The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6

by Jakubowski Maxim

  The bulb seemed to swing from its cord as Drake rolled his head from side to side, over and over, breathless with laughter.

  When Nick had finally removed the hinges and pulled the door away, he and the brothers charged into the storeroom, but they didn’t get far. They stopped, several yards away from Drake, not knowing what to make of what they saw.

  Drake was sitting up. He seemed to be hugging himself, but no, his fingers were busily digging into his ribs. Tears ran down his face as he gasped with laughter. He tried to speak, but his voice was nearly gone and they could not hear him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Nick said.

  The brothers cursed softly in Spanish.

  Nick moved slowly, warily toward Drake, like a hunter approaching a trapped animal. Drake was tickling his armpits now, his head thrown back, mouth stretched wide as air rushed from his lungs. He tried to speak again, mouthing the same words over and over as Nick grew closer, straining to hear him. When he finally did hear him, he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Help me please help me!” Drake was saying. “I’m tickling myself, and I can’t stop!”

  Drake was in the Recovery Room. He woke with a start, not knowing how he had got there, though that was not unusual. The effects of the dope he’d smoked were gone, he felt tired but his head was clear – until he heard the voices. They were the same voices he had heard before, voices of his past tormentors. How rude of them to talk, to hold conversations when he couldn’t even see them. His own voice was long gone, maybe for good this time, but fortunately he didn’t have to speak, they could hear his thoughts. He asked the darkness, Where the hell are you?

  “Easy, Drake, easy.” It was Emmett again. He looked a little more real, more solid than before. But you never knew, ghosts could fade in and out. “Just take it easy, okay?”

  Drake looked around. There was snickering Rodney Cole, off to the left along with his soccer player buddies. There was Marshall Carter, pre-come leaking from his beautiful big dick, and Coach Doyle. Emmett seemed to be the leader of the group, gathering them around.

  Why do you guys keep bothering me?

  “Take it easy,” Emmett said again. “The thing is, Drake . . . we’re going to tickle you. All of us. We’re real enough now.”

  Drake had grown used to these voices, these spirits. They were just hallucinations, not to be taken too seriously. But what he saw next made him sit straight up on the cot.

  Nick and Pedro and Raul were coming toward him.

  “Hey, you guys,” Drake said, “I’m not alone in here. There are ghosts around. You’d better beat it.”

  Nick laughed. “We know all about ghosts,” he said. “We see them too.”

  “What?” Drake wagged his head in confusion. “Does that mean . . . you’re ghosts?”

  “Listen, Drake.” Nick sat on the edge of the cot. His voice was almost kind. “I’m really sorry, man. You’ve been a good slave. I’m sorry it has to end this way. But you see, I can start all over again, in another city. I’ve done it many times. Somewhere I’ll find a loft, in an otherwise empty part of town, and lure some desperate ticklish stud there. And he’ll never come out.”

  Drake looked to Pedro and Raul. “Sorry, man,” they both said together, and they seemed to mean it. “But you know,” Raul added, “Pedro and me, we still want our revenge, and this is the only way to get it.”

  “But what are you doing here?” Drake asked. “You guys aren’t from the past. You’re right here, in the next room.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said, “we’re in the next room. But we’re also right here . . . with these other guys . . . colleagues, you might say.”

  Rodney Cole snickered. “More like partners in crime.”

  “Emmett,” Drake called, “where did you go? You’re probably the only guy who could make sense of this for me.”

  Emmett stepped forward again. “I wish I could,” he said. “But nothing’s made any sense to me, Drake, ever since I left you.”

  Drake sat up, swung his legs over the side of his cot. “Do you really mean that?”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Emmett said. He sat beside Drake, took his right hand and held it – the first sign that the spirits really could touch him now. “I’m having a great career. I could become the youngest CEO my company’s ever had. But my personal life has been a disaster. You see, leaving you was the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “Really?” For the first time in . . . well, a long time, there were tears in Drake’s eyes that had not been tickled out of him. “Then why did you do it, really, Emmett? Why?”

  “Because I was afraid. Afraid of commitment – we’ve all heard that one before, right? Plus I was bothered by all the kinky stuff we were into. I had to get away, start over, try to find a ‘normal’ sex life, whatever that is. But I haven’t found anything at all, or anyone at all who could take your place.” Emmett raised a knuckle to his eye, a tear slid down his finger. He squeezed Drake’s hand tightly. “I love you, Drake. I always have.”

  One tear rolled down Drake’s cheek. “Thanks, bud. I love you too. It just about killed me when you left.”

  Over in the corner, Rodney Cole rolled his eyes. “Jeez, I didn’t know I was gonna have to watch fag love scenes.”

  Emmett pointed a warning finger. “You watch your mouth. We’re going to have to work together, remember that.”

  The dark, hairy soccer player stepped up to Rodney. “Yeah, watch your mouth. As a matter of fact I’m gay, too. I came out fifteen years ago, I live in San Francisco, and I’m fucking my brains out even as we speak.”

  Coach Doyle’s response to this was automatic. He called out, “Hey, son, that’s no way to talk to a younger kid.”

  “I’m not a kid,” Rodney grumbled. “I’m 32 years old, and I’m in jail in Tuscaloosa for holding up a 7-Eleven. Okay?”

  Emmett stood up. “I guess we have to get to work.”

  Drake kept his hold on Emmett’s hand. “Before I let you go, I have to know this: if you loved me, why didn’t you ever come back?”

  Emmett sighed. He couldn’t meet Drake’s eyes now. “I was too proud, Drake. Too damn proud to come back looking for you . . . until recently.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You might as well know everything. I did come back looking for you, very recently. But you had already left to come here, and nobody knew where you were.” He had shed more tears, his face was glistening.

  Drake covered his face. “Oh, my God. Oh Jesus.”

  “So I had to give up. Imagine my surprise when I was summoned here,” Emmett said. “I was even more surprised to find out – I don’t even know how – what I’m supposed to do. What we’re all supposed to do.”

  There was a stir in another corner of the room. Carter raised his hand and cleared his throat rather loudly. “Uh, excuse me,” he said, “but can we kind of get started? I like this spirit stuff, and there’s a lot more guys I want to go see.”

  Emmett ignored him. He could only watch Drake – for Drake was crying.

  He had whimpered and shed tears in front of Nick many times, but now he broke down completely, heaving sobs that seemed to come from the pit of his stomach, tears filling his cupped hands like an offering. He cried for losing Emmett, and for losing his only chance to get him back; he cried for the years of emptiness, the nights spent in bathhouses and back rooms, the mornings of lonely solitude. And he cried for himself, for the senseless waste of his young life.

  And yet, and yet . . .

  “Look at it this way, Drake,” Emmett said, kneeling down before his friend. “You’ve lived the only possible life you could, and this is the only possible end.”

  And yet . . . he thought not only of Emmett but also the others in the room – Rodney Cole and the soccer players, Marshall Carter and Coach Doyle, and Nick and Raul and Pedro. They had given him the most thrilling, terrifying, erotic moments of his life. Did it all add up to a life that had been worth it?

  He had to
believe it did.

  As abruptly as he had started crying, he stopped. He shook tears from his face, took a deep breath, turned and confronted the whole group. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to cry. Not anymore. And you know what? I’m not going to beg, either, no matter what you do to me.”

  Nick wore his famous tight-lipped smile. “You can’t take all the fun out of it, Drake.” Drake lay back on the cot, spread his arms and legs wide. What irony, getting tickled to death in the Recovery Room.

  The last thing he said before they fell on him was, “Nobody can say I never got what I wanted.”

  And so it was that Drake was finally tickled to death, in a room where he lay completely alone in the darkness. Only in his mind had they come back – the boys and men who had craved his ticklishness, who had strained to hear his hysterical laughter long after it had faded to croaks and whispers. They tickled him, these ten boys and men, with apologies but without restraint, the lust in their fingertips carving out Drake’s very core.

  He lasted several hours, only because he was able, for part of the time, to retreat to the dark lake, and the harmless nibbling fish who reminded him to breathe. Then that part of his mind shut down, and his soul began to seek a way out.

  If you were on a plane that day, heading toward that same city, you might have seen the usual towers and highways, anonymous-looking, insignificant from so high up. If you were sitting on the right side of the plane, you might even have glimpsed the old warehouse district, and a flash of light just above it, as bright and brief as if the sun had thrown off a spark. That spark was Drake’s soul, ascending toward its next life, hoping to find a gay male body that would be just as ticklish as the one it had left behind. Just as ticklish, and – if such a thing were possible – just as brave.

  Fire

  Lisabet Sarai

  It’s just a harmless little quirk. That’s what I’ve always told myself. It isn’t as though I tie women up and whip them, or dress up in garter belts and high heels. I’ll admit that my sexual life is a bit unusual. Idiosyncratic. But compared to what’s considered normal, these days, I’m straight, red-blooded, all-American. A regular guy.

  I do my research. I plan with care. I stick to derelict buildings, the ones that are already half-demolished by time and weather. Never any place within fifty miles of home. And never any place that’s occupied.

  All right, it’s true that I imagine torching Manny’s fancy house on Sycamore, whenever I drive past, but that’s just a fantasy. And I know the difference between fantasy and reality.

  It started when I was fifteen, about six months after Mom left. It was a thick July night, high summer, and my window was wide open. The smell of the smoke woke me, before the sirens. Wood smoke, seeping into my dreams, heady with recollections of campfires and friendly darkness.

  My eyes flew open. A shimmer of electricity ran through me, like the heat lightning you can see on the horizon at dusk when there’s going to be a thunderstorm. I sniffed, breathed in the message in the air. The smoke was speaking to me, whispering something sweet, something exciting, that I couldn’t quite make out.

  Then the sirens began to wail, blocks away. They came closer, their pitch rising. Something crawled up my spine and back down, then settled heavily in my groin. I threw on a pair of shorts and a tee shirt and made my way down the stairs as fast as I could on tiptoe. Didn’t want to wake my father, that was for sure. The old clock in the hall said quarter to two.

  The sky to the east was lit up like sunrise was on its way early. There was a strong eastward breeze, too, making the leaves restless. I ran barefoot along the sidewalk, the hot wind urging me on toward that eerie false dawn.

  As I rounded the corner of Maple and Main, a spear of flame rocketed up above the trees. My knees suddenly went weak. It was the Saunders’ place, Jim Saunders who used to play poker with my dad, before. When Mom was still around. His old clapboard house was burning like tinder.

  Something swelled in my chest. I could hardly breathe. I joined the crowd milling on the sidewalk across the street from the blaze, neighbors in pajamas and hair rollers, strangers in uniforms barking orders into walkie-talkies. I took no notice of them. I couldn’t take my eyes off the fire.

  Flame swirled around the two-story house, twisting and flowing through the structure like liquid light. The vacant windows filled with orange and gold tongues that licked away at the outer wall, gradually melting it away to charcoal and then to ash. It was terrible, and glorious.

  The flames drew me as nothing ever had. I craved them, wanted to feel their burning caress on my sweaty skin. I wanted to be consumed. For one crazy moment, I almost gave in to the need, almost broke through the ranks of police and firemen and threw myself into the blaze.

  Then something shifted, and I felt the flames inside of me. They surged through my body, tasting my fear and my lust. They teased me, rippling up and down my spine. The heat was unbearable, and wonderful.

  My dick went hard as rock. My breath came in gasps. I wanted to grab my cock and jerk away at it until the flames spurted out, but somehow I was paralyzed, hands clenched into fists by my side.

  I watched, fascinated, as the fire whirled and eddied through the shell of the house. I felt it circling my dick, searing my rigid flesh. I heard a strange sound, some animal whining in pain. I realized dimly that it was my own voice.

  My eyes felt scratchy and dry, from the brightness and the drifting ash. I closed them for a moment, but the flames still danced on the insides of my eyelids. I could feel the fire breathing. It sucked up all the air into itself, then released it in scorching gusts. Once, then again, and again.

  My aching lungs took up the same rhythm. My cock throbbed in time. The fire ate me from the inside out, turning my bones to embers, roasting my organs, bringing my spunk to a rolling boil. I writhed in its embrace, pleasure so acute that it was almost agony.

  Thunder cracked, suddenly, close enough to deafen me. I opened my eyes in time to see the house’s roof collapse into the raging furnace below it. A cloud of sparks flew into the night sky. Droplets of fire rained down on the crowd of bystanders. The first ones seared my bare arms just as the shock wave hit.

  Like the house, I exploded into a million shards of flame.

  I was fifteen. Like most kids that age, I jerked off a lot, sometimes three or four times a day. This was nothing like that. Nothing.

  I felt light. My body had dissolved into light, into air, but air that crackled with delicious electricity. Aftershocks. My cock twitched and drooled residual fire, yet at the same time, it was as though my body was gone, melted and then vaporized.

  I must have stood there, dazed, for a long time. A vicious box on the ear roused me.

  “You little bastard, what do you think you’re doing, out here in the middle of the night?” As usual, my father didn’t wait for an answer. “What kind of trouble are you up to this time?”

  He grabbed my arm and dragged me roughly in the direction of home. I went meekly, too distracted to struggle. I felt drained, yet at the same time my whole body hummed with lingering excitement.

  Dimly, I hoped that he wouldn’t notice the damp patch on the front of my shorts. But then, what did it matter? Given what I had found, what I had learned?

  Back in bed, I jacked myself off twice, replaying the images of the burning house, feeling once again the seductive kiss of the flames. I fell into an exhausted sleep as the birds began to twitter. When I woke, I had a sense of peace and well-being that stayed with me for days.

  The memories wore out in about a month. After that, I did what I could to recapture the dark excitement of that night. I went to see disaster movies, the kind where they blow up cars, or skyscrapers, or airplanes, everything convulsed in roiling fireballs.

  I began to spend a lot of time in the woods. I’d carefully sweep the ground clear of pine needles and dead leaves. Then I’d build a fire (Boy Scout training coming in handy) and lie down beside it, slowly stroking my dick, hypnotized
by the flames flickering and dancing among the logs.

  I took to watching the local news every night, just in case some house or apartment or store happened to burn, somewhere. On the nights when I was lucky, I’d spend hours in bed, later, imagining it all: the awesome heat, the searing brightness, the smell of smoke, the crackling laughter of the flames as they devoured everything. My cock would be red and raw the next day.

  Don’t get the wrong idea. I wasn’t weird or anything. I worked after school at the Kroger’s grocery. I quarterbacked on the football team. When we were both seventeen, I screwed Lisa Downing for the first time in the back seat of my father’s Buick. She and I even went steady for a while. Somehow though, we both cooled off. She was a nice enough girl, but she wouldn’t have understood. About my secret quirk, I mean.

  Three weeks after I graduated high school, two days after I turned eighteen, I left home. Moved halfway across the state, found a place to rent, and got this job working for Manny.

  I’m good at selling cars. I’m polite, well-spoken, and sincere, just the opposite of everybody’s stereotype. But I know how to close a deal. I’m persuasive, Manny says.

  Manny’s got the biggest Ford and Chrysler dealership for two hundred miles around. New and used. He treats his salesmen like shit, but the pay is decent. I was particularly interested in the perks. I could drive any car on the lot, for as long as I wanted, provided I got the boss’ permission.

  I bought myself a police band radio, and spent quite a bit of my free time on the road. Listening for fire reports. Out here in the midwest, especially in the summer, we get lots of lightning strikes. From May through October, that’s what I lived for.

  I’d be driving along some country road, my window open, the soft night air ruffling my hair, everything silent except for the crickets. Then there’d be the crackle of static as the radio came to life. My heart slamming against my chest, I’d strain to make out the location. If it was anywhere within a forty-mile radius, I’d head in that direction, my breath already ragged, my cock swelling in my pants. Sniffing the breeze, I imagined that I could already catch the distant, intoxicating scent of smoke.