Bones

by Eli Easton

  Shit.

  They broke the clinch and stood awkwardly, blinking into the flashlight. The policeman was standing on the other side of the wall. If they’d really wanted, they probably could have made a break for it into the cemetery. It would have taken him a few seconds to get over the wall and come after them. They’d probably have been able to outrun him.

  But when he said, “Come out here onto the sidewalk,” they obeyed. The wall was only waist high, so it wasn’t hard to just climb over it. The policeman turned the flashlight off once they were on the sidewalk in front of him, and Matthew could see that he was young—probably in his twenties. He didn’t look threatening. More amused.

  “Okay, I know doing it in a cemetery is a turn-on for some people, but it’s public property. It’s also locked up after dark, so you shouldn’t be in there anyway.”

  “We weren’t ‘doing it,’” Alejandro said sullenly.

  He had a tendency to mouth off to cops, teachers, anyone in authority—except for Abuela—and Matthew was afraid he’d get them into even more trouble than they were already in. But the policeman just nodded, as if conceding the point.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “If you promise to find someplace where you’re not trespassing before you get back to whatever you were doing… we’ll just call it good.”

  Alejandro looked like he was about to say something unpleasant, so Matthew jumped in. “Sure. Okay.”

  “All right,” the policeman said, smiling and turning away. He didn’t even bother asking their names. “You two have a nice night.”

  ALEJANDRO FUMED the entire walk home. The best moment of his entire life! Ruined by a cop! Figures. Gradually, though, it dawned on him that Matthew was still there, walking beside him. Maybe the best moment of his life wasn’t entirely ruined.

  “So…,” he said, not sure if talking about it was a good idea. But he kind of had to. “Do you want to be my boyfriend now?”

  “I guess so.”

  Alejandro stopped walking, unsure whether to feel elated or crushed. “You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

  Matthew turned back to him. They were in the shadows between streetlights, so it was hard to see his face. “We’ve been best friends for so long, it feels like my entire life. And I’ve been in love with you for just as long. You have no idea how desperate I’ve been to tell you I love you—”

  “I think I know.”

  Matthew stopped for a second, as if he had to absorb that. Then he continued. “What if it all falls apart now? What if we break up and can’t stand the sight of each other? I don’t know if I could deal with not having you around anymore.”

  Alejandro stepped forward and put his hands on Matthew’s waist, feeling the heat of his skin through the thin T-shirt he was wearing. “I’m scared of that too. But I know I love you—”

  “I love you!”

  “—and right now it’s feeling like a good thing.”

  Matthew leaned closer until their foreheads bumped together and Alejandro could feel his soft breath on his face. “Yeah.”

  MATTHEW’S MOTHER had come back to the apartment earlier in the evening, after she’d gotten off work. She’d immediately insisted upon opening all the windows, saying, “What on earth happened while I was gone? It smells like a whorehouse in here! And were you smoking?”

  Matthew had told her Abuela had come over and smoked a cigar, which killed any further discussion about it. Nobody told Abuela she couldn’t smoke a cigar, if she wanted to.

  Now, as the boys let themselves into the apartment, everything was quiet. Mrs. Shaw had long ago gone to bed. Of course, the moment he noticed the door opening, Spartacus launched himself at Matthew.

  Spartacus was still a bit worn out from his ordeal, so rather than a full-on assault, Matthew merely had to deal with being circled and licked to death. Alejandro received the same treatment, and both boys ended up on the floor for a few minutes, nuzzling the beast. Matthew had cleaned him up that afternoon, so Spartacus was more or less back to normal now.

  He would have nothing of being locked out of the bedroom, however, so Matthew had no choice but to let him in. Spartacus immediately jumped on the bed and curled up in his usual position at the foot of it.

  “So much for a night of hot sex,” Matthew muttered as he closed the door behind him.

  Alejandro stood by the bed as he slipped out of his shirt, revealing the same lean, muscular chest Matthew had seen a million times before… though somehow it seemed much, much sexier now. “I suppose we can wait on that,” he said, laughing. “As long as I get to hold you tonight.”

  Matthew approached him and ran a hand down his sternum, following the faint trail of dark hair that started there, down over the contours of his taut abdomen to hook his fingers into the waistband of his jeans. “Naked?”

  Alejandro growled quietly, a low, lustful sound that made Matthew’s cock swell. “Naked would be good.”

  JAMIE FESSENDEN set out to be a writer in junior high school. He published a couple short pieces in his high school's literary magazine and had another story place in the top 100 in a national contest, but it wasn't until he met his partner, Erich, almost twenty years later, that he began writing again in earnest. With Erich alternately inspiring and goading him, Jamie wrote several screenplays and directed a few of them as micro-budget independent films. He then began writing novels and published his first novella in 2010.

  After nine years together, Jamie and Erich have married and purchased a house together in the wilds of Raymond, New Hampshire, where there are no street lights, turkeys and deer wander through their yard, and coyotes serenade them on a nightly basis. Jamie recently left his “day job” as a tech support analyst to be a full-time writer.

  Visit Jamie: http://jamiefessenden.wordpress.com/

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jamie-Fessenden-Author/

  102004836534286

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamieFessenden1

  By JAMIE FESSENDEN

  Billy’s Bones

  Bones (with B.G. Thomas, Kim Fielding, and Eli Easton)

  By That Sin Fell the Angels

  The Christmas Wager

  Dogs of Cyberwar

  The Healing Power of Eggnog

  The Meaning of Vengeance

  Murder on the Mountain

  Murderous Requiem

  Saturn in Retrograde

  Screwups

  Stitch (with Sue Brown, Kim Fielding, and Eli Easton)

  We’re Both Straight, Right?

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  UNINVITED

  B.G. THOMAS

  IT WAS bad. It was really bad. It made me wish the cop had ignored my press badge (like they often did) and refused to let me go in.

  He’d grinned at me—“Ah, what the hell. Go on.”—and motioned me past.

  That’s weird, I thought.

  That’s when I saw why.

  Fuck! I looked away, felt my Egg McMuffin try to return to the open air, and forced it to stay down. I would have been a laughing stock—the cops would never forget it.

  Remember the Hindenburg, I said to myself. Remember the Hindenburg. My mantra.

  I took a deep breath, stepped closer to the nightmare. An officer moved to block my way—

  “It’s okay,” said the first cop to his buddies.

  —and I raised my cell phone and took a picture. Took several. I wasn’t much of a photographer and had to make sure I had some good ones.

  Good ones! Ha!

  I shuddered and turned away. That was when I saw the words, written in blood, on one white wall. “TO SERVE BARON MANGE KEY,” it said in big, bold capital letters. Fuck!

  The victim had been laid out over some kind of large, low table, his limbs tied to the legs. His face had been painted with a skull and his chest cut open from throat to navel. I knew because the dude was naked. There was… something on the man’s penis. I hadn’t wanted to look to
o close. The blood had been enough. There was a lot of it. Everywhere.

  “Jesus,” I muttered and once more ordered my breakfast sandwich to stay put. Remember the Hindenburg, followed immediately by the thought, Thanks loads for the tip, Brookhart. Brookhart being the cop who had called me and told me to get my “cute butt down to the Heritage Hotel right now!” It was okay for her to say that because she’s a lesbian and I’m gay—part of the reason we’d connected about a year before. I’d been bashed, and she and her partner had shown up, and I’d gotten far more sympathy than a friend of mine who had once had the same thing happen. Luckily I hadn’t had to go to the hospital.

  “Taylor! There you are.”

  I jumped as if I’d been goosed, spun around, and looked up, and up, to see Dt. Brookhart looking down at me with those big dark eyes of hers. She was tall at, well, any height compared to my five five. “You’re letting your hair grow, Daphne.”

  She reached up and touched her short, natural waves as if surprised they were there. “Not really.” They weren’t much longer than a few inches.

  “Where’s Detective Asshole?”

  She gave me an amused smile and an arch of one of her wondrous brows. She swore she didn’t pluck them. I didn’t believe it. “He’s looking for something.” She pointed at the body. “Nice, huh?”

  I shook my head and saw the open chest in my mind’s eye. The McMuffin gave me a cheery wave and let me know it would still be glad to let me taste it a second time. Just as good the second time, it told me.

  Stay! I ordered. “No,” I told her. “Not nice at all.”

  She smirked.

  “What’s it about?”

  Brookhart shrugged, always sure not to commit. I was a reporter, after all. Sort of.

  “Not for me to say. But if I were asked off record….”

  I rolled my eyes. “Off record.”

  “Then I would say it looks like a ritual killing of some kind. Witches, Satanists, I don’t fucking know. Did you see the chicken head?”

  “Chicken head?” Chicken head?

  “Tied to his willy.”

  Willy. Oh my God. The something on the man’s penis.

  “Rooster head, actually,” she replied matter-of-factly, like it was an everyday occurrence. “Cock on a cock.”

  “Cute,” I said.

  “I don’t ever think they’re cute. But hey, what do I know?”

  “What can you tell me about the vic?” I asked, trying to sound cool and televisiony.

  Brookhart turned and looked back at the bloody disaster. “His ID says he’s Douglas Brightwell—don’t use his name.”

  “Daph!”

  Those lovely brows of hers came together in a dark slash. She hated it when I called her “Daph.”

  “Daph is too cute,” she had told me more than once. She wasn’t “cute.”

  I thought she was okay, but hey, what did I know?

  “No name!”

  I sighed. “Fine.”

  She nodded. “Married, father of three. He’s in town for a business convention. Or he was. Six two, two hundred fifty pounds, more or less, most of that muscle. Whoever cut him open was determined.”

  God, I thought, looking away. That was an image.

  “And they cut out his heart.”

  “Heart?” I snapped my eyes back in her direction.

  She nodded, expression totally neutral. “Yup. We haven’t found it yet either. But there’s a lot of other shit. Feathers everywhere. Chicken bones. Bottle of rum, most of it gone.”

  “Drunk killer?”

  She shrugged again. “Oh. And there’s a bucket. Full. Of blood.”

  “With blood?” I actually felt my own draining from my face.

  “Like in Carrie, but they left it behind. No prom queens need worry.”

  “Funny,” I said. God. Chicken bones. Bucket of blood. Missing heart. “Why did you call me?”

  “Are you tired of covering pet parades and gay pride, or not?”

  “Yeah.” I sighed, then nodded. “Tired.”

  “Then I suggest you get another couple of pictures before the chief gets here—which should be in about thirty seconds—and get the story to your boss before Chadrick or Rockower get a whiff of this.” She cocked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the corpse.

  Chadrick and Rockower were two of the Chronicle’s “star reporters.” And they would get a “whiff” of this soon—and try to steal the story. My story, if I had any say. I nodded, swallowed hard, and darted back to the body to take more pictures. There was a coroner there now, peering down at the man’s face. And Brookhart’s partner, Dt. Asshole, was there as well, arms crossed over his chest, the scowl on his ugly face making him even less attractive than usual.

  “Well fuck me,” the coroner said suddenly.

  “What?” said Dt. Asshole (aka Townsend).

  “There’s a statue in this guy’s mouth.”

  “A statue?”

  “It’s a goddamned Virgin Mary,” the man said, apparently totally unaware of the blasphemy in his choice of words.

  I gulped and keyed that info and a few more sentences into my phone, attached the pictures, and hit the send button.

  Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in my boss’s office.

  LOOKING AT my pictures on Mencken’s computer wasn’t quite as bad as seeing the real thing. That’s when me and the boss saw that, yes indeed, there was a rooster’s head tied to the man’s impressive genitalia—

  “Not that that’s going to do him any good any longer,” Mencken said and took a gulp from his mug of coffee.

  —and that yes, there was a bucket filled to overflowing with what appeared to be blood.

  “Never assume anything,” the boss liked to say, and then he’d finish the cliché with, “It makes an ass out of you and me.”

  “You” in this case meaning the reporter, and “Me” meaning the Chronicle. Making the Kansas City Chronicle look asinine was verboten.

  Besides the chicken head and the blood, there were feathers—lots of them—more blood—even more of that—and more Catholic statues—a Saint Francis and a couple I didn’t recognize, having grown up in a household where my mother told me that all Catholics were going to hell for “worshipping idols.” I knew that wasn’t true because I dated a guy briefly who liked to describe himself as a “recovering Catholic.” He was a sexy Irish guy who assured me that “Nah. We don’t worship Mary. Really.”

  Speaking of the Virgin Mother: “And you say there was a Mary statue in his mouth? I’m just trying to picture that. Since there is no effing picture.” The word “effing” was Mencken’s way of not swearing. He was a big man who looked a lot like Lou Grant, but not quite as heavy, and he had a full head of dark, badly styled hair. His tie had been pulled loose, and one of the duties of his secretary was to remind him to tighten it whenever he had to meet with someone important. Apparently I wasn’t important.

  “Look, I was lucky to get the pictures I did,” I told him. “The Chief came in just as I was leaving, and the coroner wasn’t letting me any closer than I already was.”

  Mencken made a raspberry. “It couldn’t have been very goddamned big, then. I mean. In his mouth?” He was toggling back and forth between two of the better—read: focused and bloody—pictures.

  “Well… it was….” The image came to mind again, and I was thinking that, if I was lucky, my breakfast was well past being able to make a personal appearance. “It was lodged down his throat.” And when the guy pulled it out, it made the most horrible squelching noise. “It was about six inches long.”

  “They measured it or something?” Mencken asked, giving me “the eye.”

  “I know six inches,” I said before I could stop myself.

  Mencken’s brows shot up, and then he shook his head and let out a half laugh. “I suppose you might.” He looked at the pictures once more. Shook his head again. “I guess you think I should give you the story.”

  “I think you should,
” I said. “It was my contact that got me those pictures. Does anyone else have them?”

  “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to effing use them! I mean, can you see this on the front page?” he asked, pointing to the rooster and dick photograph.

  I shrugged. That was his decision to make.

  “I’ll give you till tomorrow morning to come up with something good. Otherwise, you turn over all you got to Chadrick.”

  No. He was not giving my story—my first real story ever—to fucking Chadrick! “You’ll have something.”

  “Something good.” Mencken slapped his coffee mug down on his desk, and coffee swilled out. He didn’t seem to notice.

  I jumped up and headed for the door.

  “Dunton!”

  I spun around.

  Mencken was leaning forward onto his desk with an intent look on his face.

  “Yeah?” I managed.

  “I know you can do this. You can write. You’ve wanted your chance. This is it. Let’s see if you can write murder instead of bake sales.”

  I nodded and ran out the door.

  WHICH IS why it made no sense that I met Gay for cocktails later that afternoon. Hey, I could stay up all night if I needed to, I reasoned. And martinis helped me write. As long as I stopped at two, three at the most, that is. Four is where I always forgot the end of the evening.

  And yes, “Gay” is her real name. We laugh about that sometimes.

  We met at The Corner Bistro, which was about ten blocks east of The Male Box, my usual hangout. It’s not that Gay didn’t like The Male Box—au contraire, she liked it a lot, and if it was karaoke night, her competition fled the bar. Or at least the stage. She was that good. But The Male Box was always one of two ways: dead and boring or loud and packed. There seemed to be no in-between. The Corner Bistro, on the other hand, was Kansas City’s answer to a classy gay bar. And it was. Classy. Quieter. The waiters even had matching shirts, and ain’t that special? The drinks were good too. They even had food—chichi stuff like calamari and crab cakes and stuffed artichokes. A little pricey, but always good. Gay was in the mood for chichi.