_Anthology - Monsters

by _Anthology

  Oh, fuck. He trembled, waiting, helpless, for what came next.

  "Feel free to call upon me anytime..." Oh.

  "That's it?" Fuck, what was wrong with him? Did he want to be torn to shreds by this spawn of hell?

  "Oh, you must want a token, a remembrance of our time together..." The long fingers twisted, snapped, the smoke curling from them. As he watched, the smoke circled his nipple, seemed to slide through. As it became a hard metal ring, embedded in his flesh, he jerked, the sharp bite flooding him. He whimpered, nipple going hard around the ring. It felt real enough. This couldn't be a dream if there was really a ring in his nipple.

  "If you open the circle, you can go..."

  "You're letting me go?" He hated the plaintive note in his voice -- this was a demon, he was scared and terrified that at any moment he would be torn limb from limb... and he'd never felt so alive.

  Tears pricked his eyes as he stumbled to the edge of the circle, smudging the line in the dirt with his foot. There was a snap, a roar, a victorious chuckle, then the darkness eased, the mist dissipating. He collapsed to his knees, shocked to find himself still dressed, his friends still around the now-broken circle.

  Mark stood, hands helping him up. "Man! You okay? What was that?"

  Heat flooded his face. Oh, shit -- what had they seen?

  He shook his head, trying to clear it, the only thing that felt real was the throbbing in his nipple.

  "Yeah," Bren's voice sounded. "It got all windy and smoky for a minute or two. Did something catch on fire?"

  "A minute or two? No, it was longer than that!" Much longer. Surely. "No. Just a minute. Long enough to get worried. Man, next time? Tell us if you're going to do fireworks, okay?" Mark nudged his shoulder. "Scared the hell out of the girls, though." "Yeah, sure." He looked back at the broken circle. It was just dirt, the wind kicking up some leaves and the petals they'd thrown into it. The moon shone through the trees, giving enough light to see by, the candles were snuffed out, one still smoking slightly.

  His body throbbed, he could still feel the way the smoke had expanded inside him, had filled him. His hand went to his chest, the ring hard and solid beneath his shirt. His nipple ached, sensation shooting through him. Real. Somehow, it had been real.

  Mark looked at him and frowned. "You coming?" "Yeah. Yeah, I am." He shivered, followed Mark back toward the parking lot, wondering how long he had to wait to try it again.

  For a moment, just a moment before Mark opened the car door, Mark’s dark eyes looked as grey as smoke.

  The Choices We Make

  By AM Riley

  JULY 12, 1982 His mother was going to be out of town for the whole weekend and the old lady never noticed the mileage on her car anyway. Once he had found that, for less than a week's allowance, he could buy himself a nice shiny I.D. that declared him legal age to enter any club in Hollywood, he merely had to wait for his opportunity.

  So the doorman had seemed pretty easy. Casting hot eyes up and down his body. The sensation heavy and tactile and there was a new experience right there. He'd ogled plenty, to be sure. Usually sideways, from beneath his lashes so no one would see. But he'd never been ogled before. Never felt another man run his eyes, like big hot hands, up and down his body.

  He danced through the door, high on the endorphins of it. The first beer was bitter and nasty and he wondered briefly if they watered it down with plain tap water and if the alcohol would kill the germs. Then an anonymous hand cupped his ass and he found he didn't care. He wiggled and felt his whole body warm with embarrassment and a little bit of something else.

  Warm wet air on his ear. A husky, slightly slurred voice, singing along with the music, "... cutest ass I've ever seen."

  "Thanks," he said politely. He turned in time to see blazing blue eyes, then strong fingers looped in his and he was being dragged through the heaving mass of male bodies toward the back of the club.

  *** It was a good thing he'd had that beer, he was thinking. Because this was further than he'd ever gone with anyone, ever. Even with Billy Mills in the basement of the Holiday Inn during the track team's away meet. Pressed against a sticky wall. Cold hard hands molding his body, squeezing it not very gently. One hand insistently working his cock. The mouth biting and sucking his lips, his chin, his throat.

  "God," he whispered. His mind going white with the sensations. He felt his zip jerked down and just like that his cock was in the guy's hand. And, oh, that was good. Needing, and God, he was going to come right now. But the guy grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him around.

  And a thick cold thumb was at his entrance. "Wait," he squeaked, jumping away as best he could. His legs were hobbled by his pants, the guy's arm around his chest like a steel vise. He felt the blunt cold head of something pressing at his virgin entrance and barely had time to struggle, to panic, before one of those thick hands was clamped over his mouth, the guy's teeth back at his neck.

  He was struggling so hard. Anticipating the pain. Bemoaning his stupid luck, sorry for himself that this would be how he lost it the first time. So strung out and upset and fucking scared that he didn't even notice the pain at his throat until the breath caught in his trachea, unable to make it to his lungs.

  White noise and the heave of his heart. The stains on the wall were the last thing he saw.

  JULY 12, 2004 I tell myself I can quit anytime, but the truth is I don't want to. The days seem pale and weightless; a study in grays, while I wait for twilight and the telltale thump and hum as the lights are turned on, the DJ tests the amps. Only a few customers mill in and out in the earlier hours. Scrawny, meatless things, they live as I do, on the sounds, the heat, the life that fills these rooms.

  Club 24 is only the latest in a series of bars I've frequented. It isn't the place that's the habit, of course. It's the atmosphere. Whatever I do during the day, I'm not really alive until I walk inside. The bartender tonight is Jason. Cute little thing, who knows it and shakes that tight round ass with intent. He sets the highball glass down in front of me and gives me a look that is the twenty-first century male equivalent of fluttering eyelashes. "How you doing, Bobby?"

  I grin appreciatively, but shake my head. "Here to meet Joshua," I tell him. Jason rolls his eyes and moves on down the bar.

  "So, you answer to Bobby?"

  The voice is near my left ear. Loud enough to be heard over the music. Intimate enough to make me squirm and move myself infinitesimally away from the source.

  "Nice, Midwestern name, Bobby." I keep gazing straight ahead of me, as if I haven't heard. There are mirrors behind the bar. Bottles line the lower shelves so that my image, and the image belonging to the voice beside me, are obscured by rows of colored liqueurs, but above the glass shelves I can see the reflection of the catwalk. Masses of men in bright shirts merge, congeal, and separate, like a fruity drink in a slow blender. It makes me thirsty. I look down the bar for Jason and indicate with my glass that I'd like a refill.

  "Let me get that," says the voice and a ten-dollar bill is thrown onto the bar. I grudgingly turn my face enough to nod at my benefactor.

  "Thanks."

  "No prob, I owe you. You picked up the tab the last time." No prob? Christ, what decade was this guy from? The last time? I give him a quick once over. The blue eyes are good, but they have that defensive 'Boys in the Band' cynicism that makes me feel tired. His hair is longer than is fashionable, in a fluffy helmet style, that almost looks like a toupee. The sideburns might be stylish if they weren't so thick. Ditto the mustache. And the way he dresses! Wide collared black polyester shirt, unbelievably bad tie. It's like he scoured the racks of one of those seventies retro stores on Melrose. If his face weren't so young, unlined, almost glowing in the blue lights with a kind of fever, I'd think he was some old guy looking to score a couple of young twinks.

  Definitely not my type. Not now. Not ever. "I'm sorry," I say coolly. "I don't remember..."

  "Of course you don't," he says. He holds out his hand, but I don't take
it. And after a tiny second he withdraws it, the smile seeming to turn, in the shifting lights, to a baring of teeth. "My name is Drake." Drake. Dude's got a name like an aging porn star. The music selection changes. The beat familiar, strong. I push myself up. "Excuse me." I have to dance to this. This is my song. They always play it at some point in the evening. It's a Club 24 classic.

  My 'admirer' makes a great show of releasing me, hands up, palms out, big phony grin as he rocks back. Really, the guy hasn't a clue. I step back into the press of bodies on the dance floor.

  *** It must be close to 9pm and the place has really filled up. I enjoy the heat and flow of lights across my face, my eyelids. Strangers' hands brush across me as I pass, anonymous, lewd. Sensation in and out, the bass so loud it's like a heartbeat.

  The heat around me, the sweat, is like a furnace. It saturates my skin, warms me inside like the alcohol can't. There is only one thing that can make me feel warmer, more energized, more alive. And he dances by me, tossing his head. Auburn curls spring down a strong white neck. He hasn't stopped at home to change and still wears the starchy white shirt from the office, his tie folded and stuffed in the pocket. Joshua turns, arms raised, shoulder muscles pumping under the stiff cotton. His eyes are closed, head tilted back to expose the tendons of his throat, the Adam's apple. A splatter of freckles paint his neck. My hands rise as if pulled by puppet strings and plant themselves on his chest.

  Thick black eyelashes lift ever so slightly. Dark blue gazes out at me. He grins, a saucy white smile. Pleased to have captured me so easily. His teeth are perfect. The music continues and the men sing along, arms in the air pump back and forth to the beat. Joshua and I face each other, dancing. His hands have floated down to my hips and I feel the nervy current sliding up my sides, down the v of my pelvis as his thumbs caress the bones there. He mouths the words to the song.

  "I want your body... "

  His hands are hot and damp with sweat. This close, I can see the freckles that litter his face, his earlobes, a gold hoop intersecting one like marking the spot. I lean forward and draw the cold smooth metal between my lips.

  I feel him turn into the touch. "Sorry I’m late," he whispers, or rather yells at a low decibel. It makes his voice raspy, like he's been screaming, and turns me on terribly.

  I give his earlobe a quick nip before shouting back, "It’s okay. I kept busy." The bodies are pressing so close now we can't move without rubbing against each other, bumping bodies around us, the air hot and damp in my mouth. The smell of males everywhere, the pump in my chest of the music. Joshua leans into me and makes a suggestion, his eyes indicate the shadows of the room.

  We flow, we bleed, we dance slowly towards our destination. "What are you doing, Bobby?" That voice growls close to my ear again and there is the irritating prickle of polyester across my shoulders. And he, that throwback, Drake, is there. I twist out from under the embrace. Joshua stops dancing. That sleepy lust leaving his face. He looks at the interloper with a raised eyebrow. Back at me.

  "Let the kid go, Bobby." "What?" I spin around in the tight quarters and get a hand between us and on his chest. Give him a shove. "What the hell?" I shout over the music. "Why can't you leave me alone ..."

  Its like my hand has connected with solid rock. His chest is granite. The spinning ball overhead throws light across his eyes and suddenly I'm held. Drake's eyes go over me. Tactile. Exploratory. He steps closer and seems to breathe me in, scenting me even. One cool hand comes up to grasp my wrist and his thumb rubs slowly over the skin, as if searching for my pulse.

  I feel myself growing hard. "Get lost," I say feebly. So low he can't possibly hear me. Drake gives me a knowing look, but then nods, shrugs and backs away. Without another word, just one long drop of those eyes from my face to my crotch and he's gone, working his way through the crowd. My eyes follow him. I can't help it.

  "Who was that?" Joshua's not good at dissembling. I can hear him attempt nonchalance, but he doesn't pull it off.

  "Just a creep," I say, dragging my eyes from that dark head as it recedes into the mass of dancing bodies. I look at Joshua. His eyes are narrowed and they dart from mine quickly as I turn. My song is finished and Joshua's mood has sobered, so we shoulder our way back to a corner of the bar. He waves for drinks. "Two Dos Equis, no lime," and drinks it halfway down, that soft Adam's apple bobbing, before he speaks again.

  "James is hosting an Amendment party next weekend," he says, spinning the round bottom of the beer bottle on the little coaster.

  "Are you going to go?"

  He nods. "This is important, Bobby. I want to get involved." Joshua is no wild-eyed anarchist. He picks and chooses his affiliations. If he thinks this is important, then so do I.

  "Can I go with you?"

  He grins. "Well, yeah, that's why I told you about it." Over Joshua's shoulder, about five stools down, I see the unmistakably fluffy coif of Drake reappear.

  "Hrmmm," I say. The head dips and moves away from the bar. My eyes flicker from it to Joshua, unable to stop tracking Drake's movements.

  "James is all right," says Joshua thoughtfully. "No screaming liberal there. And his partner is a Master Chef, you know..."

  Drake crosses the dance floor again, headed towards the back. During one of my surreptitious glances, he turns and those eyes streak across the room like a poison dart and somehow hit me right in the groin. "I've gotta hit the head," I say, suddenly. Joshua stops. Mouth open, mid-opinion. He snaps his lips closed and his eyelashes flicker just a little as he looks at me. "Sure," he snaps. "Okay."

  *** Halfway down a back hallway, I find Drake. I've come up behind him in the dark, but still it’s like he knows I'm there. He whirls around, eyes sharp as steel, and then he's got me up against a wall. Big strong hands holding my ass cheeks hard, mouth opened over mine wide, our teeth and lips mashing together wildly, his pelvis grinding and thrusting into my thigh.

  I feel a door at my shoulder and hear the echo of water against tile. "No," I manage to say, wriggling my shoulders away from the men's room door. "Too smelly."

  He groans. "Where?"

  There's a space behind the payphone that no one uses anymore. Cell phones have rendered it decorative. As soon as I push in that direction he gets the hint and soon we're down to some serious business, my shirt opened, his hands cool and hard twisting my nipples fiercely as that hungry mouth travels down my abdomen, mouthing my jeans.

  "Get these off," his voice is a growl and I obey thoughtlessly. Dropping my jeans and boxers to my knees, bracing myself against the wall. His mouth is wet, but not hot, lukewarm and eager, the suction incredible. His tongue searches out my hot spots unerringly. I feel my knees start to go and one of those hands grasp the top of my thigh, helping me to stay upright, the other squeezing and fondling my balls as if he knows them from the inside out. That learned mouth starts suckling my cock like a lollipop and the fizz and sparks in my brain are all I know, all I see, as I thrust and thrust. His throat is all wet vibration, a guttural vowel that consumes me, swallows me into himself. Until there is nothing left of me. I am an emptied, shattered husk, gasping ridiculously for breath, propped up against the wall.

  As the aftershocks subside, Drake pulls off my dick slowly, nuzzling into my crotch. "Oh, Samuel," I think I hear him say, "yah looblah vase," or some other weird thing.

  There is a loud smack against the wall near us. I crack my eyes barely open and see a kid gaping in my face. He's got hold of the payphone and is screaming something.

  For a second I think he's going to beat me with the phone. Then I hear his words. "Dead! Oh God, I think he's dead!" He waves the phone. Stares at it. Drops it. It whacks against the wall then just swings there.

  Then Drake is pulling up my jeans, tucking me in and standing in front of me in a kind of laughable chivalry. The guy has taken out his cell phone. He's pale and swaying, but he manages to punch at the buttons. I see blood on the cuffs of his shirt. More voices are yelling now. A wave of men swelling in the hallway be
yond our niche, all with those shocked wide eyes, looking around shouting, "Dead!" and "Murder!" There is a loud girly scream.

  Drake clasps my elbow in one firm hand. "We'd better leave," he says.

  *** He has me maneuvered out the door and into the parking lot before I've realized what's happening.

  "What are you doing?"

  He ignores my question. "Where's the car?"

  I fumble dazedly for the keys I've kept in my pocket. Press the large white button and a nearby car beeps and flashes its lights.

  As he steers me towards the little convertible Benz coupe he laughs. "Nice wheels." That snaps me out of it a bit. "Wheels?" God. "Man, nobody says 'wheels' anymore. Don't you know that?"

  "You knew what I meant." His hand grips my elbow, guiding me toward the passenger side.

  I can't explain why I let him. Why I hand over the keys and let him drive. I can't even explain why I've left the club with him, actually. Maybe I'm still in shock from what just happened in the club. That guy. Screaming in my face, covered, I recall now, with sweat and blood. Or maybe I'm still wiped out from that amazing blowjob. But I'm getting the lassitude that I get sometimes. My mind loose and just drifting along. Letting events flow through me. Joshua has been critical of this tendency in me. This inclination to passively go with the flow. To follow whichever current is strongest.

  "We aren't sheep, Bobby," he said to me once. "A man's choices are what define him." Well, right now I'm choosing to let Drake drive to Timbuktu and take me with him. He maneuvers down the narrow alleyways, navigates the complex maze of residential streets, then a sharp right turn and we are pulling out onto Sunset Boulevard, joining the stream of cars moving slowly west.