Kellan paused to stare blankly at Matt, one arm still in his shirt. “Huh?”
“Yeah, that was my reaction. I asked why she was suddenly interested and she never wrote me back.”
“…And we’re sure she’s not responsible for this?”
Matt shrugged. “She made it abundantly clear that she isn’t. Normally when I caught her in a lie she’d burst into fake tears and accuse me of not loving her enough to trust her. Then again, that was when we were dating, and it is weird that she’d ask about you out of the blue like this.”
Kellan sighed. “It’s too late to be worrying about this. Let’s go to sleep, we’ll do all the things we said we’d do in the morning, and if it comes up again, then we can worry about it.”
“Sounds good. And I’ve been thinking that, with all the parents and kids running around tomorrow, there is absolutely no way your stalker is going to show up here. That means we can relax and have fun.” Matt smiled. “I’m really looking forward to spending the evening with you.”
“You’ve been spending a lot of evenings with me recently,” Kellan pointed out with a laugh.
“Nights, yeah, but how often do we get to dress up and act silly and give out candy like this?”
Kellan waggled his shoulders. “Technically, since we’re grown men who can decide how we spend our free time, we could do that every day.”
Matt laughed. “Okay, but how often can we do that when it’s socially acceptable?”
“Meh, guess you’re right. Plus if we did that every day I’d definitely eat enough leftover candy that I’d have to spend more than a few hours a month at the gym, and who has time for that?”
Kellan finished getting ready for bed. He tried to think of why Chelsie had wanted to know if his stalker had done anything else to him. There was the tiny remaining chance that she knew more than she claimed. She also might feel guilty for not showing concern earlier. He could understand why she was upset. She had worked so hard these past few years to be a better person, yet as soon as something bad happened in Matt’s and Kellan’s lives they had blamed her right away. They should have given her the benefit of the doubt until they had evidence she was involved. At the same time, Matt had made it clear that this stalker was serious business, and even if she wasn’t a fan of Kellan she should have noticed how worried Matt was and feel bad because of that.
“We should take Chelsie some of those cookies,” Kellan said as he got under the covers.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. If she’s really innocent, they can be an apology for making assumptions. If she is somehow involved, maybe she’ll be so touched by our kind gesture that she’ll call off whoever it is.”
Matt thought for a moment. “I could make them with white chocolate Kit Kats. Those were her favorite, last I checked.” He smiled. “Yeah, we can do that. We’ll have to include a quick shopping trip and baking time in tomorrow’s schedule, but it’s doable.” He turned out his light and held out his arms to Kellan. “Come on, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”
Kellan happily climbed into Matt’s embrace. Soon they were both fast asleep.
Chapter 9
Kellan’s and Matt’s sleep was interrupted by a loud knock on the door in the middle of the night. Kellan woke up first. His immediate thought was that the stalker was trying to get in.
“Matt,” he whispered loudly. “Matt, wake up!”
The person at the door knocked again. Matt sat up. He looked at Kellan. In the near-darkness Kellan could see the trepidation on his face. Kellan had to be brave for him. He ventured out of bed, and Matt followed closely.
There was one more knock before they reached the door. Kellan peered out of his front window. There were a few people standing outside his door, one of whom was holding a flashlight. He couldn’t make out much more through the blinds. Matt squeezed his hand. Kellan opened the door.
The smell hit him so hard it distracted from processing any faces right away. It was the unmistakable acrid stench of spray paint. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed something white on his door. He turned to look at it and his heart caught in his throat. In massive letters, from the top of the door to the bottom, was the word PEDOPHILE. However, the “E” was slashed through the middle with an odd streak as though whoever was writing it had turned sharply while trying to finish it.
“Oh my God,” Matt said. His lip curled at the sight of the graffiti. He put one arm around Kellan’s waist and pulled him closer.
That was when Kellan paid attention to who was standing on his doorstep. The person with a flashlight was a security officer. There was also one of Kellan’s neighbors whom he saw in the laundry room now and then. They were both holding the arms of someone in a long raincoat. It was a woman with curly brown hair that tumbled past her shoulders. She held her head low so her hair would obscure her face. Kellan could barely make out that she appeared to be middle-aged or slightly older.
Matt took a step forward, arm clutching Kellan even tighter. “Candice?”
Kellan was so astonished that Matt recognized this person that it took a moment for him to place the name. Candice was Chelsie’s mother. She scowled up at Kellan, even though he hadn’t said anything at all yet.
“You know this person?” asked the security officer.
“She’s my ex’s mom,” Matt said. “Candice…I- I- What the fuck?”
“I spotted her on the cameras and tried to get here soon as I could,” the security officer said. “Sorry I couldn’t stop her from writing…that. Fortunately, Mr. Bachert here saw her run when I approached her and caught her before she got away.”
Kellan’s neighbor nodded in acknowledgment. He was indeed a force to be reckoned with. Over six feet tall with a broad chest. Kellan vaguely remembered a conversation they had while waiting for Kellan’s clothes to be done in the washer when he said he worked as a bouncer.
Matt shuffled closer to Candice. “It was you the whole time?”
Candice wrinkled her nose with a huff. “If you had left him when I warned you a few weeks ago, you wouldn’t have had to see it come to this.”
Matt put his free hand over his mouth. His fingers around Kellan’s waist clenched. “Why?”
“Why? Why?” Candice snorted. “Because he doesn’t deserve any of this. He doesn’t deserve this home, or his job, and he certainly doesn’t deserve you. I’m sure he got here by lying and stealing and playing off the sympathies of bleeding-heart liberals, just because he’s queer and ‘oppressed’ and therefore should get things for free in the name of ‘equality.’”
All four men stared at her in disbelief. Mr. Bachert said what was on all their minds. “Lady, that has got to be the most fucked up thing I have ever heard someone sober say who wasn’t on the news or something. And you think that’s a reason to go accusing someone of being a pedophile?”
“Everyone knows gay men prey on children. They’re sex-hungry deviants who want to destroy the institutions of love by forcing their filthy lifestyle on everyone else. They destroy happy relationships like the one Matt had with my Chelsie, and then they go off sleeping around with other men on the side!”
That was enough. “I have never cheated on Matt!” Kellan exclaimed. “If you’ve really been stalking me, you should know that!”
“Well,” Candice said haughtily, “I do have a day job, one that I earned and worked hard to get so I could support my daughter, and I couldn’t keep an eye on you all the time, but I saw those condoms in your bag! Why else would you have them in your car if not to hook up with other perverts while Matt’s at work?”
“It’s called a ‘quickie,’ which Matt and I have on occasion, but they happen so spontaneously that I like to be prepared at all times, because I’m a responsible adult who thinks about the potential consequences of my actions.”
“The way you thought about the consequences of seducing Matt and converting him into another homosexual?” Candice’s lower lip trembled. “He was going to propose! He wanted to have
children and live a happy normal life, until you—”
“Woah, woah, woah,” Matt interrupted. “I had no intention of proposing to Chelsie, or have kids with her.”
The fury in Candice’s face snapped to confusion. “Y-You didn’t? But you were always so good to her, and when she told you she was pregnant you said you would be there for her.”
Matt frowned. “You mean when she lied about being pregnant to convince me to stay with her? I said I would take responsibility if she wanted to have the baby, but we were using protection because we had talked about how I didn’t think I was in a good place to be a father. As for a proposal? We did not have a healthy relationship. She relied on me way too much, and it was partly my fault for enabling her. I thought I could help her, but she needed a real therapist, not someone to dump all her emotions on and manipulate into supporting her.” He wrapped both arms around Kellan. “Besides, Kellan didn’t ‘convert’ me. I’m pansexual, and I asked him out first. To be perfectly honest I spent the last year and a half of my relationship with Chelsie wishing I could break up with her and see if Kellan felt the same way about me as I felt about him.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Candice completely lost it. She flung herself at Matt, screeching at the top of her lungs about how he led Chelsie on and took away the best years of her life and so on and so on. She called him and Kellan every slur in the book. Mr. Bachert and the officer had to struggle to keep her from clawing Matt’s face off. Lights turned on in windows around the building as people came out to see what was causing all the commotion. Kellan dragged Matt inside and slammed the door. He ran, grabbed his phone from beside his bed, and called 911.
They sat on the bed waiting for the police. The dispatcher said someone would be there in five minutes. Kellan was glad to have this finally resolved, but the fact that someone based all their hatred of him on such a deluded world view left a twisting pit in his stomach. It was a harsh reminder that there were people out there who didn’t know a thing about him except that if they met him they wouldn’t like him because he was gay. That was their problem; if other people wanted him to feel bad for being like this so they could feel better about themselves for not being like that, they must be very unhappy with who they were. Kellan, on the other hand, was proud to be gay. Unfortunately, bigots took that as an insult to their own unhappiness.
“Some people are just the worst,” Matt sighed.
“They really are.” Kellan snuggled against Matt. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being here, for being you. I don’t know. I’m so lucky to have you.”
Matt brushed his hair behind his ear with a smile. “Same here, honey bunch.”
The screaming outside eventually died down. Shortly after, the police finally arrived. Kellan and Matt went out to watch Candice being taken away.
“You have every right to press charges,” the officer said. “It’s definitely aggravated harassment, and she’s made it very clear what she thinks of ‘homos’ and…well, other stuff I’m not gonna repeat, so you might be able to classify this as a hate crime. Then on top of that there’s the property damage and defacement. If you guys don’t press charges, I’m sure your landlord will.” He glanced at Kellan’s door and shook his head. “Wish I could say this was the first time I’ve seen an angry white woman accuse innocent gay people of being child molesters, but…” He sighed. “There’s a lot of people who are an unfortunate level of ignorant.”
Kellan did decide to press charges. After all Candice had put him through in such a short time, justice was due. The officer informed him that she may have to pay a fine instead of going to jail, but it didn’t matter. So long as it was officially documented that she was a harasser and a bigot, they could punish her however they wanted.
The next day Kellan’s and Matt’s plans were postponed for a while. The first thing they did was ask Kyle to paint over Kellan’s door before any parents saw it. Next, Kellan went to file his charges and Matt went out in search of white chocolate Kit Kats. They met up again in the afternoon and went out to lunch. They talked about everything that had happened and how relieved they were that it was over.
Matt called Chelsie to see how she was doing. Of course, the police had informed her of her mom’s arrest. “I was afraid of that,” Chelsie said. “I was out with her when you texted me on Monday. When I told her you thought I was behind everything she didn’t outright tell me it was her, but she was…giggly, and she asked if you sounded ‘fed up’ with the situation. It made me suspicious. I got her to admit it yesterday but I didn’t know how to tell you. I tried talking her out of it instead. Fat load of help that did, huh?”
“We’re just glad she got caught before she did something really crazy,” Matt said. “Sorry again we kept thinking it was you.”
“Ugh, don’t worry about it. If you hadn’t gotten me into therapy, I probably would have wound up like her when I got older. That’s one of the things I talk about with my therapist: how much of my crazy came from watching the way my mom treated my dad, and believing that was ‘normal.’”
“You’ve made a lot of progress and I’m happy for you,” Kellan said.
“Thanks guys. You two enjoy the rest of your Halloween. I gotta go get ready for a party.”
They said their goodbyes and hung up. “Whew,” Matt sighed. “Speaking of Halloween, I think we’ve had more than enough tricks to last us a while.”
“Mmhmm,” Kellan agreed.
Matt took Kellan’s hand. “How about we just do treats for the rest of the day? We’ll go home, bake cookies, dress up in weird clothes, make some kids happy, and then…” He bit his lip and winked.
Kellan winked back. “Good plan.”
THE END
ABOUT FERAL SEPHRIAN
Feral Sephrian is a jack-of-all-writing-trades who scribbles anything and everything from poems to shorts stories to novels to screen and stage plays. She recently graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with a double-degree in Ancient Studies and English Literature and a minor in Theatre Design and Production. She hopes to take this education and tell the stories of the past, present, and future in a variety of media.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!
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