Nightfall

by John Inman

  “I’VE WANTED to be with you since the first time I saw you, Joe.”

  Ned lay tucked up in Joe’s arms, the lazy thunder of Joe’s heartbeat pulsing in his ear. While his body was exhausted, his mind was a raging turmoil after all the truths he had suddenly discovered. About himself; about Joe. One of Joe’s strong hands now lay splayed across his back, while the other lightly stroked the scar at the side of his head. The taste of Joe’s seed still danced on Ned’s tongue, and that was a wonder beyond anything Ned had ever experienced.

  Ned closed his eyes, and before he had even known the words were coming, he had begun to speak. Softly. In a fervent rush. While in his imagination, he spilled the words onto Joe’s chest and let them seep in through Joe’s pores, in reality the words—words he never thought he would say to another human being—came easily. In fact, they all but gushed out in an unstoppable torrent. Even in the midst of all the other wonders of this remarkable night, it was an inexpressible relief to at long last let them go, and Ned hurried to finish his thought before fear chased it away. “But…. But I kept those feelings about wanting you hidden. At least I tried to.”

  Joe lightened his touch on Ned’s scar but didn’t cease caressing it completely. “It’s because of this, isn’t it?” he whispered. “Because of your scar?”

  Ned simply nodded, nestling his cheek more solidly into the pillow of hair on Joe’s chest, smiling to himself when Joe’s arm tightened around him even more, holding him inescapably in place, right where Ned wanted to be.

  “I was sixteen,” Ned sighed. “The kids at school found out about me. Found out I was… queer. I was a sophomore. They taunted me with it for weeks. Then one day Bobby Johnson, the quarterback of the football team, cornered me in the shower after gym. I always waited around as long as I could so the others would be gone by the time I had to strip down and shower. Otherwise, the comments they made were just too… painful.”

  “Couldn’t the teachers help?” Joe asked, his finger now resting motionless atop the scar as if absorbing its heat. As if hoping to draw the pain it had caused Ned into himself instead. At least that’s how it felt to Ned.

  Ned’s breath caught. A lump formed in his throat. He tried to connect himself back to the story he was telling. He wanted Joe to understand. For some reason, Joe had to understand.

  “I was too ashamed to tell the teachers,” he said. “Bullying wasn’t such a big thing back then. They didn’t write slogans about it. You didn’t see it on bumper stickers. Nobody passed laws about it in the senate. It was just something that every kid who was different had to suffer through. Like a rite of passage.”

  “Go on,” Joe quietly urged. “What happened?”

  A tear slid across Ned’s nose. He turned his face briefly into Joe’s chest to blot it away. For his efforts, he received a kiss to his hair, and Joe’s arms tightened around him even more.

  “Tell me,” Joe gently pleaded. “I want to know.”

  Ned let a sigh flutter through him. Then, almost without conscious volition, the words poured out. Somehow, he knew Joe would not judge him for what had happened. Not the way Ned judged himself. Not the way Ned still judged himself.

  “I was just finishing up with my shower and reaching for my towel when Bobby Johnson came at me out of nowhere. The other kids were gone. We were all alone.” Ned paused. He tensed in Joe’s arms. “I’ve never talked about this before. It’s not… easy.”

  Again, Joe pressed a kiss into Ned’s hair. “Finish it, Ned. Let it out. Get rid of it once and for all. Tell me what happened.”

  It seemed the floodgates had opened. Freely now, the tears were slipping across the bridge of Ned’s nose and pooling on Joe’s chest. Joe didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t try to brush them away. He merely stroked a comforting circle on Ned’s back.

  Ned forced himself to continue.

  “He… he stood in front of me. Bobby Johnson. He was naked. He started touching himself with a smirk on his face like he knew he was turning me on. He had me cornered against the wall of the shower, still dripping wet, while he stroked himself into an erection. He stepped closer to me and rubbed it across my stomach. I tried to get away. I was crying by now. He laughed at me for crying. Releasing himself, he put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me down to my knees.”

  Ned’s breath hitched.

  “The horrible thing was, Joe, I wanted him to do it. I’d done things like that before to some of the other boys. That’s how the word got around.”

  Softly, Joe asked, “Did you blow him?”

  Ned slipped around in Joe’s arms until his face was thoroughly buried in Joe’s chest. He breathed in the scent of Joe’s skin and wallowed in the comforting darkness there. His answer was muffled, but still it came.

  “I acted like I didn’t want to, but I think he knew better. He grabbed my hair and pushed himself into my mouth. I cowered there on my knees looking up at him, his cock buried deep in my throat. I could see he enjoyed what I was doing, but there was a mean glint in his eyes too. I didn’t understand it until he called out.”

  Ned stammered to a stop.

  “Called out what?” Joe asked.

  Ned rose onto his elbows and settled his gaze on Joe’s face. “He called out to a bunch of other kids. They were hiding just outside the shower. Out where the lockers were. They filed into the shower, giggling and laughing at me kneeling there with Bobby Johnson’s dick down my throat. The minute they were all there, surrounding us, Bobby Johnson pulled back just far enough to shoot his come all over my face.”

  “Ned….”

  But Ned didn’t stop because the story wasn’t over yet.

  “Then the others took their turns with me. I was still crying because I was so ashamed. But they swarmed around me. One of them, I could never remember which one, pushed me facedown onto the cold tile floor and spread my legs apart. He was the first to rape me. I’d never had that done to me, Joe. God, the pain! There were four, I think, who finally did it. One right after the other. By the time they stopped, I had passed out. When I opened my eyes, I was all alone in the shower stall, shivering with cold, splattered with come and filth. There was a puddle of blood at my waist where they had torn me inside. I could barely move. My head was bleeding too. Someone must have kicked me while I was unconscious.”

  “Ned…,” Joe said again, reaching up to squeegee the tears from Ned’s cheeks with his thumb. “Please tell me you reported what happened. Please tell me they were charged with rape and assault.”

  Ned dropped his head back to Joe’s chest. It was the only way he could escape Joe’s gaze. “Until tonight, I’ve never told anybody. And I never went back to school. I was sixteen, so I quit. I couldn’t go back, Joe. I was too ashamed.”

  “You were the victim, Ned. You had nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Ned sighed and shook his head. It was the only answer he offered.

  “What about your injuries?” Joe asked.

  “My mom took me to the emergency room. They stitched up my head, but I never told them about the other thing. It eventually healed on its own. I was pretty sure my mom suspected what had happened, but she wouldn’t talk about it. I knew she was as ashamed of me as I was. She probably went to church and pleaded for my soul. That was mom’s answer to everything. She blamed me for what happened. I know she did. And all this time, I’ve pretty much agreed with her. It was my fault. It was my fault for being who I was. I deserved it.”

  Joe slammed a fist into the pillow beside Ned’s head, causing Ned to flinch. “But… you were assaulted, dammit! You were raped! It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid. What happened should have ruined their lives, not yours. Those kids should have ended up in jail. None of the punishment, none of the guilt, should have fallen on you, Ned. It should have fallen squarely on them.”

  “Yes,” Ned said. “I know that now. You’ve shown me that much, Joe. This past year of knowing you has made me face up to a lot of things. Even before tonight, before I was sure you w
ere… the same as me—gay, I mean—you somehow showed me that having these feelings isn’t a sin. It isn’t wrong. It’s just the way some people are. But I didn’t know that then. And even if I had known, the shame was too much for me to live with. So I let those kids win. I also let them steal my life from me for the next ten years. Until tonight, I’ve never been with anybody.”

  “You kept your desires buried all that time?”

  “Yes. The one who finally brought them out was you, Joe. Like I said, I’ve wanted to be with you like this since the first time I saw you. Somehow getting to know you, becoming friends with you, overpowered the guilt I felt inside. For a while I thought if we were friends it would be enough, but in the long run I knew it wasn’t. Still, I was afraid to do anything. Make a first move. Afraid you’d hate me. Or worse, afraid you’d laugh at me like they did. I still hear their laughter, you know. Every day. Every single day. This is the first time I don’t hear it, Joe. Right now. Lying here in your arms. I haven’t heard it since you first told me how you feel. I haven’t heard it since you told me you wanted me in the same way I’ve been wanting you.”

  “Oh, Ned.” Joe laid his hand to Ned’s cheek, and Ned blinked back what he knew was the night’s final tear. Hell, it had to be. He was all cried out.

  Joe’s voice was weak with emotion, as if his anger had drained him. “Is that why you never see your folks? Is that why you’ve cut yourself off from your family?”

  Ned gave a shrug. “It was the only way. There was only my mom anyway. And she wouldn’t have wanted me after finding out the truth. After finding out what I’d done. What I was.”

  “But you were a victim, Ned. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  Ned dredged up a smile. It had been so long since he wore one, it felt odd on his face. “Yes. I was a victim. But thanks to you, I’m not a victim anymore.”

  “Good,” Joe said, dragging up a matching smile. “And never let yourself be a victim again. All right?”

  Ned nodded, making the hair on Joe’s chest bristle against his cheek. He lifted his head and gazed toward the window. Only then did Ned realize a burgundy-red dawn was leaking just enough light through the pane to see by. Enough light to see Joe’s smile, at any rate, and Joe’s beautiful body lying beneath him in that eerie, blush-red morning haze.

  Once again, Ned burrowed down and rested his cheek on Joe’s chest. Loving the feel of Joe’s chest hair on his tender skin, he listened breathlessly for Joe’s heartbeat underneath.

  “Please, Ned. Don’t go back to your apartment. Stay with me until this is all over. I can’t bear to think of you by yourself.”

  “I’ll stay with you as long as you want me to,” Ned said, touched by the gentle way Joe made his request.

  And while an unseen sunrise began to nudge the world from the total blackness of a moonless night into another bizarre crimson dawn, the background hum of electricity, which no one ever really pays attention to, suddenly stopped, leaving an awkward pall of quiet in its wake. The LED readout of Joe’s alarm clock on the nightstand blinked out with a beep. The rumble of his old refrigerator in the kitchen stilled. The emptiness left on the air caused them both to lift their heads and listen to the silence.

  “The power’s out,” Joe whispered.

  At that moment, every dog within earshot began to howl. The sound of their wailing seemed to come from every direction at once as their plaintive cries suddenly blanketed the city in a wall of mournful sound.

  “Holy shit, it’s 101 Dalmatians!” Ned nervously laughed.

  Naked, they flung themselves out of bed and rushed to fling aside the curtains on Joe’s living room window. Ned’s laughter died as quickly as it had come.

  Staring out, they saw a world drenched in blood. Or so it appeared. True light did not exist. No shadows fell. Very little of the world was illuminated at all. The closest trees, perhaps. The walls of the building next door. Everything else was lost from sight. Without so much as a hint of the sun rising somewhere in the east, the world was a darkened stage with one red spotlight casting a dim blush past the proscenium, barely enough to light the empty scene.

  And around it all, the yips and howls of countless dogs, like a grieving, relentless thunder, rumbled across the city. Their eerie, desperate cries made the little hairs on the back of Ned’s neck stand up. Goose bumps peppered his arms.

  Ned rested his hand on the velvet softness of Joe’s naked hip.

  Pressing his lips to Ned’s ear, Joe said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “So am I,” Ned whispered back, savoring the acceptance he’d found in Joe’s arms. The acceptance of who he was and all he had done. And the acceptance too of all the hunger he had been feeling for Joe for so long. Along with the blessed, blessed relief that Joe hungered just as much for him.

  Ned’s thoughts fell away as Joe leaned closer to the window, staring out at a day like neither he nor anyone else had ever seen before.

  “When you go to work, you’re not going alone,” Joe said with a worried frown.

  “Will the deli even be open? There’s no power.”

  “We’ll go and see.”

  “You mean you’ll walk me to work?”

  Joe turned away from the window and gazed gently down at Ned’s upturned face. “Yes. I won’t leave your side until I know you’re safe.”

  Their eyes found each other’s. Ned licked his lips and grinned. “Before we go,” he said, “there’s something I have to do.”

  And just as Joe was about to ask what he meant, Ned lowered himself to his knees and took Joe’s sleeping cock into his mouth. Needless to say, it didn’t stay asleep very long.

  Ned knelt there, stroking the back of Joe’s strong legs while Joe hardened between his lips. Once again, Ned relished pleasing the man he cared about more than any other. Joe’s taste was familiar to him now, and Ned knew he would never grow tired of it. Ever.

  Moments later, when Joe arched into him and craned his head back, mouth stretched wide in a grimace of release, Ned all but wept with joy as Joe’s warm, sweet juices spilled across his tongue. As if the floodgates of one opened the floodgates of the other, Ned scraped his aching cock through the hair on Joe’s shin and, with a cry, spilled his seed over the heated flesh.

  In the recesses of his mind, Ned heard the same words over and over, echoing inside his head like a benediction. Words he had long wanted to hear. Words he had long needed to believe. And now, suddenly, he did. For the first time ever, the words rang absolutely true.

  This is not a sin. This is not a sin. This is not a sin.

  Still on his knees, Ned clutched Joe to him while Joe softened between his come-moistened lips.

  “Baby,” Joe muttered, gently caressing Ned’s cheek.

  Under Joe’s touch, Ned closed his eyes, as peaceful and accepting of himself as he had ever been. Stroking Joe’s long legs as if only now discovering how beautiful they were, Ned pressed a smile into Joe’s belly and let the scent of Joe’s seed, Joe’s heated flesh, burrow through him.

  He tilted his head back and peered up into Joe’s face.

  “Baby,” Joe said again, and Ned smiled.

  Chapter Three

  AS THE crimson haze deepened, daylight faded, and darkness grew. Vision was limited to a matter of yards. The third red dawn had barely broken when religious leaders began to speak of the apocalypse, frightening the devout and making a bad situation worse. Politicians railed from their own bully pulpits. Unlike the “men of God,” who merely wailed impotently at the heavens, pleading for mercy and laying blame on everyone but themselves, the politicos proposed laws and threatened action, although not even they knew who those laws and threats should be directed toward.

  The night before, two days after the events began and due to fears of a catastrophic collapse, the overstrained power grid that serviced the eastern coast of South America, including Rio de Janeiro, was purposely shut down. This disastrous decision plummeted the city of seven million citizens into impen
etrable darkness and launched a crime spree the likes of which no civilized country on the planet had ever witnessed. To prevent further mayhem, Rio’s power grid was hastily brought back online. Thirty minutes later, it crashed completely.

  In that second avalanche of darkness, the crime wave exploded.

  As Rio devoured itself from within, all flights on US soil were grounded due to increasing radiation in the upper tiers of the atmosphere. Soon, the entire world followed suit, grounding aircraft and halting all departures. Thousands were stranded in airports worldwide. Cell phones went silent. GPS signals were lost. No amount of satellite tweaking or recalibration could bring them back.

  Due to continued CME activity, radio and television signals in North America were blocked by a massive influx of magnetic emissions. Consequently, few Americans heard about Rio at all. This in turn provided a few extra hours of false security, since they did not yet understand that the continued operation of their power grids was all that prevented their own cities from collapsing under a wave of panic. Nor did they understand that without access to radio waves, neither the media nor the police nor the military could properly function.

  The citizens were, in effect, left helplessly uninformed and unprotected. Simultaneously, as all forms of communication failed, the tainted atmosphere around the planet deepened to a ghastly, bloodlike red.

  With that third vermilion dawn came, at long last, fear.

  And gleefully snapping at the heels of fear… lurked chaos.

  AT NINE o’clock in the morning, visibility was less than thirty feet.

  It was Joe’s night off, and he and Ned clutched hands as they strode down the sidewalk, headed for the deli. Trees, parking meters, and mailboxes kept looming up in front of them through the haze like phantoms springing out to attack. By the time they had traveled two blocks, they were both on edge.

  Joe counted back inside his head. This was the third day since the red haze fell. As he and Ned walked along, continuously fighting the urge to start running, a chorus of countless barking dogs bombarded them from every side. The cries of thousands of birds still circling frantically overhead set their teeth on edge. The concrete beneath their feet and everything they passed was coated with bird droppings. The air reeked of it—a bitter, cloying, acidic smell that made them pull their T-shirts over their noses to filter out the stench.