69 INCHES OF STEEL

by Rebecca Steinbeck

  A gentle breeze blew and lifted the leaves that Jonathon had brushed away. It carried them several feet across the ground and they came to rest at his father’s feet.

  “You’ve never once looked at me, Jonathon,” his father said. “Not in all the times you’ve come up here and not in all the times I’ve come to see you.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  His father sat next to him. He looked around the cemetery that was his home then at last his gaze came upon his son. He watched him closely for several moments then said, “I’m proud of you, Jonathon. If nothing else I want you to believe that.”

  Jonathon looked up at the full moon that was shining brilliantly among the twinkling stars now. Then he looked down at the ground by his feet. Underneath it were the dead bodies of hundreds of men, women, and children. Some died at their own hand, others at the hand of God. Others still had their lives taken by other men, women, and children. One, Percy Robertson, was the first person in the history of Bellingen to be found guilty of murder. In 1878 he was hanged with the blood of two young girls on his hands, neither of whom had reached the age of puberty, and neither of whom had had the good fortune of knowing a lover’s touch.

  Jonathon’s father told him every time he came to visit that he was proud of him, but Jonathon still hated him for killing the other driver that fateful night on which the Devil danced in Bellingen and nothing he had said since had made up for it. Nothing much could.

  He climbed to his feet and brushed his jeans with his hands. He walked away toward the front gate of the cemetery. His father called out to him. “I love you, son.” Jonathon didn’t stop and he didn’t look back either. He just kept walking. After all, it was getting late and his mother would be wondering where he was.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I’m home, Mom,” Jonathon called out. He closed the door behind him and looked around the room. His mother had lit a fire to warm up the house. Thank you very much Mom, and this time the pleasure was as much hers as it was his.

  He heard voices in the kitchen. It was his mother and, judging by the voice, a younger woman. His mother called him into the kitchen and he went there. The pretty thing from across the road was standing there with his mother and she was holding a copy of the first novel he ever published, Thy Kingdom Come. It wasn’t a bad first effort to create something longer than a few thousand words if he remembered correctly, though it was hard to remember too much because it had been some time since he last read it and even longer since he wrote it. He smiled at her. The pretty thing from across the road holding a copy of one of his books smiled back.

  “Jonathon, I’d like you to meet Serena,” his mother said.

  Serena was in her early twenties, had dark hair that hung straight down to her shoulders, and blue eyes and a smile that plenty would die for. Jonathon guessed they would also kill for it.

  His mother continued, “She’s a big fan of your work and wanted to meet you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Jonathon shook his head. “Not at all.” He reached out and took Serena’s free hand. He pulled it to his mouth and gently kissed the back of it. Serena blushed. Jonathon’s mother watched her son and smiled. He hadn’t stopped by for some time now and when he did it was only for a short while. She always wanted to make that short while as happy for him as possible and as he got older and enjoyed more success with his career as an author it meant she had to share him with more and more people and if the whole darned thing meant giving up some of her time with him to a pretty girl she knew and cared about instead of someone she didn’t, so be it.

  “I’ll leave you two alone for a moment,” Jonathon’s mother said. She went out to the lounge and tended the fire.

  Serena held out a pen and her copy of Thy Kingdom Come and asked him to sign it for her. He took both and flipped open the cover. He scribbled a note on the first page and signed his name underneath. He handed the pen and book back to her - “Reach for the stars and don’t ever hold back. Yours, Jonathon Steel.” - and she smiled gratefully.

  “I’ve read all your stuff,” she said. “Where do you get your ideas?”

  It was a question Jonathon had been asked so many times he had lost count. The other question he was asked so many times he had lost count, and the question was based on the fact that much of what he wrote was blood and guts and balls-to-the-wall terror, was why he got them. His standard answer to both was that he simply didn’t know, that he just opened his mind to them and they came in from wherever. And that was true. And then there were times he philosophized. “There’s a field of energy of which we are a part,” he said. “It’s called the Universe and it knows everything and it tells us what we need to know when we need to know it and while the things we need to know are more often than not rainbows and cheery lollypops, sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they are blood and guts and balls-to-the-wall terror. And while we suffer the horror of real-life crime everyday on the news, its better to suffer it, if we must, and obviously we do or we never would, its better to suffer it between the covers of a novel where the only person who really suffered at all was the person who wrote it and it’s the suffering the writer goes through so he might tell a truly great story that he is really rewarded for, not so much the amount of books he sells.”

  Serena’s heart melted at Jonathon’s words of wisdom like snow in the heat of the sun. But there was no sun. Not in that moment. In that moment, there was only Jonathon Steel, best-selling novelist. And she was smitten. “I especially liked the vampire story that appeared in Horror House Magazine this year. It was so real I couldn’t help but think you must really have been a part of it. Have you written anything else lately?”

  Jonathon smiled. “As a matter of fact, I have.” He took her by the hand and led her to the lounge. He sat her down on the two-seater and smiled. “Wait here.” He turned to his mother who was still tending the fire and winked. She smiled at him then turned to Serena as he headed down the hallway to the room that was his as a boy and still was as a man.

  “You’re in for a real treat, Serena,” Jonathon’s mother said. “The book he’s talking about? It hasn’t been read by anyone except his editor and publicist and by all accounts it’s a doozy. You should be honored that he’s even talking to you about it, especially seeing as it’s not due out for a few more months. Not even the reviewers have got their copies yet.” His mother hadn’t read it either, but she didn’t mind, for the stories he told often cut so close to home for her as this one did for him they hurt. They made her bleed inside and she no longer read them because of it. But she was happy for him and for the success his stories brought him. After all, he was her son, and mothers are always happy for their sons.

  Serena smiled. “I am honored. You can be assured of that.”

  Jonathon came into the lounge holding a book that had a black cover with bold red letters on it. He sat next to Serena and showed it to her. It was called Bad Moon Rising: The Resurrection of Elizabeth Bathory. The letters danced on the cover like blood dripping from a black heart.

  “Who’s Elizabeth Bathory?” Serena asked.

  Jonathon ran his palm over the cover. “She was a Countess who lived in sixteenth century Hungary. She was someone who preyed on the hearts and souls of young girls. She killed them and was rumoured to have bathed in their blood.”

  Serena was intrigued, and a little bit shocked. “Why do you write about such bad people, Jonathon?”

  He had been asked so many times where his ideas came from and why they came but he had never been asked why he wrote about such bad people. Truth be told, he didn’t think he did. He just wrote about people. True, most of them were based on people he knew and experiences he’d had, but none of the characters were real people in every sense of the word. Nor were they bad. They just . . . were. Elizabeth Bathory, on the other hand, was a real person, and while much of what was in his book was dramatized for full effect, he had to research the woman and who she was and why she did the things she did. Much of it cut
close to home. Much of it made him look at who he was and why he did the things he did. That the end result was a sure bestseller that he had already been paid handsomely for in the form of an advance ten times greater than most people earn in a year made the journey worth every step he had been made to take. Money made him forget about all the bad things that had happened in his life, as did writing about them, and it made him smile when little else could. “It helps to not think of them as bad,” Jonathon replied still looking at the cover of his book. “Instead, I prefer to think of them simply as people who do bad things. That way I have nothing to fear when I reach into their hearts because there is nothing bad to be found. Only good things will be found because deep down people are full of love and have a deep affection for those they share that love with. What they do besides that is what they do. It’s not who they are.”

  Serena shifted her body a few inches closer to Jonathon’s. “And when the line between who they are and what they do is crossed?”

  Jonathon looked down for several moments at Serena’s leg which was pressed against his now then back at the cover of the book. “They are capable of doing the most horrendous things imaginable, even to those they are full of love and have a deep affection for.”

  He turned to Serena. She was looking at him with adoration in her eyes, like some star-struck 60’s teenager who had just caught a close-up of her favorite pop star. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to press his body against hers. He wanted to feel her naked breast in his hand and her nipple in his mouth. He wanted to make love to her. He really and truly wanted his mother to leave the room.

  “Would you like to ask Serena to stay for supper, Jonathon?” It was his mother and there was a cheeriness in her voice that was becoming more evident every time she spoke about him or Serena or both of them put together.

  Jonathon looked at his mother for a moment then turned to Serena. He smiled and shrugged. She smiled back and nodded. Jonathon’s mother picked up the phone and called Serena’s house. Serena’s mother answered. “Hi, Marie,” Jonathon’s mother said. “Just letting you know that Serena is staying for supper. I hope you don’t mind.” Several moments passed and Jonathon’s mother smiled. Jonathon began to wonder if there wasn’t a little bit of matchmaking going on. “We’ll have a coffee after he leaves,” his mother said before hanging up the phone. She smiled at Jonathon and Serena then went to the kitchen. Jonathon had no doubt at all there was in fact a lot of matchmaking going on.

  Serena watched Jonathon’s mother disappear into the kitchen then turned back to Jonathon. She rested a hand on his knee. “What’s it like being famous?”

  Jonathon smiled. It was wonderful and he knew it. He looked at the petite hand on his knee wishing it was on his cock then up at the young lady who it belonged to. “The best thing about it is the freedom that comes with the money made by being famous. I can go wherever I want, whenever I want.” That wasn’t quite true. “Unless of course I have a book tour to do, then I have to be somewhere I don’t always want to be, like hotel rooms instead of home, and television and radio stations instead of my office writing the next big thing. It’s a pretty small price to pay though considering all the good things that come with being famous. Fast cars. Holidays. Big houses.” Pretty girls. “It’s nice of course to come home to Bellingen sometimes and just be me though. Plain old Jonathon Steel, the little boy who grew up here and went to school here.”

  Serena smiled. “And who loves his mother and her home cooked meals.”

  And who had his heart broken by his drunken father who climbed behind the wheel of a car when he should’ve caught a cab.

  Jonathon smiled. “Nothing beats a home cooked meal, that’s for sure. Not even dinner at the finest of five-star restaurants. The décor in those places is wonderful, but the food isn’t all its cracked up to be. After all, food is food no matter which way you toss it. Believe me, when you’re paying big what you’re really paying for is the ambiance, the chance to eat where most people can’t afford to. It’s like a game that only the rich can play. The game is fun of course, and I wouldn’t give it up for the world, but like in all games there are those who can’t play for shit and rely fully on the size of their ego to get by. In the case of these guys it’s the size of their wallets that matter most, to them anyway, and to others, but not as many as they would like to think. They tend to forget that for every one of them there are a hundred others with a hell of a lot more money than them. Not to mention a lot more talent, and talent will always outrun money. Not that talent is the be all and end all, of course. Timing plays a big part in it too. So does luck. And sometimes, every now and then, it’s just your time.”

  His father realized too late that he had crossed the white line into oncoming traffic and a tear escaped his eye as the front end of his car crashed at high speed into the front end of a car being driven by a teenage girl and then they were both dead. Perhaps, as Jonathon said, it was just their time.

  Serena slipped her hand into Jonathon’s and gave it a quick squeeze. “What made you want to write?”

  Jonathon shrugged. “I don’t really know to be honest. I’ve always been creative, that’s for sure. Always painted or drawn or told jokes and stories of one place or person or another. One day I sat in front of a computer my dad bought me and started to type. Before I knew it I’d written a few thousand words about a young boy who’s turned into a vampire by the one person he loves and trusts more than anyone else in the world - his dad. When I read them back I knew I had something special. A good story on one hand and a place to release my innermost thoughts and feelings on the other.” He thought in that moment about his father and he thought about the computer on which he had written everything from day one. Hundreds and thousands of words on that one machine brought home by his father for no particular or apparent reason, not even because he loved his son, at least as far as Jonathon knew. He just brought it home and gave it to him. Jonathon had updated it several times of course, adding more power to an already powerful machine, but deep down it was still the same machine it always was and it was Jonathon’s good luck charm, if there was any such thing. He would write his stories about vampires and ghoulies and ghosties with bleeding hearts on it until it simply wouldn’t write anymore, and then he would fix it and then he would write some more on top of that. The computer was the one good thing he remembered about his father. Maybe that’s the real reason he had held onto it as long as he had. After all, there wasn’t much else about his father worth holding onto. At least, nothing he could remember because even if there was it was taken from him that fateful night when two worlds collided in a way he could never have imagined.

  He turned to Serena. “What about you? What does a beautiful and seemingly innocent country girl want out of life?”

  Serena smiled. A beautiful and seemingly innocent country girl. “I want a man who will treat me right. One who will love me for all the right reasons and leave behind the bad ones for someone else to worry about.” She ran her hand along Jonathon’s forearm. It was strong without being too strong and soft without being feminine. She looked into his eyes. She could see the fire that burned bright for a future much better than the past. “I want someone successful. Not because of what comes with being successful, as nice as I’m sure that is, but because with success comes proof of that person’s desire to be more than they once were, and there’s nothing sexier in my opinion than someone who wants to be more than they once were, except perhaps someone who already is.”

  Jonathon’s heart beat at an almighty rate, pumping blood to all the right places. He saw in his mind’s eye Serena dropping her clothes to the floor, exposing her naked body to him. Her breasts were small and pert, her nipples strong and erect. She tossed her dark hair to one side and flashed her brilliant blue eyes at him in the hope she might tug at his heart as well as his cock. He reached out to her and stroked her bare skin. Goosebumps were raised all over her body. She closed her eyes and sighed. He leaned into her and pressed h
is lips to hers. She reached her arms around his waist and slipped her hands under his shirt. She caressed his bare skin and she moaned as he kissed her neck. They pulled themselves closer to each other and Serena felt the hardness of his cock against her. She danced against it, rubbing herself up and down the throbbing shaft that was aching to enter her. She moved her hands to the front of his jeans and pulled down the zip to release his cock so she could touch it and feel it and suck it. She licked it up and down before taking it into her mouth. She sucked it gently at first before speeding up the pulsating and rhythmic motion of sucking his throbbing seven inches of man-muscle to the point where he would surely come if she didn’t stop. She climbed to her feet and made Jonathon lay back on the bed which he did with a child-like grin on his face because he liked sex and each time was as good as the first. He watched her run her hand between her legs and play with her pussy. He stroked his cock as she moaned and groaned and he watched her pussy juices drip gently down the inside of her thighs. For several long and glorious moments she watched him stroke his cock and for several long and glorious moments she imagined him sliding it into her pussy, making love to her in a way no other man had or ever would.

  Serena continued. “When we moved into the house across the road, I had no idea that your mother was in fact your mother. I just knew she was a lovely lady whose son had made good with his writing. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when I found out who her son was. I mean, I have all your books and every magazine your stories have been in and I . . . I . . .” The words just wouldn’t come, but she was sure she would if given half a chance.

  Jonathon looked at her and smiled. “It’s okay, and thank you.” He never tired of people’s admiration for his ability as a writer and of his work. “I do have a question for you, though. What made you come here to Bellingen of all places? I mean, it’s a nice enough town and everything, but it’s not exactly a thriving metropolis.”