by Neil Plakcy
They parted ways the next morning like two old friends. Brian had kept his word, and he hoped Carl would too.
THE FERRYMAN
Gregory L. Norris
Sunlight, brilliant and blistering, spilled through the damaged bulkheads, one fraction of a second ahead of a wall of exquisite pain. The searing blast engulfed Lieutenant Junior Grade Cole Rader. Gunmetal gray tattooed in rivets evaporated in blinding-bright memories of Cape Cod in the summer; the strangely scaled trees, windblown into flat natural topiaries along the shore, and lazy rides in his skiff.
Recent dreams and fantasies about John Yuzzino superimposed over the sunny, two-dimensional vision. John, with his perpetual five o’clock shadow and neat, dark hair going silver just above the ears. And how John would look bare-chested, his bare legs and feet in a jaunty pose beneath the sun, on Cape Cod, in the skiff with Cole, his flesh glistening with sweat, a happy smile hanging crooked on his mouth, his eyes seeing Cole, only Cole, in the sunlight raining down from a cloudless sky the color of comfortable denim.
And then Cole was in the frigid, dark water. When he broke the surface, the USS Liberty lolled tall above him, her superstructure clearly showing the fresh wound dealt to her above-water hull amidships. Noxious gray smoke roiled out of the impact site; dirty orange tongues licked at the exposed sinew from within, the source of that false sunlight Cole had imagined, dreaming it into lines of sweat dripping down treasure trails, masculine muscles glowing gold under dreamy August sunlight half a planet away. The explosion had blasted him out of the Liberty and into the Arabian Sea, only the water was too dark, too cold, even in the shadow of the damaged escort vessel.
“Boat, ahoy,” Cole called, his voice echoing with an empty, eerie resonance over the waves.
The Liberty receded farther beyond a veil of mist and smoke.
“Ahoy! Someone, help me!”
Water lapped at Cole’s ears and lips, the expected brine completely absent. The surf smelled and tasted fresh. As dead as it felt around him, Cole also sensed it was alive, undulating, teeming with energy if not actual life. Panic attempted to seize hold of him. He silenced the voices in his head attempting to steer him toward greater danger and focused. He needed to get out of the water, to return to the Liberty, where the promise of help was certain. His eyes locked onto the accommodation ladder running down the side of her hull, he kicked out and cut across the choppy surf.
Ignoring the weight of his shoes and socks, his service uniform, too, attempting to drag him under the water, Cole reminded himself that he’d grown up at the beach. He both respected and feared the water in healthy doses, even this body that had stolen the identity of the Arabian Sea, and maintained his levelheadedness. At least at first.
The mass and superstructure of Liberty receded, becoming less distinct with each stroke despite Cole’s best effort. He cut water, paddled. On the next stroke, his hand struck something cold, solid. An instant later, he was sitting in the ferryboat, in full dress uniform, staring at an ominous figure seated aft with its bony hand on an old-school wooden rudder. A man, or what looked like one, shaped and colored like a cloud, his image unleashed a chill over Cole’s flesh. Cole fought the urge to shiver, failed. By the time the shudder tumbled, the ghost-form had solidified into a set of eyes, preternaturally gray between the dark fabric of a hooded cloak. Beyond, USS Liberty abstracted, more of an apparition now than the presence across from Cole.
It’s Charon, thought Cole. The Ferryman.
Only it could not be. Willing the image away didn’t exorcise it. Cole forced his palsied lips to move. Somehow, getting words past them proved to be more Herculean a task than any other act of training or crisis he’d soldiered through in life.
“You,” he eventually said, his throat desiccated to desert. “Ferryman.”
The specter’s gray gaze locked with his. “Me,” a deep, male voice answered.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the other side. Though you already know this.” Another shiver tumbled down Cole’s spine, equal parts ice and heat, the latter sensation somehow worse. When the landscape stabilized, Cole’s dress whites glowed against the palette of moody grays, the perfect attire for a naval funeral.
“I’m not ready,” Cole said. And then he shouted the same statement verbatim in anger.
The ferry drifted forward, heedless of his protest. Liberty was still visible, but barely, a phantom set against a pale gray sky.
“Did you hear me?”
The Ferryman nodded. “You and everyone else who’s ever joined me in this ride across the Styx. Bolder souls than you have voiced similar words, heroes every one—John F. Kennedy, Amelia Earhart, Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King. Charlemagne, David, and a thousand other kings. Men and women who weren’t afraid.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Cole lied.
“No, but you’re afraid of yourself.”
The retort caught him so completely off guard that the façade of Cole’s anger evaporated. “What the hell does that mean?”
A humorless chuckle sounded from within the dark cowl of Charon’s cloak, which fluttered like wisps of smoke, diaphanous in the gray breeze. “First, it was your family that kept you living a lie, and then that ridiculous Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The soldiers I met so long ago in Athens would have laughed at so outlandish a conceit. Do you really think the Powers of the Universe frown upon the love shown between human males? Some of the noblest and bravest warriors in history shared their beds and their hearts with other men.”
Eyes narrowed, Cole shrugged, shook. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“Don’t I?” the Ferryman taunted.
The phantom tending the rudder tipped a pallid hand toward the water at starboard. Cole glanced over the rail and saw himself floating in the turgid surf, burned and bleeding, dying. His eyes connected with his other self’s and, in that brief, bottled reflection, he saw all that had been lost.
Cole blinked, and he was on the skiff again, on the Cape, with John Yuzzino. Sunlight glinted. Sweat flowed. A scene from a happy life that hadn’t been allowed to play out and might never now unfold. An alternate reality. Heaven, perhaps.
“Cole,” John said. Only he was Johnny here, a laid-back surfer dude with eyes like twin sapphires, and though the sun in the sky had created the conditions for this resplendent day, it orbited Johnny Yuzzino. He was its master, a chariot driver stretched out in a jaunty pose, his hairy legs crossed at the ankles, arms behind his head, his neck resting on wrists.
A cocky smirk broke across his unshaved mouth, crooked on one corner. The smirk revealed a length of clean white teeth, that one element lending Johnny a wolfish look more than all the hair, muscle and jeweled gaze combined. Sunlight pooled in the sweat on his taut abdominal muscles, in the hair on his legs and in the nests of dark fur exposed in the pits of his arms.
Cole’s flesh ignited at the image of the other man, dressed only in loose-fit summer jam shorts, navy with white piping. He drew in a desperate breath of air heavy with the incredible male scent of Johnny, sweat and the trace of excited masculine hormones leeching through skin. Cole’s arousal ran deeper through his blood, past his bones, and into his soul. Even Johnny’s big feet, angled over the edge of the skiff, excited him with hunger that that part of a man’s body wasn’t supposed to inspire, but in this case did.
“Hey,” Cole sighed.
“Come over here,” Johnny didn’t so much ask as order.
Cole navigated to the skiff’s stern, where Johnny radiated with the sun’s captured light. The skiff rocked, and the gentle dark blue surf off Cape Cod on this perfect day whispered against the hull with soft, wet giggles.
En route, he caught his reflection in the water: his chestnut hair clipped short in military style, a day or so worth of prickle on his chin, cheek and neck. Unlike Johnny’s chest, Cole’s was bare of fur save for the treasure trail cutting him down the middle, making a roundabout ring at his belly b
utton. His cargo shorts, riding low on his hips, showed plenty of waistband and an inch or more of his black boxer-briefs. The waistband, in kind, flashed some curl at its very top.
Cole’s legs matched Johnny’s in terms of hair and muscle, those of an athlete, strong without being too showy at the calves and thighs. Big bare feet, a growing swell under that line of pubic shag, and healthy summer sweat completed an impressive image, though it was the smile on Cole’s face, drifting in the waves, that was the most telling facet of this happy alternate reality.
He forced his eyes back into the boat. Despite the day’s warmth, a shiver spilled down Cole’s spine. Johnny.
“Fuck,” he sighed, lost his balance, and fell into the other man’s waiting embrace. Sunlight and male scent enveloped him, along with Johnny’s arms. In that instant of energy, sweat, and radiant joy, the last of Cole’s doubt evaporated. Johnny moved to kiss him, and Cole met him halfway. The contact was electric, euphoric. He gasped a breathless expletive around Johnny’s mouth and swore again when his cock, swollen to its hardest state, attempted to join arms and lips in connectivity.
Legs scraped together. Big bare feet rubbed at the toes, ankles and insteps. While kissing, Johnny laced his fingers around Cole’s and then tongues mimicked. Cole boldly reached his free hand down and shook the meaty fullness between the other man’s legs. Johnny moaned into his mouth. His tongue licked across Cole’s teeth.
“Do it, dude,” Johnny said. “I’ve been waiting so long for this. Too fucking long.”
Cole pulled back, a space of a few inches. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t?” Johnny sighed, the smile on his face melancholy at the edges. “Maybe I need to be clearer.” He leaned up and crushed their mouths together. “I love you, Cole Rader. Have, secretly, since our first tour together.”
“No way,” Cole said.
Johnny caressed his cheek and then proved his love in actions as well as words.
They maneuvered into position, that perfect mathematical male equation, with one’s mouth aimed at the other’s cock. Not waiting for permission, because none was required, Cole worked down Johnny’s board shorts, worried his own dick might accidentally bust its load before Johnny finished freeing him from his.
In a daze, Cole absorbed the vision of the other man’s nakedness, his cock first, a column of erect muscle thickest at the middle of its shaft, capped by a classic helmeted head wreathed in foreskin. Like his sweat, the lone drop of Johnny’s precome had captured the sun’s light. Moisture glistened in his cock’s fleshy noose. It was, Cole thought, the most magnificent sight to young yet wise eyes that had traveled the globe as part of the U.S. military.
But that snapshot of Johnny’s dick only occupied the top spot until he wiggled free of his shorts, and the two balls hanging loosely in a hairy sac appeared.
“Yes,” Cole gasped.
Now among the other male scents were the sweat of Johnny’s nuts and his patch of pubic fur. Cole inhaled, convinced he was growing high, leaned closer, licked.
“That’s right, dude—suck on my rocks,” Johnny urged.
Cole did, taking them into his mouth one at a time. The taste was better than he dreamed, and Cole had imagined this moment often while squirting his seed into a sock or when forced to swallow it down after lapping it off his fingers to avoid embarrassment following inspections. Worse, he’d ground his cock into his rack’s miserable mattress too often while denying his needs, and the truth. The truth was he needed Johnny. Because he loved him.
“I love you, too,” Cole confessed.
Opening wider, he sucked Johnny’s dick between his lips, the taste hitting his tongue like liquid sunshine. All demons fled save the one that appeared without warning at the stern of the skiff where Johnny had been, a dark blemish that jumped down out of the cloudless sky and now fixed him with an ominous stare.
The taste on Cole’s tongue soured. Johnny’s cock was gone. So was Johnny, and he had taken the sun with him. The world again went gray around the ferry. A symphony of sad moans rose up from the swirling mists, chilling to flesh still reveling in phantom sweat.
“You?”
The Ferryman nodded. “We’re almost there. It’s time to pay your fare.”
“No,” Cole said, the weight of his full dress whites too heavy, a shroud of mummy bandages forced upon him against his will. “We didn’t get to finish!”
“Woe to him who ends his mortal existence in might-have-beens and unrequited lamentations.”
Cole shook his head. “Charon,” he growled. The Ferryman’s gaze narrowed. “You called me out. You were right. I was afraid. But I’m not anymore. I want to go back. Turn around.”
“That’s not the way this works.”
Cole broke eye contact and looked higher. The Liberty’s conning tower rose up from the mists, seemingly a million miles distant. “I refuse to pay.”
“Then I would be forced to send you out of my ferry.”
“I’ll swim.”
“Swim quickly,” the Ferryman said. “Even I don’t remember all that inhabits the Styx in this late aeon.”
Cole moved toward the edge of the boat.
“And, Cole,” the apparition warned. “Don’t forget what you are swimming toward.”
Cole tipped a final glance toward the rudder. The barest smile lit the Ferryman’s face, crooked at one edge, just like…
“Johnny,” Cole said, and dove into the turgid water.
Cole swam, not only for his life but also his soul. Sounds thundered in his ears, bites of noise and voices, all dissonant, none clear. Ignoring his panic, Cole pressed forward, cutting water faster and faster.
“I love you, Johnny,” he whispered into the Styx. Something brushed against his leg. He ignored it, kicked, swam faster, faster yet. As fast as sunlight, he imagined. At that speed, breathing proved impossible; he forgot to anyway until the last stolen sip of air boiled in his lungs. The River Styx jellified around him, a further attempt to slow his escape. But nothing, not physics nor philosophy would keep him from reaching the safety of Johnny Yuzzino’s arms.
Sea beasts splashed around him. A dense, dead fog poured down from the heavens, filled with skeletal flying things that raked at his back. Eyes shut against a hundred nightmares, Cole pressed forward, his focus on the sunlight and the source: John.
The Liberty rose ahead of him and pulled free of the fog. A loud, baleful horn bellowed, driving apart the mist and scattering his attackers. A klaxon answered. At first, Cole mistook it for the roar of one final sea monster, shrieking at him while in pursuit, one last barrier attempting to keep him from reaching the man he loved. Then recognition dawned—it was the ship-to-ship distress signal. The darkness broke in a blinding flash of gold.
Pain flared through Cole’s body, exquisite in its agony.
“Clear,” a man’s voice called through the cacophony of bellows and moans.
The shock hit him again. The world went dark once more before erupting in an effulgence of light. From the corona, a face appeared. Navy Physician John Yuzzino, the Liberty’s General Medical Officer, gazed down from Heaven. Riveted gunmetal bulkheads replaced Doric columns, pearly gates and pillowy clouds as décor; instead of Ankh, Staff or Book of Life, Cole’s savior held de-fib paddles in those familiar hands, which had worked such wonders in Limbo.
“Lieutenant Rader,” Johnny said, his timbre rising to a desperate plea. “Cole, you’d better come back, buddy. Don’t you leave me. Don’t you fucking dare.”
Cole smiled. “Never again.”
Their eyes connected. No more words were spoken en route to Liberty’s sick bay. None were necessary.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
BEARMUFFIN has been writing gay erotica since 1985. His stories once appeared in such legendary magazines as Honcho, Mandate and Torso. Sadly, they are the stuff of memories. However, his fiction can now be found in anthologies published by Cleis Press, Starbooks and Bold Strokes. He loves to travel and is ever in search of gr
ist for his literary mill.
MICHAEL BRACKEN’s short fiction has been published in Best Gay Romance 2010, Beautiful Boys, Biker Boys, Black Fire, Boy Fun, Boys Getting Ahead, Country Boys, Freshmen, The Handsome Prince, Homo Thugs, Hot Blood: Strange Bedfellows, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4, Men, Muscle Men, Teammates and many other anthologies and periodicals.
MARTIN DELACROIX’s (martindelacroix.wordpress.com) stories appear in over twenty erotic anthologies. He has published four novels: Adrian’s Scar, Maui, Love Quest and De Narvaez, and three single-author anthologies: Boys Who Love Men, Flawed Boys and Becoming Men. Martin lives with his partner Greg on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
LOU HARPER (lou-harper.livejournal.com) has misspent most of her life in parts of Europe and the U.S., but is now firmly settled in Los Angeles and worships the sun. However, she thinks the ocean smells funny. In her free time Lou stalks deviant words and feral narratives, and she is currently embroiled in a ruinous romance with adjectives. Lou is a loner, a misfit and a happy drunk.
AARON MICHAELS (aaron-michaels.com) doesn’t know how to sail, but he did spend one memorable afternoon at a local marina watching sailing lessons similar to the one that inspired his story in this anthology. With any luck, the poor guy who spent more time in the water than on the sailboat that afternoon had as much fun as the characters in “Sailing Lessons.” Aaron’s short fiction can be found in numerous anthologies, including Hard Hats, Surfer Boys, Skater Boys and Model Men.