He was lost in thought when he realised Ryan was looking him directly in the eye.
“You’re not concentrating, are you?” Even before Dane had a chance to reply, Ryan continued. “Ah, it’s no good. If there was anyone around who could help us, they would’ve responded.”
Dane went to take his fingers off the glass.
“Uh-huh,” said Ryan. “We have to say ‘goodbye’ to the spirits first. The main reason most horror movies featuring a Ouija board have any sort of a story is because someone played around with one and didn’t say ‘goodbye.’”
“Okay. Goodbye. Ciao. Adios.”
Ryan raised an eyebrow at him. “Goodbye.”
“Can I take my fingers off?”
Ryan nodded.
“What are we going to do now?” asked Dane.
Ryan rubbed his temples. He inhaled, and as he exhaled, he brought his hands down over his face. “What we’re going to have to do now, my sexy man, is figure it out for ourselves. What do you think we should do?”
Dane frowned. He shook his head despairingly. “I don’t know. All I know is I love you. I’m so happy right where we are. But we don’t have all the facts. We don’t know what’s inside the light. If anything. We don’t know how much time we can stay here before we’re trapped here. We don’t know whether eternity actually means eternity or just a very long time.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Ryan, getting up. “Let’s go for a walk. Clear our heads.”
He held out his hand to Dane, who took it, and they made their way to the front door.
“You know,” said Ryan with a wicked glint in his eyes, “if we really were ghosts, we’d be able to walk right through this. Want to try?”
Dane was more concerned with the impossibly difficult decision they had to make. He couldn’t care less if they could walk through solid doors or not.
“Watch,” said Ryan. He stepped forward, disappearing through the wood.
Dane had to admit, he was mildly impressed.
“Come on,” shouted Ryan from the porch. “Your turn.”
Dane rolled his eyes and smiled. Closing his eyes, he stepped forward, encountering some slight resistance, but making it successfully through to the porch.
“Handy if you lose your keys,” said Ryan, chuckling. “Where’s your hand?”
Together, hand in hand, they walked down the path and through the gate. Literally. A little further down the footpath, people dressed in smart clothes were going into the house next door. The sight of happy individuals arriving for a dinner party saddened Dane. Why he should care what other people were up to when he had Ryan was a mystery. Regardless, he was glad when the last person disappeared into the house and he could only hear their faint chatter.
They walked a good way along the street in silence. So lost in thought was Dane, he almost forgot Ryan was beside him. They turned the corner, almost automatically, and continued on their way.
To Dane, the night seemed lighter, hardly dark at all. Instead of shimmers, he saw great swathes of light flashing all about him before disappearing again. They were frequent and often blinding, forcing him to focus on the cement slabs of the footpath.
“What have you decided?” asked Ryan, giving Dane’s hand a squeeze.
“I can’t decide. I just can’t.”
Dane looked at him, squinting against the flash of light that formed a split-second backdrop behind him.
“Well, I’ve made a decision.”
Dane couldn’t speak. He desperately wanted to know what his lover had decided, for Ryan’s decision would be his decision, but at the same time, he was incredibly nervous.
“All afternoon and all evening I’ve been daydreaming about staying in your home with you for eternity. I’ve been fantasizing about our life together and how wonderful it would be, you and I in our luxurious cocoon.”
Dane smiled weakly.
“Then I wondered,” said Ryan, “what would become of that cocoon after your grandmother’s death? When there is no one around to make decisions? When they realise there is no one alive living in your house? They’ve probably already begun enquiries. You’ve been dead quite a few months now. They’ll sell your home, our home, and someone else will buy it and move in. A family, perhaps. Invading our space, constantly underfoot and depriving us of our freedom and privacy. And while they may not be able to see us, we’ll be able to see them.”
Ryan pointed to the people eating Chinese noodles in a restaurant across the street. He pointed to the driver of a car going past. And to a cyclist whizzing by.
“I think the only option for us is to step into the light. It might mean oblivion, in which case we’ll be none the wiser. Or it might mean paradise, made more ideal by your presence. It can’t be anything bad. You’re a good person. I’m a good person. And there can be no light in dark places. Nothing dark in light.”
They came to a side street and turned into it.
“What do you think?” asked Ryan.
Dane took a few moments to consider his answer, or rather to ponder what Ryan’s decision meant, since there was no question of him leaving Ryan’s side. “I think we should do it. Step into the light.”
Ryan wrapped his arms around Dane and kissed him.
“But not here,” said Dane. “I want to go home. Be at home. With you. I’d feel better going on an unfamiliar journey if it began somewhere familiar.”
Ryan didn’t say anything. Rather, he smiled and took Dane’s hand once more, before they walked back the way they had come.
This time, Dane physically opened the gate, and the front door. “I want to do things normally this one last time.”
Inside their cocoon, both men held each other tight. Dane felt no compunction to speak. He was content to rest his head on Ryan’s shoulder, to feel Ryan’s body pressed against his.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you,” replied Ryan.
They kissed, a long passionate kiss. Almost feverish. Dane could feel tears he knew weren’t really there slipping down his cheek. He could feel his heart, which hadn’t beaten for months, pounding in his chest. His legs felt weak and there was a strong sense of nausea in the pit of his stomach.
All around them were flashes of light, which lingered, sometimes long enough for the whole room to disappear. It was warm and felt good on Dane’s face. It felt like sunshine and love, safe and familiar. And now he was glad Ryan had made the decision to join it.
“Are you ready, my love?” asked Ryan, kissing Dane one more time.
Dane took a deep breath. “Yes, I am.”
They joined hands as the light in the room grew so powerful they almost couldn’t see each other.
“Please, don’t let go,” said Dane, his voice cracking mid-sentence.
Ryan squeezed his hand. “Not on your life.”
“Which way do we go?”
“I don’t think it matters. Let’s just start walking and see where we end up.”
Ryan squeezed Dane’s hand once more as they began walking slowly across the room. Only there was no room anymore. There was only light, bathing them and filling them.
“I love you,” repeated Ryan.
Dane opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out, and together, they disappeared into forever.
THE END
Stranger Things
Chapter 1
My mother told me I was born on a night so dark and stormy that even the spirits dared not venture forth from their crypts. She added, with a tone of mild irritation, that getting to the hospital had been an obstacle course of fallen branches, stray rubbish bins, and scattered pieces of outdoor furniture.
“I thought I was giving birth to the antichrist,” she said.
I was only six, and when I searched her face for a sign she was joking, I found none.
Soon after I was born, my father left and my mother, who’d always wanted a daughter, began to dress me like a girl. I was too young to know any differently, bu
t when I got older and started going to kindergarten, I was made aware that little boys weren’t supposed to wear dresses and ribbons.
“Are you a boy or a girl?” asked one inquisitive boy.
“A boy,” I replied with a measure of indignation.
“But you’re wearing a dress.”
I stared at him. What could I say? I was wearing a dress.
In reaction to my unresponsiveness he shoved me to one side and walked over to join his friends, who were waiting by the swings. The news that Morgan Berry was really a boy spread like wildfire and from that day on I became an ‘untouchable’. No one played with me and whenever I was paired up with anyone for a game or a dance, they pulled a face and walked towards me like they were headed for the gallows.
Later, when I went home and complained to my mother that I wanted to wear boy’s clothes, she smacked me and told me that money didn’t grow on trees. When the verbal teasing turned physical, I’d come home distraught and my mother would hit me again and tell me grow up.
I remember I’d just turned eight when my mother introduced me to her new beau.
“Morgan, this is Dennis O’Rourke. He’s going to be your new daddy.”
I stood uncomfortably in front of them, barely able to do more than glance at Mr O’Rourke.
“Aren’t you a pretty little girl?” he said before bending down and kissing me on the cheek.
When my mother didn’t correct him, I ran from the room. I’ve no doubt I would have run from the room even if she had told him, although for an entirely different reason.
Not long afterwards, Dennis, my mother, and I moved to a town far, far away from the town I had been born and raised in. I never went to kindergarten again. Or to school, for that matter. My mother applied to the Ministry of Education to home school me and that’s just what she did. Most days.
I was thin and pale as a child. I guess I was pretty for a boy. My dark brown hair was long and straight, and my fringe was cut in a perfect line just above my eyebrows. I very easily passed for a girl and fooled everyone, just as I had fooled Dennis. It was to my benefit to make sure I did a good job. I’d already had a taste of what happened to boys who wore dresses.
Six months later my step-father found out I wasn’t really a girl.
My mother had gone out for the evening so Dennis was to be my babysitter. Just like any other weeknight I was sent to bed at eight-thirty. I brushed my teeth and climbed under the covers, having to forgo my mother’s usual good-night kiss. Several minutes later I heard my bedroom door creak open. Immediately I pulled the covers up over my head. Curiosity, however, compelled me to take a peek, and what I thought had been the boogie man was, in fact, Dennis.
“Are you asleep?” he asked, his voice just above a whisper.
“No,” I replied.
He came and sat down on the side of my bed. “Did you know,” he began, “that if I put my hand down here…” His hand disappeared beneath the blankets. “…and rub…”
He recoiled as his hand came into contact with something he wasn’t expecting. The mask of horror he wore so startled me that for a moment I thought I had done something wrong.
In the days that followed, Dennis could not look at either me or my mother with anything but mild disgust. Once I caught my mother returning his look with one of her own. One that said, “Don’t you dare!”
At puberty, the game was up. No more girl’s clothes. For the first time in my life I was permitted to be a boy, though the permission was given not by my mother, but by hormones which made things too hairy, too big and, in the case of my voice, too deep, to be able to fool anyone any longer.
I was still more slender and petite than the other boys I saw around town. Even the scrawniest of them had at least some muscle definition. I’d never lifted anything heavier than a book and had no muscle tone at all. I noticed my complexion was paler and smoother than theirs, too. The sun hadn’t had much opportunity to tarnish my skin. I was indoors too much. Used to creamy smooth skin and thinking the fine hair that appeared above my top lip ugly, I shaved daily, close to the skin, double and even triple shaving the same area until it was as silky as it had ever been.
My mother continued to home school me until just before I turned eighteen. Mostly she’d give me classics like Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, and modern classics like Catcher in the Rye and then expect me to write discursive compositions about what I’d read. She’d give me topics like “Pompeii” or “World War 2” or “The Vikings” to research on the internet and then she’d quiz me on them. I’d watch documentaries on television and online, and somehow, despite this hotchpotch method of teaching, I arrived at the eve of my eighteenth birthday an educated man.
“Man?” Dennis snarled. “You call this a man?”
He’d been drinking, a pastime he’d been cultivating over the past year or two.
“Leave him alone,” said my mother, who was drying the dishes she’d just washed.
“I’ll leave him alone if you stop calling him a man. Bloody faggot!” He went to the fridge and retrieved another beer. “You’ve raised a faggot!” He slammed the fridge door shut.
My mother indicated that I should leave the room with a discreet nod towards the double doors leading into the hallway. It wasn’t discreet enough. Dennis caught it.
“What are you doing behind my back?” he bellowed. “Secret signals!”
He was right in my mother’s face. She wore an expression of terror.
“Wh-what are you talking about? There weren’t any secret signals,” she said, managing a weak smile as she braced herself against the kitchen sink.
I started for the door, but Dennis saw me.
“Get back here, faggot!”
He stormed towards me. I continued for the door, sliding it open and making it into the hallway before I felt him grab the back of my neck. I gasped as I was yanked backwards.
“What are you doing?” screamed my mother.
“Seeing how much of a man he is.”
I felt faint. Numb. I didn’t know what Dennis had in mind, but a whole slew of wickedness passed before my eyes on a conveyor belt of horror. My heart was racing and I felt as though I was going to throw up. Whatever he had in mind for me, I knew I was no match for him.
He slammed me up against the wall. “Come on, boy! Fight back! Show your mother what sort of man she’s raised!”
He stood at six foot and was an ex-football player. His muscles were like steel. He had alcohol and aggression on his side. How was any man, let alone me, going to defend himself against all that?
His fist connected with my jaw with such force that my face had hit the wall before I felt the pain of his blow. I glimpsed a line of crimson on the painted plaster and noticed the salty, metallic taste of blood invade my mouth.
“What are you doing?” I heard my mother scream. I saw a flurry of movement—my mother rushing to my aid and being thrust back by Dennis.
“Come on,” he said, his bottom teeth bared as his eyes bored into me. “Be a man.”
I could barely focus. I saw his hand come towards me. I flinched. His fingers grabbed my crotch.
“Just what I thought. A cunt!”
He removed his hand then hit me again, his fist pounding my face into the wall. I felt a brief explosion of white hot heat and I think I threw up a little bit. I fell forwards. It felt as though I were falling into a void. It seemed like I’d fall forever.
Chapter 2
I woke up surrounded by the night; above me, the canopy of a large tree, in front of me, a bejewelled sky, and beneath me, a carpet of soft, fresh-smelling grass. There was a breeze dancing through the leaves and setting some of the smaller branches bobbing. It was a mild summer night and I felt strangely at peace. My jaw didn’t hurt and when I pressed the palm of my hand against it, I felt no swelling. With the tip of my tongue I checked each and every tooth and could account for them all.
Only when I stood up and realised there was not an electric light in sight did I
wonder how I had come to be wherever it is I was. Had Dennis and my mother thought me dead and dumped my body? It was possible. Astounding as it was to me, my mother loved Dennis deeply and would do anything to protect him, even, it seemed, aiding in the disposal of her own son’s dead body.
I suddenly felt enormously hurt. How could she assist Dennis in something as shady as dumping a dead body? Did she not love me enough to treat my body with at least a little respect? I felt my eyes water, but I clenched my jaws and forced those salty pearls back to where they’d come from.
If that’s the way she wanted it, then that’s the way she’d have it!
As it turned out I hadn’t died at all. In their panic they’d obviously made a mistake. But if my own mother cared no more for me than to leave my body to the crows—and on, what must have been by that time, my eighteenth birthday, then I’d forget all about her. I was an adult now. Legal. I could make my own way in the world and that’s just what I’d do.
I surveyed the way before me once again, but could see little on that dark, moonless night.
“Hello down there.”
It was a man’s voice and it had come from above me. I searched the boughs of the mighty oak.
“Who’s there?” I called back.
“Me,” said the man. “Over here. You’re looking in the wrong place.”
I squinted, scouring the pitch black of the canopy until I saw something that looked like a stain on the night; a pale smudge in the branches.
“There you are!” said the voice. “You’ve found me.”
“What are you doing up there?” I asked.
It was strange, but the longer I stared into the darkness, the easier it was for me to see what was there. I saw the pale smudge streak through the darkness and heard a light crunch as something landed in the leaf litter not more than two or three metres in front of me, a strangely luminescent figure.
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