by Gareth Wiles
* * *
‘An aberration,’ Inspector Hastings announced – both vaguely and stoically – as he strode through the grey corridor leading to his office in Myrtleville police station. He opened the office door and briefly paused to look back at Sergeant Noose.
‘Horrific – keeping a child prisoner since birth. One of the worst cases I’ve worked on,’ Noose replied.
‘Not that, my medical,’ Hastings snapped back. The younger man studied his superior’s prematurely white hair and reddened complexion. ‘I investigate crimes, not chase after drugged-up youths. I shouldn’t need to be as fit as a butcher’s dog!’
‘It does help if you’re healthy though, Sir,’ Noose cautiously uttered. With a big sigh, Hastings vanished and slammed the door behind him. Noose turned and bumped into Peter Smith. The young teen dropped the papers he was carrying and promptly fumbled to pick them all up again. ‘Who are you, what are you doing in the station?’
‘Sorry, I’m after Inspector Hastings,’ the boy coyly replied, gathering his papers and trying to move on. Noose stepped in his way.
‘I’m Sergeant Henry Noose, I can deal with whatever you want.’
‘No,’ Peter chuckled, ‘I need to speak to an inspector – not his tea boy.’ Suddenly Peter realised he’d overstepped the mark, and he hadn’t been able to help himself. Noose’s face was ashen with rage. ‘I’m in my last year at school and want to do my work experience here,’ he blurted out, smiling.
Noose raised an eyebrow. ‘I see.’
‘I have an urge to solve mysteries – like I can sense there’s unknowns to be uncovered,’ the boy went on, again dropping his papers. This time, he did not bend to pick them up. He became transfixed on Noose’s face – a very ordinary, longish face. Thin brownish hair lay atop the head, already beginning to vacate it slowly as a small bald patch fought for living space. He was tall, but round-shouldered, and hadn’t shaved this morning. He was not unlike Peter Smith in looks, although Peter had yet to begin shaving.
‘What are you looking at?’ Noose demanded of this weird lad.
‘You.’
‘Why, is there something on my face?’
Peter thought about Noose’s face and decided it wasn’t the face he was looking at at all; it was the man himself. The essence, the being. Startled, he turned and dashed away. The sergeant picked up the boy’s papers and briefly flicked through them. They were just stories – crime stories – scrawled in pencil on the crumpled paper.
* * *
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ Noose called out as he came to stand next to Peter.
‘What is?’ the teenager asked the slightly older man, keeping his gaze fixed ahead at Myrtle Forest in the valley below and the Welsh mountains behind it.
‘The world – all this,’ Noose went on, waving his hand around at the view. The late afternoon sun was just disappearing behind the mountains and the greeny golden trees were in shadow.
‘I guess.’ He had sprinted from the police station at first, but soon found himself arrested by the view in the distance. The trees were beautiful, yes – what was left of them. Many had been felled for housing developments. Lots and lots of people. Buzz buzz buzzing.
‘The world is a wondrous place, lad,’ Noose went on, ‘full of simple joyousness – if you look at things in the right way.’ He held up Peter’s papers. ‘There are some bad people, who do bad things. The good people have a framework set in place to try and stop them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t – but there are good people. Maybe your stories would benefit from following a similar moral model.’ He handed them back. Peter folded them up and stuffed them in his back trouser pocket.
‘You read some of my stuff?’
‘I saw some line about humanity being sick and evil.’
‘You say there are some good people,’ Peter pondered, ‘but what is good?’
‘You’re so young to be so cynical,’ Noose sighed. ‘I bet you’ve done nothing in your life yet. You haven’t lived.’ The sergeant turned to leave, pausing and putting a hand on Peter’s shoulder. ‘And please, stay away from the station. Go and find work experience somewhere else.’ With this, he walked off.
* * *
‘Their daughter Kelly is already in care,’ Hastings yelled down the phone, ‘how the hell did this brother Tony of hers slip through the net? They kept him locked up like a bloody dog!’
Noose was standing the other side of his superior’s desk. He briefly eyed up the fish tank dumped on top of several filing cabinets. There was water in it, and bubbles pumping around, but no fish. Hastings slammed the phone down and leapt up, storming over to the cabinets. He yanked one of the drawers open and grabbed hold of some fish food.
‘It’s a horrible case of child abuse,’ Noose said almost nonchalantly.
‘You will see good in people, won’t you boy?’ Hastings grunted back, lifting the lid on the fish tank and sprinkling some food on top of the water. Noose stared blankly back, having witnessed this ritual for months now. There were no fish to miraculously appear and consume the food. ‘You’ll come a cropper one day.’
‘What do you mean by that, Sir?’ Noose gingerly questioned.
‘Horrible case? I can tell by the way you say things – horrible fucking case? It’s downright depraved. The human race is a vile speck of shit under the sole of the universe’s shoe.’ Tears almost welled in his eyes, but not quite. ‘The things I’ve seen.’
‘I’ve seen some pretty awful things too, but I still try to stay positive. There’s a lot of good out there,’ was Noose’s response. A sceptical Hastings turned to face his sergeant – more to ensure his raised eyebrow had been witnessed than anything else.
‘How’s the family – your little boy?’ Hastings suddenly asked, changing the subject.
‘Super, thanks.’ Noose smiled as widely as he could. ‘Growing up fast.’
‘Yes,’ Hastings replied vaguely, tapping his chin as he went about adding more food to the fish tank.
Noose’s thoughts were filled with Tony and Peter. He somehow imagined them as the same person, or at the very least composites of some whole. The sergeant had shown a remarkable ability to pigeon-hole these things – these crimes he investigated. Peter wasn’t a part of any crime he was involved with, but he was a part of the overall spectrum of goings-on at the station. He and Tony had come to his attention on the same day, thus they were in the same section in Noose’s mind. They were one and the same – neither had seen or done anything yet in their short lives. Noose was certain of that. They’d been held back for different reasons, but held back nonetheless. Tony’s bind was physical – an actual locked door. Peter’s, Noose reasoned, was partly physical owing to his youth but largely mental – his outlook was tainting and halting potential experiences.
* * *
‘Hello Peter,’ said his best friend David. Peter just smiled back, briefly, as David kept looking at his eyes and lips.
Suddenly Peter’s younger brother Stuart – all a bright flop of blonde hair and deep cobalt eyes – dashed past in the school yard with a gang of other boys. ‘Get a room, bum boys,’ he yelled at his brother and his friend as half the children on the yard burst into fits of laughter. Peter’s face reddened as he gritted his teeth, but David hadn’t appeared to have heard the comment. His features, positioned in the centre of a chubby round face, remained fixed and almost trancelike.
‘Don’t listen to them,’ he suddenly said, Stuart’s words obviously having registered with him. ‘We can be who we want to be.’
‘What do you mean?’ Peter interrogated.
David broke eye contact, wandering off. ‘Oh, never mind,’ he mumbled as he went.
Just now the snootiest girl in school strutted past – Lucy Davies. Short, with an hourglass figure and sporting a face full of makeup, she swished her long dark hair away from her face and gossiped with her friends. Peter just stood and watched, transfixed on her as David had been on him. She didn’t acknowledge his exist
ence. He hadn’t even registered in her peripheral vision. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d do with her, but he knew it happened in the bedroom and that she’d have to enjoy it. Now his mind was filled with David, who had stopped in the distance and was looking back at Peter.
* * *
That evening the two lads went walking in Myrtle Forest. David wished to keep on going deeper and deeper in, moving further and further away from the main path. Peter went to turn back, a bizarre dizziness and visions of a water well overwhelming him. David grabbed his hand and pulled him – the pair fell over, David ending up on top. He gazed intently into Peter’s eyes, suddenly kissing him on the lips. In an instant Reaping Icon appeared above the pair.
‘Peter Smith – so many pasts and so many futures,’ said the one who looked like a man, but could not be seen. ‘You are trapped, I have halted you. You are mine to meddle with.’
Against the backdrop of empty existence dangled Darren, Stuart, Jim and Anthony too, like wet knickers on a whirligig – fit only for Reaping Icon’s games. He had come from them, and now controlled them. He grabbed Peter now and tossed him along his timeline, fiddling and toying wherever he so wished.
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SEX
All women were extinct. Even so, David seemed overly eager to enter into a homosexual relationship with me.
‘Needs must,’ he quipped, casually unbuttoning his shirt. I was not ready. Still in my mind were the women, mostly agreeable, who had since perished. I surveyed the listless grey sea ahead of us. Mankind was now arid, though Nature had neglected to notice. It went on regardless of humanity’s latest problem, all other female species surviving intact. I had a girlfriend in the old world, before all the women went. We’d never had sex, but I knew I wasn’t gay – I just knew.
I looked over at David’s exposed, hairless chest as he sat himself down on the rock. It was not unpleasant and I’d seen it before – he’d always been my best mate. Even after I found out he was gay in sixth form, we remained close friends. His sexuality had never troubled me because I felt so secure in my own. I fancied women, and I’d always wanted to have sex with women. This, of course, had never happened for me because my girlfriend Lucy had been quite shy. I was shy too, in a way, and just hadn’t seized the opportunity. Now that the virus had wiped her and her fellow females out, I would never get the opportunity to have heterosexual intercourse.
‘I can’t do it,’ I told David, turning and walking away. He got up and rushed to me, taking my hand and yanking it to stop me in my tracks.
‘If you want to lose your virginity, then why not lose it with me?’ he said quite sensibly. He had a point. ‘Your only other option is a bloody animal or something.’
I didn’t want to have to do that. I looked again at his chest, keeping away from his eyes. They had always been my friend’s eyes, not my lover’s. Would one session of sex, just to get it out of the way, really make him my lover? Would it even be proper sex? I didn’t know anything about gay sex – I hadn’t a clue. To be honest, I hadn’t a clue about straight sex either. The whole spectrum of sex had eluded me. I knew David had done it before, because he always told me about his conquests. He oozed confidence and experience. It didn’t trouble me to hear the details of his exploits, and I wasn’t sickened by the two men thing. My mother didn’t like it, though, and she’d always encouraged me to stay away from David and “his ilk”, as she put it. Well, she was gone with the rest of them now. Really, it seemed as though only David and I remained in the whole of the world. It could have been the case this warm summer evening as we stood alone together on the beach.
‘I’m not sure I can have gay sex, let alone with you,’ I uttered.
‘Why not?’ he asked me straight out.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well I’m not going to force you, but the offer is there.’ I looked back at his face and he was smiling warmly. He wasn’t an unattractive man by any means – not that I could really tell if a man was attractive or not. I found women attractive. David’s smooth chest – at least, it looked smooth – was just like a woman’s, except he had no breasts. He did have nipples though, and these were probably the next best thing. I was never a breast man anyway. I felt myself compelled to feel his chest to see if it really was as smooth as it looked. Instinctively, though awkwardly, I moved the hand David was holding towards his chest. He brought it the final few inches, pressing it against his heartbeat. I felt a rush of pain down my spine, my mind filled with Lucy and her beautiful jet-black hair. But, she was gone now and David was right here in front of me.
I pulled my hand off his chest and stayed still, several thoughts now dashing through my mind. Was I averse to what could happen between the two of us because it was with another man, or because he was doing the chasing? With Lucy, the thrill had been in her seeming reluctance and my pursuing of her. It had spurred me on, made me desperate to be with her. Now, here with David, it was a completely different circumstance. He stepped closer to me and, as though he was leaning in for a kiss, just gave me a friendly hug. I was strangely disappointed for a flash, wishing he had kissed me. Why hadn’t he kissed me? As he pulled away, his arms still around me, I lost all control of myself and kissed him on the lips. Now it was his turn to step back from me.
‘Do you want this or not?’ he asked.
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘There is always a choice with intimacy, nobody can force you into anything.’
I wasn’t sure what other choice there was left to me, but my body seemed to be making the decision as I got that shortness of breath before an erection. I tried to conceal it, turning away from him as my penis hardened in my trousers. It was very difficult to hide, and David stepped up close to put his hand down there. I jolted him, which he didn’t find surprising.
‘I’m uneasy,’ I told him. ‘I’ve never been inclined towards this sort of thing.’
‘I will always be here for you, you are my best friend and always will be,’ he replied. Maybe that was the problem? That this offer would always be there made me less inclined to seize the opportunity now. I’d always thought Lucy would be there, and hadn’t rushed with her. Perhaps David would not always be here after all? To seize the day, to do this with him today whilst my emotions were so high and so penetrating, would be to make that crucial step I had not yet taken in life. Why put it off any longer? There was nothing stopping me now.
I had never felt these urges before, and yet I had never felt repulsion from the idea. Of course I had given it thought, I must have with David speaking about his experiences, but I hadn’t desired to partake. Then again, why were there these barriers – these separations and labels – making what I wanted from life different from what David wanted? We were just the same, just human beings here on Earth together right now at this very moment in time. I thought again of all the women who’d been wiped out, and wondered if I should even allow myself to seek happiness. Suicide had become very common since the extinction; some men just couldn’t cope. I didn’t want to die, especially by my own hand. It seemed monstrous for that to be my legacy in the face of this challenge now facing us as a species. I not only wanted to live, but needed to live for all those who had been wiped out. Could I come to represent all the women who had perished by the cruel hand of a freak virus? Would becoming gay bring me closer to this aim? Such a thought in itself disturbed me. People couldn’t just become gay, David was proof of that. I’d witnessed his entire life side by side with my own as he struggled to be accepted because of his born sexuality. I quite clearly realised he would never have chosen that. Now, here he was in a world without women, and he didn’t seem to mind. Well, he was always good at hiding things so maybe he was concealing his true feelings on the matter. He certainly seemed to have been hiding his true feelings for me all these years.
‘You would not choose to be gay,’ I told him.
‘Nor would you,’ he replied.
‘Under normal circumstances,’ I mumbled to myself. He had
heard me, but did not reply. I was confused why he had even suggested we get together, unless he had seen in me some hint of homosexuality throughout our long friendship. And this was the most confusing angle of all, the fact that we had been such close friends all this time. Was my love as a friend for him muddying the situation? Perhaps my erection just now was a hazy overspill of our deep companionship, and not sexual lust. We had certainly been close all our lives and were both letting ourselves get carried away as emotions ran high. The sheer devastation of what had befallen humankind was difficult to fully absorb. It seemed like a sick practical joke from a higher being, or punishment for unknown crimes. I certainly felt responsible somehow, like I had personally killed every single one of the billions of women who had suffered and died as the virus had spread across the globe. If I was personally to blame, was it then a test to see how I would cope? Was David, in front of me now with his offer of sexual fulfilment, some kind of snake tempting me to take the apple? It did feel like I would experience sexual fulfilment, and this was the worrying point. No matter which way I looked at and analysed it in my mind, intimacy on any level with David did not seem wrong – it was the logical step, the absolute right thing to do. But, there was that niggle at the back of my mind that kept whispering “No”. The whisper – that faintest of voices struggling to be heard in the incessant cacophony of screeching that was my mind – could easily have been the last residual sound of Lucy as she faded ever more from this sorry excuse for a world. No, Nature was still glorious and rich in all its diversity; it was humanity that was the sorrow here.
* * *
‘It’s a shame it took the death of every woman on Earth to bring us together, but I’m glad it did,’ David whispered to me as we lay there naked. His hand rested on my chest and his leg was wrapped around mine. ‘I always loved you as more than a friend,’ he said, his entire being melting on me in such bliss. To this, I could not reply. I didn’t know how to. The sex itself had been passionate and not altogether unenjoyable, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy and women in general. I felt I had somehow wronged both them and David, and moved away from him to sit up on the side of the bed. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked comfortingly, placing his hand on my shoulder. I wanted to shrug it off, but didn’t want to upset him. Somehow I owed him; I’d toyed with his emotions, fulfilled his desire and played him like I cared. I did and I didn’t care. In the midst of the passion, as he let me bury myself deep into his moist body, I loved him and cared so much. I could still smell that wet odour. Now, I just didn’t know.