Caspers Ghosts

by Victoria Hyder

  I touched his shoulder and pried him onto his back. “Don’t look so angry,” I murmured as I stroked his hair out of his eyes. His face was hard with blotchy spots of pink on his cheeks. His eyes were a cross between anger and humiliation. They were locked on mine as I trailed my fingers down his hands, followed the curve of his hipbones and then slid over the bulge in his jeans. I cupped his hard-on and he gasped out. Pressing my lips to his ear, I breathed, “Let me help you.”

  “N-No … Can’t t-touch it!” he whimpered again, his body convulsing beneath me.

  I kissed his cheek, “I won’t touch your skin, I promise. Let me help a little.”

  He whimpered tightly as I experimentally stroked my fingers up and down his length. He gasped out softly, “F-Fine … But don’t touch my skin!” he hissed out, saliva flecking his lips.

  I adjusted my position on the mattress and added extra pressure to his stiffness. I rubbed the pad of my thumb along his bulge. He gasped out, arching into my palm. I couldn’t help but smirk; he was more eager than I’d expected.

  “Just relax,” I hummed as I palmed him through his jeans.

  As much as my mouth watered to taste him, there was no way he was ready for that yet. I don’t even think I was. I pressed small kisses along his tense jaw and quickened my pace. His muscles twitched under his flawless, white skin.

  He was panting softly in my ear.

  The noise made my stomach flip as he arched his hips into my hand. The denim burned my palm but I didn’t care as I watched him stumble over the brink. His breath hitched and his body jerked beside me as he came, his muscles tense and shuddering. He let out a strangled whimper before collapsing against my pillow, a bead of sweat running down the side of his flushed face.

  I slowly withdrew my hand, training my eyes on his face as he stared up at the ceiling, his face pink and lips parted as he tried to catch his breath. A seed of fear bloomed in my chest. I was afraid of how he’d react when he’d collected himself enough to think straight.

  Swallowing thickly he drew a deep breath and sighed. “I’m … not going to hit you.”

  I let out my own shaky breath; “I –didn’t think you would.”

  He snorted softly. “Sure,” he murmured. He turned his head to look at me, his pupils were fairly large still as he tried to smile at me. “That was … unexpected.”

  “Yes it was.”

  “Would you … judge me for liking it?” he asked.

  “No … of course not.”

  How could I judge him? He’d looked so beautiful, squirming beside me. I leaned against the pillow, watching him. It would have been so easy to tell him, in that moment, just how much I loved him. I tried to speak, but the words lodged in my throat. He looked at me questioningly but I just pressed a small kiss to his mouth. He kissed back, deepening it, opening his mouth so our tongues could tease one another. I moaned lightly as his fingers curled into my hair and drew me closer. I gripped his shirt in my fist as I sucked on his lips, making him gasp. That was how we spent the rest of the afternoon, my damp hair soaking my pillow as I lie there kissing the boy I loved. I just hoped one day I could fucking tell him just how much he meant to me.

  *

  I woke up to the sound of the front door slamming shut and my parents’ voices carrying up from the driveway as they got into the car and drove off. Groaning, I burrowed against my pillow. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I noticed that there was a warm weight resting against my back. Craning my neck, I turned a little and couldn’t help but smile at Casper’s sleeping form resting against my back. It was the bare minimum of touching, but it still felt comforting. By the time I heard the click of a camera go off it was too late; Katie was scurrying back out of the room and down the stairs, laughing with the knowledge that I didn’t have the energy to follow her.

  Pouting, I slumped back against the pillows. Casper grunted behind me. I froze as he rolled over onto his back and stretched out, arching this way and that. His movements were very graceful and cat-like as he moaned before dropping back down on the mattress. I held my breath. Eventually, I did roll onto my other side and leaned on my arm as I watched him. His grey eyes were open, the long black lashes flitting slightly as his eyes stared up at the ceiling. His breathing was steady as he played his fingers on his stomach to a silent tune I wish I could’ve heard.

  “Mmm what time is it?” he eventually murmured.

  Grabbing my phone I tapped the screen. “Just gone seven.”

  “Is your mum gone?”

  “Yep.”

  “Thank fuck!” He collapsed on the bed and curled an arm behind his head, his free hand still playing the tune one his stomach. We laid in silence for a little while before he whispered, “So that whole ‘hand thing’ … That really happened?”

  Holding my breath I waited for the inevitable. “Yeah.”

  “So it wasn’t a dream?”

  “You often dream about me getting you off?” I teased quietly.

  “Fletcher!”

  Sighing softly, I shook my head. “No … No dreams here.”

  He turned to look at me. Our eyes locked and my heart raced. I winced as I saw the tears in his eyes. He turned back to stare upwards before he spoke; “I’ve never been really good at this whole touching thing. You could be best friends with someone and not have to touch them, so I never really saw the point. Well, that was my logic behind it all.”

  He bit his lip. I held my breath, watching and waiting. “When I was younger, my parents thought it was a mild form of autism. When I grew up a little they thought that I just had anxiety around other people.” He paused to let his words sink in and like any good listener, I didn’t say anything. “I’d had a few close friends who I’d eventually let sit closer to me and maybe a monthly hug or two but that wasn’t really an issue. Secondary school was a killer. People have no concept for personal space, which quickly became a nuisance. I even got temporarily exiled into the ‘special help’ classes because the stress over getting touched in class got too much for me. My grades shot right up as soon as I was isolated and had a table to myself to focus at.”

  I licked my lips as I digested the information. His phobia had made him a recluse, perhaps unintentionally, and forced him to love his own company even more than was normal for a teenager. Clearing my throat, I propped my head up on my elbow so I could look down at him. “So how old were you when they decided to integrate you back into regular classes?”

  “Fifteen,” he murmured softly, sniffing loudly to control his voice. “There wasn’t really an integration process to be perfectly honest. I just tried to control my urges to snap at someone and my mum told me to take up a sport outside of school so I could feel more in control of my urges.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I studied karate for a while. I actually got really good at it. I was a blue belt when I gave it up to go to Uni.”

  There was a sensitive question that was hovering over our heads. So far he’d skirted around the subject pretty well, but no matter which way the conversation went, that question blared like a neon sign and needed to be answered. There was no way around it. He needed to break through that wall. I was more than willing to catch him on the other side if he stumbled. I wanted to be the one to catch him.

  “So what happened to you to make you so adverse to people touching you?” His silence felt like a block of ice crashing down on my chest. “Please, just let me understand.” I reached for his hand but he flinched away.

  He shook his head, “If I told you … You wouldn’t look at me the same way again.”

  “Casper,” I groaned. I cupped his face in my hand. Ignoring how tense he was I leaned close, “I am not going to judge you! Please, believe me when I say that. Will I be shocked? Probably. Will I throw you out on the street? Of course not! Will I tell you to get out of my life? Never! At this point, Casper, if you walked out of that door right now, I would follow you. I don’t care how long it’d take to convince you to come back, even if
I had to follow you all the way back to Uni, I’d do it!” He looked at me with his steady eyes. A single tear rolled down the side of his temple and disappeared into his hair. I swiped the tear track away and drew in a calming breath, “Please Casper?”

  He let out a shaking breath. He closed his eyes and spoke in a rushed whisper. “My cousin sexually abused me every Sunday afternoon when my mum watched him for my aunt and uncle. It was whilst they had some ‘adult time’ together and met up with friends.” He choked on his words and his nose grew damp, “A-At first it was just the whole childish curiosity. I’d never had the urge to tell my mum. I figured she would have been proud that I was finally letting someone touch me but I still didn’t tell her. He would hold my hand or hug me during the day when he was over and at the end of each day he’d make me suck him off. Whether he was hard or soft, I had to do it. That was his reward for touching me. Apparently there were rumours that I had some weird, contagious skin disease or some crap.”

  I watched him try to give a stiff little laugh and it broken my heart.

  “However, as we got older it got worse,” he licked his lips and his teeth chattered a little. “He was two years older than me and when I was eleven he made me suck him off until he … finished.” He turned away from me and I didn’t try to stop him. His shoulders shook as he curled himself into a tight ball and pressed his hands over his ears as though to block out his own voice. “I tried to force myself to enjoy it. I’d figured I didn’t like girls anyway and to some extent he was gentle. Until he disabled the protection on his home PC and started watching porn. Then he got violent.”

  He was crying now; I could hear it in the cracking of his voice, the volume of his words and the muscles pumping in his throat. He swallowed heavily and pressed his hands tighter. “On the way home one evening, him and a bunch of his friends jumped me and dragged me off to a small park down by the creek near my home. They tied me up like the girls in those videos and made me suck them all off and beat me. The others stopped but my cousin … He … He raped me while they stood there and watched!” His last cry ripped through my soul as he let the floodgates open. He shook and choked for air.

  I reached out and dragged him back against my chest. His body burned through my clothes as I tucked my chin into the crook of his neck and held him tight. “Shh, shh, you’re not there now!” I assured as calmly as possible as he gasped for air.

  His nails were cutting into his temples and his face was screwed up with such raw, festering anger that it made me feel physically sick. I gently rocked him against my body, his sobbing echoing in my ears as I adjusted my hold. “You’re not there anymore,” I repeated, “You’re here with me. You’re with Avery now, Casper, and I’m not letting you get hurt anymore! I will do whatever I can to protect you I promise!”

  “You can’t HELP ME!” he cried out, my eardrums ringing with the volume. His hands beat at my arms but I didn’t let go. Every blow heart, but I needed to keep myself together as well as him. “He’s in here!” he wept tearing at his hair, “HE HAUNTS EVERYTHING I DO!”

  “CALM DOWN!” I shouted.

  I hadn’t meant to raise my voice but how else would he hear me? Massaging the back of his neck with my free hand, I tried to ease the tension in his muscles. He gulped for some air, shuddered and slowly forced himself to relax a little. “That’s better,” I rested my face against his own. It was like putting a snowball next to a radiator. Adjusting myself slightly to better cradle him, I got comfortable and slowly caressed his stomach. It had worked with Katie when she’d scraped her knee at school or gotten into a horrible fight with our parents about sleepovers. Casper soon relaxed enough for him to sniff loudly and scrub his face roughly with the cuffs of his shirt.

  “You must think I’m a mess!” his muffled voice croaked out.

  “No I don’t,” I murmured calmly. “I think you’re brave.”

  He scoffed and shook his head. “Please!” he snorted, “You’re my boyfriend; you’re supposed to say that.”

  “So we are boyfriends now?” I teased softly trying to lighten the mood and distract him a little. His huff of annoyance meant he clearly wasn’t in the mood to even pretend to get offended. Sighing, I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to take advantage of you earlier. I didn’t know how deep this all went.”

  “How could you?” he frowned. “I never told you, did I?”

  “Yes but I still shouldn’t have pushed; I should have respected your boundaries and stopped trying to break down your walls.”

  Through the darkness his hand found mine. He gingerly laced our fingers together and I gave a tentative squeeze. His shaking breath eased up a little as he turned slightly to peer up at me, “Thank you for wrecking-balling my stupid boundaries.”

  I couldn’t contain my laughter. Despite how emotional we were feeling, his way of dealing with pain and awkwardness made me love him that much more. I cradled him a little tighter and he let me, turning on his side so he could better tangle our legs together and curl against my chest. I pressed a kiss to his forehead. Eventually he became too exhausted to even keep his eyes open and so at last he fell asleep just as the last sliver of sunlight was swallowed up by the night.

  As soon as I was sure he was asleep, I slipped out of the bed. He curled around the spare pillow, hooking his arm over the middle as I tucked the sheets around his chin and pressed a lingering kiss to his clammy forehead. As soon as I closed the bedroom door I felt exhaustion wash over me. We hadn’t eaten since lunch and even though I wasn’t hungry, I could feel my lack of energy tacking its toll. Feeling drained, I let gravity guide me down the stairs to the living room where Katie was curled up on the sofa under a throw blanket in the dark. The eerie white glow from the TV screen illuminated her. As I walked in, her head turned to me and she frowned.

  “Where’s Casper?” she asked as she raised a spoon of ice cream to her mouth from the large tub in her lap.

  “He’s asleep,” I shook my head, “He had a bit of a nightmare so he’s sleeping it off now. I think he’s exhausted the nightmarish parts of his imagination for tonight.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but there were some things that even I deemed too heavy for Katie to deal with. “Scootch!” I poked her leg.

  She huffed with a roll of her eyes as she scooted over, making room under the blanket for me. The sofa was warm where she’d been sitting for however long waiting for Casper and I to come down. Guilt prodded at my brain but I brushed it aside. “What’re you watching?”

  “Pirates of the Caribbean Four.”

  “Good choice.”

  “Thanks I figured you might be up there for a little while longer so I opted to pick something we both liked,” she leaned forward and snatched another spoon from the coffee table. “For you,” she grinned.

  “Thanks,” I returned her smile before taking a scoop of the raspberry ice cream. It melted as soon as it hit my tongue and I moaned, “I haven’t had this in forever!”

  “I bought it especially the other day,” Katie said as she leaned back against my shoulder. She sighed as she reached for my hand under the blanket. “I really missed you Avery.”

  The guilt stabbed through my skull and I winced. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders I pressed a brotherly kiss to her forehead, “I really missed you too, kid.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The following morning I woke up to an empty room. The other side of my mattress was rumpled and cold, and so was Casper’s made-up bed on the floor. I didn’t know if he’d slept behind me all night or moved in the early hours of the morning. I wouldn’t have blamed him for needing space after the episode last night. Not that I wanted him to feel vulnerable. Scrubbing my hand down my face I rolled out of bed and went about my morning routine.

  Katie was sitting at the breakfast island in the kitchen, dressed in a pair of frilly shorts and a loose t-shirt that hung a little off her shoulder. Her hair was still a little messy and she was munching her way through a bowl of Cheerio
’s. I tugged a lock of her hair as I walked around the island. She moaned through her mouthful of mulch and glared at me as I got myself a bowl and filled it up. Sitting across from her on the island she watched me for a few moments before pointing her spoon at the door, “Where’s Casper?”

  Glancing at the door as though just saying his name would name him appear, I shrugged, “Maybe he went out for a run or something.”

  Katie hummed and then drained her orange juice in three swift gulps. “Ah!” she sighed happily, “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  I grabbed the juice, “I didn’t hear him leave. It was a long night and as soon as I got back upstairs I was out like a light.”

  Rolling her eyes she grinned at me, “So how are you and Casper going to survive church on Sunday?”

  Blanching, I looked up at her. “You really think mum is going to make us go?”

  She gave me a ‘don’t-be-dumb’ look, “Of COURSE she’ll make you go. Both of you,” she added, stressing each word so that they landed like rocks in my stomach.

  Groaning, I dropped my head over my bowl and prodded at the mushy Cheerio’s. “Fuck this’ll be a nightmare.”

  “Oh I don’t know.” I looked up at her with a frown. She grinned coyly at me. “I’ll bet Casper looks pretty sexy all dressed up like a good Christian boy.” She winked and my jaw dropped.

  “God you’re making me sound like a pervy old priest!”

  She snickered, “Oh come on! Are you telling me that Casper scrubbing up just for you, maybe even wearing a cross, wouldn’t be hot to you?”

  Rolling my eyes, I ducked my head to hide my grin and pulled the newspaper over to read. I could practically feel Katie’s smugness purring at me across the table. The sound of the front door opening and closing made my ears perk up. Casper’s familiar tread carried down the hallway made my heart skip as I forced my head down to read the newspaper.

  “Morning Katie,” Casper greeted from behind me.