Queermance Anthology, Volume 1

by Queermance Anthology- Volume 1 [MM-FF] (v5. 0) (epub)

  ‘Everything okay?’ was all Sean asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Tully answered heavily. ‘Fine. Just… work.’

  Sean nodded once. He seemed to understand.

  Tully didn’t know if that was better or worse.

  They distracted themselves in front of the television until it was time to sleep. Tully found he could hardly find it in himself to enjoy the movie he’d suggested. They put the percolator on for one last coffee before bed, the two mugs side-by-side on the bench.

  Guilt was a funny thing. It worked through your insides until it didn’t matter why you’d done a thing, only that you had done it.

  As days passed, that was what Tully felt. Sean’s seeming lack of awareness notwithstanding, Tully had committed an act of thievery against a person he suspected he might actually love. It didn’t help that, suddenly, Sean stopped sneaking out of bed at night. It happened with as little remark as had met his sneaking out.

  Still, Tully knew he had to bring the seal skin back.

  Tully stood in the kitchen, his stomach stuck in his throat, unable to fathom what words would explain what he’d done.

  ‘What is it?’ Sean asked sympathetically.

  Tully looked at their coffee mugs, together on the bench. Full disclosure and honesty were meant to be the staples of a healthy relationship.

  ‘I have something I need to tell you.’

  Sean frowned, but he was as open as Tully had ever seen him, ready to listen. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I did a terrible thing. A dishonest thing.’ Tully found he could hardly bear to look Sean in the eye. He didn’t. Instead, he reached for the bag he’d hidden behind the jacket he’d folded over a dining room chair when he’d come in. ‘I followed you to the beach, several days ago.’ His gaze inched up to Sean’s, hesitantly. ‘I saw your seal skin. The way you sank into it. I saw it all.’

  Tully waited for Sean to react. At first, the other man didn’t seem moved. He didn’t seem angry, or surprised, or worried, or any of the emotions Tully had expected. He decided to commit to the full story, extending the bag to Sean.

  ‘I took it,’ Tully said. With the admission came a heady rush of relief for no longer needing to hold onto the terrible truth. ‘I’m the reason you haven’t been able to find it the last couple of days. Take it. Please take it.’

  As these words stumbled in a rush from his mouth, Tully couldn’t tear his eyes from Sean’s. His gaze beseeched Sean to understand what he’d done, the confusion he’d felt, and forgive him. His gaze said he didn’t know what he would do if Sean didn’t.

  Instead, Sean looked as though he had expected this conversation all along. He drew his lips in silently as his gaze lowered. He took the bag from Tully. He didn’t say another word, only held the bag carefully in both hands.

  Blood rushed to Tully’s face, and he could feel it beating at his temples, louder at his ears. He hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t expected anything like this. ‘Well, what are you? Why do you-How do you do this?’

  ‘A selkie,’ Sean said simply. ‘I’m a selkie.’

  ‘But-what?’ Tully’s forehead scrunched up with confusion. He tried to recall half-remembered pictures of semi-naked figures in myth that he’d found on websites in his teens. ‘Aren’t selkies an Irish myth?’

  Sean gave that enigmatic smile. ‘Many people have travelled from Ireland to Melbourne. Did you think they came alone?’

  Suffused with guilt, and fear, and just plain overwhelmed by the magnitude of selkies, Tully didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Uh. Okay.’ His expression no doubt said he was struggling. Sean gave him the space to deal with it. Tully didn’t want space. He wanted Sean to hold him, to tell him it would all be alright.

  Sean did neither of those things.

  When they fell into bed that night, the sex was as passionate as it had been the first time. Tully clung to Sean, as though afraid to break body contact for even one minute. Sean pulled Tully to him as though he would memorise every line, detail, muscle and sinew of the Tully’s lanky form.

  ‘Stay,’ Tully uttered into the pillow as he came, with closed eyes leaking a tear. He wasn’t even sure if he said it loud enough for Sean to hear. In any case, Sean didn’t reply.

  They held onto each other afterwards. There wasn’t anything left for either of them to say. Tully tried to keep himself awake as long as he could, but eventually, he slept.

  ****

  When Tully woke sometime around three in the morning, he knew already that Sean was gone.

  Nonetheless, he lay awake and waited for his boyfriend to crawl back in beside him. He was so sure that he would. Even as his fears told him better, he kept telling himself he was sure. He was…

  As the first hints of dawn crept around the curtains of his bedroom, Tully shifted so that his back was against the headboard. He was not even remotely tired. Seven o’clock came and went without any sound of Sean re-entering the house.

  Finally, Tully had to accept that it had happened. Sean had left. He had his seal skin back, and had gone back to the ocean he’d come from. He wasn’t coming back.

  Tully closed his eyes and felt the sting of tears.

  When he opened his eyes, the bedroom doorway was still empty.

  With heavy feet, Tully got out of bed and reached for his phone.

  ‘Yeah, I’m not coming into work today,’ he said, to the receptionist on the desk. The receptionist was a portly, older lady with too-large glasses. He could imagine her expression as she logged his excuse, and wished him to “get better soon”.

  Tully’s voice was still husky from sleep and disuse. He thanked her, and hung up.

  He walked into his study, with the movie posters of Jaws and the rest on the wall; memories of recently watched movies. He turned on his computer to write for the first time in weeks.

  While it was booting up, he went into the kitchen. Opening the shutters to let the light in, Tully reached for the percolator. He pulled out a single coffee mug from the cupboard and put it on the bench, which showed no sign of where another had so briefly been placed beside it.

  INHERITANCE

  Matthew Lang

  The man who slipped into the plush booth to sit opposite Lex was slender, although his was a lithe build that owed more to concentrated physical activity, such as dance or dedicated running, than the party life of a circuit boy hooked on E or crystal. Lex didn’t like crystal - it made people’s blood taste like chalk. Plus, with a potential eternity ahead of him and no studies on the effects of drugs on vampires1, he didn’t have any idea of what ingesting it second-hand would do to his brain, and he wasn’t keen to find out. For all he knew, it would mean an eternity spent as a gibbering loony wandering the streets and begging for blood packs - or making fumbling attempts at catching rats or pigeons 2.

  ‘Hey,’ the man said. ‘I’m Connor.’

  ‘Lex.’

  ‘I know. Everyone knows who you are.’

  Lex smiled, and took a sip of his Bloody Mary 3. ‘Who am I then?’

  ‘Lex Cranbourne, painter of artwork that sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars to the right people. I’ve got a tattoo inspired by one of your pieces.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t think I painted anything that would work as a tattoo,’ Lex replied softly as the phrase the right people echoed in his head.

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Connor exclaimed, deft fingers unbuttoning his shirt.

  ‘Oh,’ Lex said. ‘That’s one of my very early pieces.’

  It was a demonic satyr, or at least, it got called that a lot. In Lex’s mind it had been an early attempt to draw an incubus, taking inspiration from depictions of horned demons in the video games he used to play. He’d kept the cloven hooves and stubby horns, but given the very male image a handsome face that was more alluring than evil, although he had tried to give it a certain sparkle in the eye. The tattoo artist had exaggerated the already large penis on the original drawing, and on Connor’s chest it arced up to touch the incu
bus’ pectorals, stopping just short of Connor’s left nipple. The tattoo also had the barest hint of fangs protruding from the demon’s upper lip, which was definitely not something that Lex had included. He hadn’t found fangs sexy then. Actually, he didn’t find them sexy now.

  ‘I’ve liked your work for a long time,’ Connor said. The man’s blush would have been almost unnoticeable in the dim lighting, but Lex’s acute senses picked up the change in the air and the subtle speeding of Connor’s heartbeat. Connor was tall, somewhere in excess of six feet, and had dirty blond hair that was almost buzz-cut short, and the beginnings of evening stubble. Lex’s nostrils flared as he saw a reddish flush spread down Connor’s neck to the top of his well-developed chest. A peppery scent of musk and fresh sweat reached Lex’s nostrils and he idly wondered what Connor would taste like.

  In Lex’s experience, everyone tasted different. There was the basic metallic taste of blood in general and a certain syrupy thickness, but from there, flavours differed widely. Some blood aged well, some did not. Sometimes there were overtones of fruit, or a certain fatty richness or even a slight hint of spice. It all came down to what each person ate - and by the smell of it, Connor was a man who liked his Indian food. As his gaze lingered on Connor’s chest, he felt his stomach clench hungrily.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said suddenly, downing his drink and rising to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not that I dislike your company, but I’m afraid I’m not good with people these days.’

  A soft hand grabbed his fingers before he could walk away and he looked down into Connor’s eyes, seeing the naked longing within. ‘If you need a better drink…’

  Lex smiled sadly. ‘That’s the problem. You’re more than a drink on legs, Connor, and you should treat yourself accordingly.’ He pulled his hand free before Connor could respond, and pushed his way through the crowd of adventurers, lost souls and blood fetishists. Stopping only to collect his jacket from the cloakroom 4, he stepped out into the crispness of the Melbourne night.

  Sucking in the cold air of autumn, he let the smells of sweat, lust and desperation fade from his mind. Technically he didn’t have to breathe - he’d even gone and sat at the bottom of the local pool for a good hour, waving at people above to show them he was quite fine just to test out the theory. It was, however, a difficult habit to break, and he found his body reflexively breathed exactly the same way it had when alive if left to its own devices, almost as if his muscles still required oxygen to function 5. Of course, with a heightened sense of smell, breathing was useful for other reasons, such as tracking down prey - that is, people - and not least of all, speech. It still amazed Lex that even with the evidence as glaring as his non-reflection in any sort of surface, including SLR cameras and shop windows, the general public were almost as oblivious to the existence of vampires as they were to the threat of climate change 6. Sometimes he wondered what else was out there, hiding in plain sight. And then he wondered if he’d even recognise it if he saw it.

  The back of Hellhound was unimpressively suburban, with a large concrete lot of free evening parking allowing residents to drive in to the Northcote area and walk a very short distance to the quickly gentrifying High Street, with its still-perceived-as-trendy eateries and holding-onto-its-grungy-atmosphere social club. Would-be celebrity chefs boasting credentials had opened restaurants such as the Fat Duck, vying for foot traffic with organic Mexican restaurants run by Egyptians, and an old, masculine, charcoal grill steakhouse that served American style portions7. Like Brunswick before it, the boho crowd were moving on, pushing further north as the yuppies moved in, seeking to surround themselves with the artistry and happy-go-lucky attitudes they had eschewed to move up the corporate ladder. It was a vain attempt to capture and absorb the essence of artistry and community that they’d long given up on cultivating within themselves.

  Of course, once the yuppies moved in they pushed up the prices and the artists moved out, leaving busy, tree-lined suburbs with bustling cafes that shut after lunch and live music venues that shut down after noise complaints from their neighbours who had to get up in the morning for a six am start, snaking into the city in their BMWs for an early workout as they chased the dream of having it all.

  Sometimes, Lex felt that yuppies were like vampires, sucking the life out of the places they yearned towards but of which they would only ever be observers by definition. Sometimes, he felt that vampires were yuppies, ruining everything they touched even as their very essence was held up to society as the pinnacle of achievement8. And how people wanted it. The immortality, the eternal youth, the rabid sex lives9 - everything was glamorised and lauded as desirable. The aristocracy of the night, the ultimate loner sitting in the corner watching the world go by as the little problems of mere mortals fell away with the slow and stately march of the centuries.

  Sometimes, Lex felt that someone ought to tell screenwriters and aspiring novelists that the little problems of mere mortals refused to go away in undeath, and the thought of them lingering for centuries was still one he found difficult to face. Snarling, he punched the nearby wall, sending his fist a good three inches into the now crumbled brick. The crack of masonry made him pause immediately, hoping the noise would be masked by the sounds of Celtic Electronica that were filtering out from the Northcote Social Club, or at least that no-one would bother to investigate a one-off noise and chalk it up to fireworks or roving thugs invading from Scumshine out west.

  ‘Did that make you feel better?’

  Or the opposite could happen, of course.

  It was Connor, naturally. Lex could just make out the spicy scent of him over the sharp smell of fresh blood.

  ‘Not really, no.’ Lex said, pulling his hand carefully from the wall and examining the cracks that now radiated from the impact area. It would probably be okay.

  ‘You’re bleeding.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Lex said, looking at the broken skin and oozing flesh of his knuckles. He could almost see a tendon if he flexed his fingers just right. Brushing the brick dust from his hand, he picked away the larger fragments and then licked his wounds, watching as the skin healed over almost instantly.

  ‘Impressive.’

  ‘Really?’ Lex asked, finally turning to find Connor standing just outside the illumination cast by a small security light, a shadow within a shadow. ‘You knew it would happen.’

  ‘But I’ve never seen it before. What’s it like?’

  Lex only needed two strides to reach Connor and his hands slammed into the wall either side of the man’s head almost before he’d finished speaking10. ‘What makes you so sure you want to know?’

  Connor shrugged. ‘I like to live dangerously.’

  ‘I could rip out your throat right now and you’d bleed out in minutes - less,’ Lex growled. ‘It would be painful, it would be frightening and you wouldn’t rise again in a better, stronger form. You’d just be dead. And it would be meaningless. You won’t have joined with a greater power, you won’t feel a rush of dark enlightenment, you won’t awaken to a higher purpose and you wouldn’t be remembered. You’d be a meal for a lonely, pathetic guy who had a bad night, happens to drink blood and yours won’t actually make his any better. Your death would be painful, messy and meaningless. Do you get that?’

  Connor leaned back against the brick wall amidst the dumpsters that smelled of stomach-churning food in various stages of decay, closed his eyes and lifted his chin. ‘Go on then,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t do it, can you?’ he asked moments later, while Lex was still staring at him in shock. A slender finger reached out and poked him in the sternum. ‘Somewhere in there you just won’t let yourself.’

  ‘But I could.’

  ‘But you won’t,’ Connor said with a smile that Lex could hear in his voice. ‘Wasn’t it Richard Attenborough who said ‘Everyone carries around his own monsters’?’

  ‘Pryor, I think.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Connor said. ‘What makes your internal monster worse tha
n mine?’

  ‘Does yours threaten to kill everyone you meet?’

  Connor thought for a moment. ‘Well, no, but yours doesn’t either.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll bite - metaphorically speaking,’ Lex said. ‘Just what sort of monster are you?’

  Again, Connor thought for a minute. ‘Ancestral,’ he said finally.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Connor’s kiss was soft and unexpected. ‘Want to come back to my lair and find out?’

  ‘Sure,’ Lex said, somewhat nonplussed. After all, it couldn’t be much worse than living forever11.

  ‘By the way,’ Connor said. ‘You taste like blood.’

  Lex hadn’t thought he could still blush. It was sort of nice to be proved wrong.

  ****

  There was a comfortable silence as they rode the elevator up to Connor’s penthouse apartment. Connor leant back against the mirrored rear of the compartment, black shirt still unbuttoned down to his navel and his red slacks hugging his slender legs in all the right places. For the first time, Lex noticed a brown leather cuff on his right wrist, as well as a tattoo that read Not ‘til the Sky. Lex’s eyes travelled over the form of the other man, inspecting his chest, his jawline, his hands…12

  ‘Like what you see?’

  Lex’s eyes snapped up from Connor’s oversized belt buckle and met a gaze that was both heated and amused.

  ‘Maybe,’ Lex said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

  ‘If I undo another button, will that turn the maybe into a yes?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Lex said, flushing slightly.

  Connor laughed and unbuttoned his shirt the rest of the way. ‘It’s all right to feel lust, you know.’

  Lex didn’t say anything, but the ding of the elevator saved him from having to speak.

  The place was - in a word - luxurious. In seventeen words, it had an old world, masculine sophistication, full of dark wood, rich burgundy carpets and aged leather. Stepping out from the lift, Lex found himself in a space he could only describe as a den. Mahogany bookshelves lined one wall, stacked two books deep, and soft, black leather couches sat before them, facing toward a wall clad in deliberately irregular stone. A large, flat-screen TV sat there, breaking the bulk of the exposed masonry, and off to one side he saw an Xbox 360, although he couldn’t see any game cases13. At the far end of the room, heavy grey Roman blinds fell to the floor, blocking out what were probably floor to ceiling windows. The entire room was illuminated by soft downlights that lit up as the two men moved further into the centre of the room, taking in the large canvases and small wall-cases, one of which held a withered broad bean with a small handwritten note that said “Inn case of Emergyncy”.