by Ally Blue
The room seethed with shadows. Joel huddled on the cold floor in the corner, arms tight around himself. The windows had disappeared. He thought he could make out shapes of things hanging on the walls, but when he tried to look at them, they blurred and shifted, blending into the grimy gray paint. He liked that he couldn’t see; the things the vague outlines suggested made his stomach knot.
The door to the room slammed open. Joel jumped, heart triphammering in his chest. Something huge and dark blocked out the light. Joel stared, and pure terror bloomed in his guts.
“No,” he whimpered. “Go away. Please go away.”
The figure took a step into the room, then another. As it moved, it shrank, and lightened, and solidified, until the menacing hulk was gone entirely. The lovely man from the previous dreams stood looking down at Joel, dark eyes heavy with sorrow. Joel sagged against the wall, weak with relief.
“Joel... please...”
The man’s voice sounded watery and far away, but something in it struck a chord in Joel’s mind. His insides twisted with a strange mix of grief and desire. Without thinking about what he was doing, whether it would save him or destroy him, Joel rose to his feet, took the man’s hands in his, and pulled him close.
Those black eyes locked with his. “Joel, please...”
Joel slid a hand into the man’s thick, dark hair, letting the heavy strands slip like water through his fingers. “Please what? Who are you? Why do you make me feel like this?”
The man held Joel’s face between his hands and kissed him, tenderly, sweetly. Joel swallowed the sob rising in his throat, but he couldn’t stop the hot tears from trickling down his cheeks. It scared him, feeling this way. Like he’d lost the most precious thing in the world, and didn’t know it.
“Please come back,” the man whispered against Joel’s mouth. “Come back to me.”
He started to pull away. Joel grabbed his wrist, holding him. The black eyes gazed at him, patient and sad.
“But, but I don’t... know you. Do I?” Joel shook his head. “Don’t leave me here.”
“Come back,” the man repeated.
“I don’t know how.” Joel clutched at the man’s hand, letting out a little cry when the long fingers slipped away from his. “Please, don’t go, don’t leave me! I can’t get back, I don’t know how!”
The man smiled, and the beauty of it stole Joel’s breath. “You have to remember, Joel.”
The man turned and walked away without looking back. Joel tried to follow, but his feet refused to leave the floor. So he stood there, unable to move, or speak, only able to watch as the man walked out the door and the lights blinked out.
When Joel opened his eyes, he was back in the familiar brightness of his hut. He sat up, looking around him. Sunlight sparkled on the bay outside and lit the little room with a warm glow. He got up and wandered around, touching this and that, reassuring himself that it was real, and that the dream was just that. A dream, nothing more.
He wandered over to the refrigerator and poured himself a tall glass of fresh mango juice. Kicking the refrigerator door shut with one foot, he leaned his elbows on the counter and took a long swallow. The smooth, faintly tart taste of it revived him, made him feel grounded again. He drank the rest, then set the empty glass on the counter.
Then he saw the picture.
It hung on the refrigerator door, held to the white metal by a magnet with a stylized sun painted on it. The picture showed two men, smiling against a background of high green mountains and turquoise water. One of the men, a tall blond with bright blue eyes and the beginnings of a sunburn on his bare shoulders, sat perched on a wooden bench on a blindingly white beach. The other man, shorter and darker with black curly hair and enormous black eyes, sat in the blond’s lap. The two had their arms around each other, the dark one’s ebony curls mingling with the other’s fine pale strands where they leaned their heads together. The blond’s big hand rested possessively on his lover’s thigh.
Joel tugged the picture out from under the magnet and stood staring at it, mouth dry and heart racing. He touched a tentative fingertip to the glossy photo, tracing the sensual features of the dark-haired man.
The man from his dreams, whose soft voice and sorrowful eyes had called so irresistibly to him.
Only in the photo, those dark eyes weren’t sad at all. They sparkled with a joy Joel could feel in his bones, the man’s smile wide and happy. Made him wonder what had happened to change that face so drastically, and if it had anything to do with the big blond man in the picture.
A man who, now that Joel thought about it, looked vaguely familiar. Joel studied the handsome face with a frown. An icy lump of dread coalesced in his guts.
“Who are you?” he said softly.
The picture remained silent. Joel set it on the counter with a sigh.
“Fuck this. I’m going for my swim.”
Joel stalked toward the door. As he reached to open it, a flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye. He whirled toward it.
And froze.
An old-fashioned full length mirror in a swivel stand had appeared on the other side of the room. And staring out of it, tall and golden and handsome, was the blond man from the picture.
Joel walked slowly forward. The man in the mirror did the same, blue eyes as wide and shocked as Joel knew his own to be. Shaking inside, Joel moved a palm down his own belly, watching his twin behind the glass echo the movement.
With a sudden lunge, Joel pressed both hands flat against the mirror, half expecting to feel warm flesh under his fingers. His skin met hard, unyielding coldness. He yanked his hands away, turned his back on his reflection, and squeezed his eyes shut.
Sunshine. Hot, humid breeze. Scents of jasmine and greenery heavy in the air. Lush verdant mountains, sapphire sky, clear blue water cool on his bare skin. A sudden shock of cold as a splash of salt water hit him in the face. Victor’s infectious laugh, melting his annoyance immediately.
“You little fucker!” One eye cracked open, squinting against the sting. “Shouldn’t splash me, boy.”
“Oh yeah? Whatcha gonna do about it, big guy?” Dark eyes laughing, shining, making him want.
“Your ass,” wading up, grabbing that gorgeous naked ass in both hands, “is so mine.”
“Always yours, Joel.” Black eyes hot now under the laughter, copper skin glowing in the tropical sun. “Always yours.”
That beautiful body in his arms, kisses deep and hot and needy, Victor’s sweet wailing cry when he came, and heaven itself couldn’t be any better...
Joel jerked and opened his eyes, breath coming in ragged gasps. He stumbled over to the counter and leaned on it, fighting dizziness. The vision had been so clear, so vivid, like a cherished memory.
As if it had really happened.
The picture lay on the counter, where he’d left it. He picked it up and turned it over, somehow knowing what he’d find. And there it was.
“Me and Victor, Soufriere, St. Lucia, April 2003. Beach outside our villa.” Joel read the words in a hoarse whisper. The words he’d written, another lifetime ago.
Joel’s hand started to shake, the panic he hadn’t felt in so long overtaking him as the memories tried to float to the surface. He shoved the picture away and strode out the door, out to the white sand and brilliant blue water and the high green mountains rising beyond the bay.
The bench was there this time. It hadn’t been before. Joel sat down on it, staring numbly out over the water.
*****
Joel sought out the dream on purpose this time. As soon as the sun had set, he took one of the sleeping pills that had appeared on the bedside table, stretched out on the bed, and closed his eyes.
“Please be there, Victor,” he whispered. “I need to know.”
He lay awake in the moonlit dark for a long time before the tension began to leave his body and he finally slept.
Joel huddled naked in the corner of the room. It had changed again. Cold stone walls th
is time, deep gray with darker patches where the damp of the ground had seeped through. Concrete floor with a drain set in the middle. A metal table, a hose connected to a faucet in the wall. The faucet leaked on the floor in a slow, steady drip where the hose attached. A single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling threw a harsh light around the room. It couldn’t quite illuminate the walls, though, and for that Joel was grateful. He didn’t want to see the hazy shapes any more clearly that he could already.
“Victor, where are you?” Joel’s voice refused to rise above a shaky whisper. “Please, don’t leave me here alone.”
The sound of a door opening made Joel jump. He looked up. On the other side of the room, a narrow wooden staircase rose out of sight beyond the low ceiling. Weak sunlight filtered from the top. Joel smiled as Victor descended the stairs.
“Victor. Thank God.” Joel stared forward, and nearly fell. Frowning, he looked down at his feet. His ankles were encased in pair of thick shackles connected by a short, sturdy chain. Another chain tethered him to the wall, preventing him from walking more than a few feet.
He looked back up at Victor, fighting panic. “What’s happening, Victor? Why am I chained?”
Victor came to him, wrapped his arms around him and gently kissed his lips. “You have to remember,” he said, stroking Joel’s hair. “It’s the only way.”
Joel clutched Victor close, buried his face in those shining curls. “I remembered you. I found a picture, from St. Lucia, and I remembered. Why can’t I come back?”
Victor pulled back and stared up into Joel’s eyes, keeping their fingers wound together. “It’s not enough to remember me, Joel. You have to remember everything. Everything that happened.”
Joel shook his head, the panic rising again. “No. I don’t want to, Victor. Please don’t make me. Please.”
“I can’t make you do anything. You have to do it yourself.”
“No. I can’t.” Joel felt the truth of it in every molecule of his body, though he wasn’t sure why. He buried his hands in Victor’s hair and kissed him. “Come back with me instead. We can live there forever, Victor. Nothing ever runs out, nothing ever changes. Nothing bad ever happens there.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
Victor pressed close, cupping Joel’s face in his hands, and they kissed for a long, long time. When Victor broke the kiss at last and stepped back, Joel thought the raw pain in those black eyes might tear him apart.
Victor took a step backward, then another. “Good-bye, Joel.”
“No, don’t leave me, please.” Joel reached for Victor’s hand, but he was already standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Victor, please, please don’t go, please!”
Victor turned toward him, silhouetted against the light. Joel wished he could see his face. “You’re so close, Joel. So close.”
“Victor, please...”
“Hurry, Joel. I miss you.”
Victor disappeared up the stairs, the door closed, the light went out, and Joel fell to his knees on the cold floor and screamed...
Joel woke, gasping and shaking, the echo of his scream vibrating in the air. He curled into a ball, arms around his head, eyes shut tight.
“Don’t make me. I can’t. I can’t.”
You can, Victor’s gentle voice whispered in his mind. You have to. Come back to me, Joel. I love you.
“I’m scared.”
I know. But I’m here for you. Right here beside you. I’ve been here all along.
Joel lay curled in his bed, in his peaceful little hut on a tropical paradise of an island. In the last place he’d ever felt safe and happy. Before whatever it was that had ripped him away from Victor and sent him here. His body trembled all over, his skin wet with sweat, heart racing. He didn’t want to remember. The knowledge would surely break him. But he had to. For Victor. For himself. For the love they shared, the life they’d made together.
Joel took a deep breath, let his muscles go limp, and shut his eyes.
...“Victor, dammit, did you leave the milk out again?”
“Again? That was you before, genius. Probably was this time, too.”
“Yeah, go ahead and blame it on me, like you do everything else.”
“God, Joel, grow a fucking skin, huh? I didn’t blame anything on you that you didn’t do. That’s your department.”
“I don’t do that!”
“So why’d I have to listen to you scream at me for ten solid minutes after you knocked my wine glass off the table last night?”
“You shouldn’t have put it there!”
“Christ, I don’t believe this...”
Joel whimpered at the sudden memory. It had started in earnest not long after that magical vacation in St. Lucia, though the trouble had been simmering under the surface for a long time. The constant arguments, the lackluster sex, followed by the huge fight that resulted in Joel sleeping on the sofa for a week. The realization that their problems weren’t going away by themselves, that they had to do something to fix their relationship.
Joel curled up tighter, hugging himself as the memory of what they’d done rose like acid inside him...
...Tall. Taller than Joel, shoulders wide and powerful, arm muscles nearly splitting the seams of his shirt. Pale gray gaze a little too intense, smile wolfish.
“Victor, I don’t know. He’s a little off, don’t you think?”
“We agreed that a threesome would spice up our sex life, and maybe we wouldn’t fight so much. Come on, Joel, just try it this once. We don’t have to do it again if you don’t want.”
It was good. Rob, the man they’d hooked up with online, coaxed Joel into doing things he never thought he’d do with anyone but Victor. After it was over, Joel and Victor went home and made love with a passion that had been absent from their bed for far too long.
They met Rob four more times before they broke it off. The sex had been good, but in the end it left them both feeling hollow. But it served its purpose. They’d rediscovered each other, the arguments had stopped, and life was good.
If only Rob had been able to let them go. To let Joel go...
“No!” Joel sat up in bed, eyes wide and heart racing. “I can’t. I can’t.”
When his legs stopped shaking, he jumped out of bed and ran outside. He stood on the beach, taking big deep breaths of salty air. He dropped to the warm sand, sifting it through his fingers, trying to keep the memories at bay. To keep that locked door in his mind from flying open and bringing him face-to-face with a reality too terrible to bear.
But it was too late, and he knew it. He collapsed onto his side as the door burst open and the memories engulfed him...
...Gray walls. Gray concrete floor, rough and icy against his bare skin. Dark, damp, cold. Cuffs around his wrists, manacles on his ankles.
“Please, Rob, let me go. Please...”
“I can’t, Joel. I love you.”
“No, you don’t! God, why are you doing this?”
Quick sting of the knife laying his cheek open to the bone. Rob’s eyes bright with madness. “Don’t you ever tell me I don’t love you, Joel. The minute I saw you, I knew we were meant for each other. I do love you. I’ll prove to you just how much.”
Endless days huddled in the corner of the dark basement, naked and filthy and cold and afraid, until he could barely remember a time before. He learned to retreat into his mind when the basement door opened and Rob came to him like a demon. When Rob chained him to the metal table and did those things to him, made him hurt and bleed, he shut his eyes tight and let his mind wing its way to place of beauty and safety.
And one day, he simply hadn’t come back...
*****
The first thing Joel noticed when he woke was the smell. A harsh, vaguely medicinal odor, with a hint of stale sweat underneath. Nothing on the island had ever smelled like that before. And the bed was harder than it had been, the sheet thick and rough against his skin.
&nb
sp; It took him a moment to notice the faint sound in the background for what it was. A voice, flat and tinny as if speaking over an intercom. When it hit him, he nearly passed out again.
People. There were people here. Which meant one of two things. Either the world had finally invaded his personal paradise, or...
Or he’d gone back to the world.
Back to that cold, dirty basement.