by Cameron Dane
The stench of spoiling food had Colin wrinkling his nose and putting his back into the work, wanting to get this job done as quickly as possible. Geez, he hated doing the trash. It was his job at home too.
A noise from behind broke the silence, sounding like shoes skidding on the gravelly ground. Colin barely registered the skitter of nervousness race up his spine, and then he heard, “There he is,” the thudding of feet hitting the concrete, and then, “That's him. Get him!”
“Wha—” Colin turned and didn't get halfway around before a fist connected with his head, making him cry out with shooting pain as he rammed into the wall. Pain lanced through his skull, shoulder, and back where he hit the brick side of the building; his head snapped back with the momentum of the punch, cracking against the hard wall too.
Glass shattering cut across the night, and suddenly the side light disappeared, throwing the back of the restaurant into near darkness.
What the hell? Fear pushed his heart right up into his throat, but Colin didn't even get a chance to make a run for it or scream. In a shot, three guys in rubber Halloween masks, dark clothes, and gloves surrounded him, closing in fast. One of them yelled, “Fucking faggot!” and all three of them grabbed him at once and threw him to the ground, knocking the wind right out of him.
Colin landed on his tailbone, and a sharp pain ran up his back and radiated through his body, stunning him into momentary paralysis. Right on top of that, booted feet flew in his direction, kicking him all over, rocking through him with blow after blow. He tried to roll over, but one of the men dropped to his knees and held Colin down, whispering with a ruthless drawl Colin couldn't identify, “Don't think you're getting away, you fucking queer. Not till we're good and ready to let you.”
“Please…ahh!”
The man holding him down clipped him one in the head hard enough to whip his face around, and then he held Colin's cheek into the ground and punched him again, spreading pain into his jaw and down his neck. Blood filled Colin's mouth with the next crack, but he could hardly wheeze through it and regain his breath under the relentless beating from the other two. He coughed up blood, but his throat filled again.
God, it feels like I'm drowning.
One of the others kept kicking Colin in the hip and thigh over and over again, and soon the wetness of blood seeped through his tan work pants and spread down his leg. Blows to his stomach, arms, and legs kept coming at him from the third person, and Colin blinked up in horror at the twisted faces of the masks, characters from slasher films, looking down on him with dead eyes as they brutalized his body.
Another kick landed on his already agonized hip, and Colin tried to shout, but only a gurgle came out. A barrage of hate-filled names spewed from all three guys with such venom, Colin slipped into panic, certain he was going to die.
Oh, God, help me. He took another punishing punch to his ribs from the third assailant, and for a moment could not breathe.
Suddenly, the hands holding his shoulders, digging him into the concrete alleyway, released him. “Hold up. Hold up,” that first voice said. “Don't knock him out cold. I want him to feel this.” A clicking sound reverberated through the night louder than the cocking of a gun.
Switchblade. Oh please. No.
The punches to his arms and legs stopped. “Shit,” one of the others said, “you didn't say nothing about a knife.” Colin blinked, and the one in the Freddy Krueger mask backed away. “I ain't gonna kill him.”
“Pussy.” That came from the one kicking his hip, in the Scream mask. “He ain't gonna die.” He stopped and traded places with the first, and now held Colin's shoulders. “It's just gonna hurt real bad. Slice him open like the rooting pig he is.” An ugly laugh muffled from under the rubber covering his face. “Go ahead.”
Colin's shirt was torn open, and such fear attacked him he started to hyperventilate.
“Ain't no running from what you are, fag boy,” the one with the knife, in the Jason Voorhees mask, said. “But after this, you'll think twice about doin' anything about it.”
Without a belt on, Colin's pants rode low, exposing his lower stomach.
“Please…” His plea gurgled through the blood in his mouth as he begged.
Without even looking up, Jason sank the tip of the knife into Colin's belly, and white-hot pain ripped through him hot enough to set him aflame. Then, the knife moved through his belly, slicing his flesh; Colin screamed in agony, and with a surge of strength, rolled out of the hold on his shoulders in an effort to protect himself. The blade stayed in him though, and seared a cutting line all the way around his side and up his back.
“Hey, kid!” A loud voice cracked across the night, and light from the restaurant's kitchen inched into the alley. “Your mom's on the phone. What's taking so long?”
The three men let go of Colin at once, and one of them yelled, “Run, run, run!” They all took off as fast as they had shown up, thundering down the alley at a breakneck pace.
“Hey, stop!” That was definitely Sal's voice above the radio.
Colin rolled toward the kitchen door, moaning as his entire being shrieked in protest of the move. “Help me.” He sucked in a breath and choked on the blood in his throat.
“Holy shit, Colin.” Sal dropped to Colin's side and pulled him onto his lap. “What the hell happened?”
Colin blinked, searching, but everything was a hazy blur. He thought Sal held him, but there were so many faces floating above him, and none of them looked clear, so he couldn't be sure. He reached up, and touched something solid. “Help me.” He coughed, and his entire body cried out with suffering.
“Goddamnit, hold on. Marta! Sierra!” Sal bellowed the names at the top of his lungs. “Call nine one one. Bring some tablecloths, dishtowels…something! Colin is bleeding!” He lowered Colin back to the ground and gripped his hand. “Be strong. Help is coming.”
“'Kay.” Everything in his line of sight dwindled, and Colin's world went black.
* * * * *
Colin jerked awake and battled the blanket tangling his legs, throwing it off his body as if it were one of his assailants. Where am I? Blinking, he looked around, his heart racing until he recognized Marek's home, and the events of the last few days caught up to him. I'm in Fiji, not behind Gino's back in Henderson, bleeding onto the ground. Even as Colin recognized his surroundings, his insides still buzzed with residual nerves. God, he hadn't had such a vivid dream of his assault in years, and it left him trembling. He didn't know why it had bubbled to the surface with such detail once again.
It's all the emotions stirred up in these last few days. Has to be. Colin wasn't used to vulnerability with a partner, and that had to be what was dredging up old fears and pain. With the adrenaline racing through, he wasn't sure he liked dealing with the results that being intimate with Marek stirred in him right now. Nothing in his life, other than the attack, had ever left Colin feeling so powerless and uncertain as Marek's unpredictable behavior, and his ever-changing fits and starts about what he wanted. Even as Colin thought about the nightmare this lack of stability with Marek roused in him, he knew he wouldn't give up what had happened with him on the beach or the foyer floor. He wouldn't dare lose any of his time with the other man in order to restore the calm he normally craved.
Colin shivered again. True intimacy. Scary concept. He stretched out on the couch, unable to make his mind and body relax. It was quiet outside now, the storm having passed from the time Colin fell asleep to when the nightmare ripped him awake. He had fallen asleep earlier to the sound of Marek pacing in his bedroom, but it was silent now, inside and out. Colin sighed and stared out the window in the darkened TV room, still exhausted but unable to close his eyes. Damn, that dream had sapped him more completely than his toughest workout.
Resigning himself to a long night, Colin settled in, then started when Marek's long shadow reached across the TV room floor, announcing his presence. Oh fuck; he came out of hiding.
Colin held his breath when everyth
ing in him wanted to run to Marek. Instead, he forced himself to remain in place and wait.
An agonized, tension-filled few minutes sat heavy in the air between them, but eventually Marek crossed the room and took a seat in the recliner, half in dark and half in light but directly in Colin's line of sight. He wore a pair of his familiar khaki cargo pants, and nothing else.
With his feet planted firmly on the floor, and his hands wrapped around the armrests of the chair, Marek blurted, “I didn't wear protection.”
Colin exhaled and started breathing again. “No, you didn't.” He had pilfered a condom and lube packet from Tom's toiletry kit back at the bungalow, but in the heat of the moment, grabbing it never even crossed his mind. They both remained tucked in the front pocket of his discarded jeans. “I didn't ask, and you didn't volunteer.”
Marek's body remained stalwart, but his gaze dropped down to his lap. “I've been with one man, one time, a different man, twice, and I was with Payton for a year. I used a rubber with the first two men, at my insistence, and upfront Payton always said he would request one. I accommodated him. I didn't mind.” Marek cleared his throat and looked up, finding Colin in the darkness. “I don't have any here at the house and don't know if on the floor there I could have stopped with you.”
Colin's heart tripped, and his stomach flip-flopped, revving up his nerves. It always felt like he stripped himself naked when he talked about his sex life, as if he gave up a piece of his power and control, but once again this man pushed him to places he'd never been before. “I've only been with two people and always used condoms with both. I did go out with three other men long enough that I traded blowjobs with them, but they both fizzled out before I trusted them enough for sex.” God, don't think I'm a loser. “Neither of my relationships reached a one-year point.” He opened his mouth, prepared to spill reasons for his break-ups but zipped his lip instead. He doesn't need to know everything at once. A little bit at a time. Colin shifted to a seated position and drew his legs to his chest. “It's funny; I only met you again a few days ago, but inside I feel like I've been with you for much longer. That's probably why, in a practical sense, I thought to steal a condom from my friend Tom, but when it came down to it, it never occurred to me to use it.”
Looking straight ahead, his body still in that locked position, Marek nodded. “With your dreams, that makes sense.”
A small smile escaped Colin. “Then we're good with what happened.” He went right back to worrying his cheek. “Is that what we're saying?”
Marek nodded again, still without looking at Colin. “Yeah, I think so. That's what I'm saying.”
“Me too.”
Quiet took them over once again. Colin wrapped his arms tightly around his legs, fighting to contain his need to push more information out of Marek. His fingers itched to shake the man to see what would fall out, and the rest of his body wanted to crawl onto Marek's lap and hope strong arms would embrace him. He needed them, after his dream.
Abruptly, Marek turned, looking to Colin, and his eyes glittered in the shadows. “You were right, you know.” His voice was a little rough. “I haven't been with anyone, in any way, since Payton died.”
Colin breathed a silent sigh of success. “Tell me about him.”
Marek shifted his focus, to his right, and stared at the blank TV screen. “I lost Payton two and a half years ago. He went out one night to have a few drinks with a friend, and they ended up at a gay bar. He asked me to go with them, like he always did, and I said no, like I always did. Pay didn't mind, but he always tried.” Marek stopped for a moment, and his throat convulsed. “Anyway, Pay's friend hooks up with someone, and Pay tells him—Brian—he's going to have one more drink and then head home. These other two guys overhear him, say they're new in town, and they offer to buy Pay his drink. Pay had gotten up early for work that day, and after agreeing and having a soda with the guys, decides to go home. He leaves Brian with his pickup, and the two new guys say they're heading out too. But instead of going to their car, they followed Pay to his and proceeded to beat the crap out of him, not stopping until his entire body was bloodied and broken.”
Marek stopped again, and this time rubbed a hand over his face before going on. “Police say they planned it; they were from outside Pittsburgh and saw something on TV about gay rights that got them fired up enough to head into the city to kill a fag. Pay was small, and when it became clear he would leave the bar alone, he became their perfect target. They went into that bar knowing what they were going to do right from the start. They planned it. They fucking planned to kill a man that night. And they did.” Marek's hands moved to his knees, and he flexed and clenched his fingers, in between scraping his palms on his pants. He blinked, and blinked, and blinked. “They were successful. Payton died in that parking lot, without me.”
Colin closed his eyes, shuddering as he empathetically experienced the final moments of Payton's life. With the nightmare of his own attack still so fresh in his mind, he swore he could feel the blows hitting his body, and automatically tensed to ward off a punch, suffering right along with Payton. Swallowing, Colin forced down tears and whispered, “I am so sorry for your loss.”
Shaking his head, Marek swiped a hand across his eyes. “I can never give Payton enough 'I'm sorry's' if I say it every day until I die. I was never with him; not out in public.” Anger fueled Marek's voice. “I wasn't open, in any way, barely even to a secret relationship, even though I fell for Pay pretty much from the second we met.”
“How did you meet?”
Marek chuckled, a real laugh, but still full of grit. “It's so awful. You'll laugh.”
The sound of humor from Marek sparked an ember of warmth in the cold blanketing Colin. “That's okay,” he said. “Tell me anyway.”
“It's such a porn movie cliché.” Sliding Colin a glance, a full smile actually lit Marek's face. “We saw each other at the grocery store, and within five minutes of glancing at each other, he made me hard and I went to the bathroom. He followed, pushed me into a stall, and gave me a blowjob. Neither of us said a word. Couple of weeks later, we cross paths in the same store, and it happened again. Only this time, he tells me he knows I won't believe him, but he's never gone down on a complete stranger in his life once, let alone twice, except with me. I told him I did believe him because I'd never gone to a bathroom and let anyone suck me off before him. He introduced himself, and I did too. He asked me out, and pretty quickly realized by my reaction I wasn't out of the closet.” The brief moment of light shimmering inside Marek diminished, and he returned to the statue of before. “Payton said he didn't mind, that everybody has to come to terms in their own time and their own way. We started seeing each other in secret, mostly late at night, to start. Eventually he came to my place more and more often. In hindsight I'm sure I wasn't fooling anybody, at least not the people in my building, but I still couldn't just come out and let people see I was gay.”
“It's hard to do. Scary.”
Marek slammed his hand into the armrest, cracking a sharp noise into the air. “It's so fucking stupid, you know.” He turned and put a full, all-out stare on Colin, slamming Colin in the gut with the volatile emotion living on his face. “I was so damn scared and worried about how people would treat me, how my life would change, always wondering what people would be whispering behind my back when I walked into a room, that the thought of coming out paralyzed me. In the end, I did the most damaging thing of all. I refused to give this person I loved the respect he deserved by going out in public with him and not being embarrassed if people made the correct assumption that we were fucking each other. I couldn't protect him”—Marek's face hardened and he snarled—“because I was too fucking busy hiding myself away.
“Pay was in incredible shape, but like I said, he was compact and wiry. There was no way he could have defended himself against those bastards who attacked him. But if I'd just not been so damned ashamed, and had been in that bar having a few drinks with him, they never would ha
ve picked him as their target.” Half of Marek's face shone with the shaft of light from the hallway, and every molecule visible to the naked eye was drenched in suffering. “If I had been there, Payton would still be alive. Only he's not, for the son-of-a-bitch, dumb-ass reason that I couldn't bear anyone knowing I like to fuck other men.”
Feeling as if he were bleeding inside with each layer of guilt Marek confessed, Colin bolted to the man and sat down on the coffee table, facing him. He wanted to touch but was afraid of Marek's reaction. “Oh, Marek, no. Baby, you need to get off that road right now. It is such a dangerous one to travel. You can't know what might or might not have gone down, had you been with Payton. I can't imagine he would want you playing that 'what if' game of roulette. Not that I knew him, but you don't wish that hell on someone you truly love, no matter the circumstances.”
Leaning forward on his elbows, Marek clasped his hands in front of his mouth. “I never told him I loved him, you know. I wanted to, but it seemed ridiculous, and I couldn't make myself say it, so I just told myself the words didn't matter, that he must just automatically know I felt it, because I did.”
Just a hint of the dreams Colin had lived with over the last few years rushed through him, drawing a confidence to his tone. “Your emotions seem to have a way of sinking into the people around you, Marek. Trust me on that.” Colin could very well be the one person in the world who knew that truth as well as Payton. “I'm sure Payton knew how you felt.”
“After he died, everyone knew. I had no ability to hide my grief or what I felt for him from anybody. It's cold comfort, but Payton constantly assured me I would come out in my own time, and I would know when to do it. He was right.” Marek pulled back, and a little smile edged up the corner of his lip. “Up in heaven, that probably makes him happy. He liked when I had to concede he was correct and I wasn't.”