.”
“Yeah,” Drake said. “And he’ll be on the cover of People magazine wearing that raggedy-ass friendship bracelet his mom made him, if it hasn’t rotted off of his arm by then. He told me he’d been wearing that thing for five or six years.”
“And a Cannibal Corpse t-shirt,” Raven added. “Or Deicide.”
Drake feigned a gag. “You know, Grayson was a pretty cool guy, but his taste in music was for shit. Death metal literally makes my ears bleed.”
“Literally?” Raven asked. “Like blood actually comes out of your ears?”
“Well, not actually,” Drake said.
“What do you think literally means, dumbass? Can people literally not understand how to use the word literally?”
“Oh, here we go,” Neva groaned. “Miss Grammar strikes again.”
“Children,” Leo said. “Can we not do this today? We need to talk about the movie. It’s got to be thirty minutes long, and we have two minutes and seventeen seconds.” He glanced pointedly at Raven. “Literally.”
CHAPTER 17
(GAVIN)
LATER ON, Bain was leaning over the end of our lab table, resting his weight on his elbows and laughing at something Neva had said to Drake. It warmed my heart to see him that way, when every ounce of care was erased from his eyes and only pure joy remained. I had once thought the longing I felt for him couldn’t get any stronger, but I was wrong. Against all odds, it continued to grow every day.
I thought about what we had done that morning, how we had irrevocably consummated our love, and I started to get hard. The feel of being inside his body was addictive, and I planned to be there as much as possible from now on. Starting right after class. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and glanced at the time.
Only twenty minutes to go.
My dick was already getting excited at the prospect of fucking him, and I wondered at the radical change in myself. In a matter of days, I had gone from vowing to never touch my brother to wanting to be on him twenty-four-seven. I truly was a masochist.
But I was a determined masochist. For better or worse, I was committed.
Everyone was distracted, running their mouths about things I didn’t care about at the moment. I had one thing on my mind, and I wanted to make sure it was still on Bain’s mind, too. I took a deep breath and sauntered around the table, squeezing between Bain and the student desk behind him. As I passed, I leaned in to whisper against his ear. “I’m hard for you right now.”
My brother, lost in his good mood and seeming oblivious to the eyes around us, glanced over his shoulder and gave me a look that made my balls tighten. The sight of his ass jutting out so round and inviting scrambled my brain, and that’s when reality started adding frames. Suddenly it felt like a slow motion movie scene as I grabbed onto his hips with both hands and thrust my erection right up between his ass cheeks. Just once. One good dry hump that lasted all of a second. Bain’s eyes widened in shock, and he straightened himself and turned back to the others.
I closed my eyes and silently chastised myself. What the hell was I thinking? I couldn’t afford to be doing stuff like that in public, because it posed a serious threat to our safety. The problem was that I hadn’t consciously made the decision to do it. It was my subconscious that had compelled me. How could I fight against urges that completely circumvented my conscious thoughts?
I told myself that it was okay. That it had all happened so quickly no one could have seen. Yet when I glanced up, Leo was looking straight at me, and he had a perfect view of what had just happened. His lips were slack, his eyes glittering with a comprehension that made my heart stutter, and the most disturbing thing of all was that he did not seem shocked.
He knows. God in heaven, he fucking knows.
I walked over to my desk, sat down, and shoved my laptop into my backpack. I was moving on autopilot now, because my mind was racing with fear. I kept replaying Leo’s expression over and over in my mind, because what I had seen in it made my skin crawl.
I stood up, looking over at Bain and trying to get his attention, to let him know in some subtle way that we had been compromised. We needed to cool our jets, because our desire for each other was making us stupid.
When Leo walked up beside me, the fabric of his shirt sleeve whispering against mine, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“You think Dr. Ray will show?” he asked. “I’m betting we’ll have to dismiss ourselves today.”
I nodded, trying and failing to look in his direction. “He’s probably chain smoking around the side of the building.”
“So you’ve noticed that, too? The man has a raging nicotine addiction.”
I finally swung my head around to face Leo. I was shaking in my boots but determined to act normal, which meant getting a little surly with Leo. “Maybe if we all chip in and buy him a vape we’ll get more instruction time. Tap into that brilliance you love to talk about so much.”
I expected a snarky comeback, but Leo’s reply was friendly. In fact, he actually smiled, and a smile from Leo to me was not a good sign.
“Hey, I have tons of notes and worksheets from his past classes. Some of them are my personal notes, and the rest I collected from other students. Why don’t we order a pizza tonight, and I’ll let you have a look at them?”
“Pizza?” I s
tared at him, wondering if he thought seeing me rub my dick against my brother’s ass suddenly made us bosom buddies. Did he think I had forgotten about the hotel and the fact that he had obviously planned to date-rape Bain? It occurred to me that maybe he’d decided I was the better target. A little pizza, a little drugged wine, and I’d be lying face down with his dick in my ass. No, thank you.
“The three of us,” he clarified. “Me, you, and Bain. After the misunderstanding at the hotel, I think it would be nice to spend some time together. Bury the hatchet, so to speak.”
I wanted to spit in his face. I wanted to ask him if he planned to bury the hatchet in my back. But I remembered my promise to Bain. No confrontation. So I put on what felt like a friendly smile instead. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to decline, Leo. Bain and I study alone.”
“Alone, huh?” Leo’s grin was electric. “You know, I think about the two of you a lot. The whole twin thing just fascinates me. I’ll bet it makes everything twice as good, even studying. Tell me, what’s it like when like when you put your heads together?”
I froze, and an image of Bain and me rubbing our cocks together while we studied had my face flushing hot. I felt like Leo knew everything, as if he had looked into my soul and seen all of the nasty things Bain and I had done together, and all of the things I had imagined doing. I had to remind myself that Leo wasn’t omniscient or psychic, and that this was just another of his games.
I kept my cool, refusing to be baited.