In Flesh and Stone

by Hal Bodner

  The sword unsheathed with a soft hiss of sliding steel. With a swift motion, the cord suspending his abused testicles was severed, and though he had thought himself incapable of making any more sounds other than strangled screams, Alex sighed at the blessed relief he felt. Another two snicks followed and the sting of the rack’s splinters digging into his buttocks and thighs as he fell down onto it again were as nothing compared to the torment he’d so recently suffered. An instant later, the strain on his shoulders eased as the rope was parted and Alex lay, still splayed out in spread-eagle, relishing the sudden absence of pain.

  Chest heaving, he felt a strong hand caressing his sweat-drenched flesh and knew, even without looking, that his wounds were again being healed. He felt the ache in his torn muscles gather in one last shock of agony before it was sucked up by his savior’s palms. The spasms eased and a warm glow suffused his being. Even the harsh abrasions where his limbs had been secured ceased to trouble him. When at last he felt once more like a whole man and not just a morass of shredded flesh, he opened his eyes.

  Scorpio had vanished. Alex didn’t know where he’d gone, nor did he care. He saw only Cancer, looking down on him with eyes filled with tenderness and concern, strangely nurturing emotions emanating from someone who, physically at least, seemed to be such a warlike creature. He flinched when the Crab’s arm brushed the end of his abused dick. Cancer’s expression softened even further and he took Alex’s manhood between both his palms, rubbing and soothing it, massaging in a way so obviously designed to comfort and not to arouse that Alex doubted he could grow hard again even if he still had the physical reserves to make the effort.

  The Crab’s hands moved over his body, from the soles of his feet to the very top of his head. When he was finished with Alex’s front, he lifted him from the torture device with strong, firm arms and carried him like a baby to a table, covered with a soft fleece, which had inexplicably materialized underneath where the manacles used to restrain him for the vicious flogging had hung.

  Laying the artist facedown, Cancer continued his ministrations. Alex moaned, for the first time in what seemed like hours, with indescribable pleasure and not from fear or pain. The tension vanished from his back and from the rear of his thighs. When the Crab devoted his attentions to Alex’s ass, he was surprised to feel his butt hole begin to twitch with the echo of a sexual arousal he had feared he would never experience again.

  Cancer continued to knead and stroke his sore and abused muscles, his gentle fingers ever returning to massage the soft, unprotected rosebud of Alex’s ass, sending waves of soothing sensation up his anus, into his stomach and chest, removing the last vestiges of the horrid torture from his supine and now completely relaxed body. He had not felt this safe, this nurtured, since the time a few years ago on his birthday when Tony had confessed that his “late nights at the office” were actually a cover to hide his enrollment in an extension course in erotic massage. Alex’s birthday gift was the best surprise he’d ever had – a delicious exploration of the techniques his lover had learned.

  Gradually, he began to feel normal again – better than normal. When he felt his full strength return, he rolled over onto his back. Cancer was a gorgeous hunk of man and Alex was eagerly looking forward to repaying the Crab for the rescue. He reached out, gazing deep into Cancer’s eyes, his gratitude palpable, and wanting to savor the feel of the swell of his savior’s biceps. But his fingers closed on empty air and, with a cry of dismay, he saw the outline of Cancer’s form begin to blur and fade. The stone arches of the dungeon retreated, replaced with the modern off-white walls of the Shermer Gallery. The soft table where he lay morphed into one of the thinly padded benches Nadine had installed so her customers could sit down while considering their purchases. The gentle glow of the fireplace was thrust out by the glare of overhead electric light.

  Alex stumbled and reached out, his hands clutching at someone’s shoulders when his knees went wobbly and he started to collapse to the ground. Arms laced about his waist to prevent him from falling and he heard a voice cry out, a young man’s voice, high-pitched with fright. “For God’s sake, Charles, call an ambulance! Nadine, call Joey!”

  His head lolled and came to rest against someone’s chest. He breathed in a fresh, just-washed scent overlaid with a hint of sage and citrus and, somewhere far in the back of his mind, he recognized it as a cologne Corey favored. Alex opened his eyes and his vision cleared enough for him to see his friends, staring at him with various expressions of concern and panic.

  “Where...” he mumbled. “Where did he go?”

  “You’re running a fever, boy-o,” Charles told him, trying to be reassuring. He dialed 9-1-1 and spoke commandingly into his cell phone, quickly giving the gallery’s address to the operator.

  “No!” Alex pushed Corey away and managed to regain his footing, reeling across the floor to stand, back defensively braced against the wall, eyes wild. “They were just here. Both of them!”

  “Relax, honey. I’ll get you some tea.” Nadine, with birdlike flutters of her hands, tried to move him back to the bench and force him to sit down.

  “No, tea! Nooo!” The last was a wail of angst-filled protest. His eyes darted around the showroom, frantically looking for some sign of the torture chamber, some indication that his beautiful male visitors had not been mere figments of a deranged mind. “They were here,” he whispered with quiet intensity. “They did...things.”

  Charles’s level baritone cut through the haze. For an instant, he felt the investment banker’s cool palm lingering on his forehead. “You’re burning up, Alex. It was delirium.” He turned to Nadine. “I told you we shouldn’t have left him alone. I knew something was wrong just before we left.”

  “I’m fine.” But Alex’s protest was belied when he slumped against the wall, and an instant later he found himself sitting, his legs no longer capable of supporting him.

  “Do you think,” Corey asked hopefully, “…someone might have...?”

  Nadine shook her head and pointed toward the camera by the front door.

  “Check!” Alex yelled at her. “Check now.”

  “Just calm down, Alex...”

  “I said, check!” he shrieked.

  With a helpless shrug, the old woman vanished into her office and emerged a moment later. “The cameras automatically take a picture every time the front door opens. Even if the alarm’s not set.”

  “And?” Alex demanded. “They were here, weren’t they?”

  She looked at Charles and Corey uncomfortably, not willing to meet her protégé’s eyes.

  “Dammit, Nadine! Answer me!”

  When she finally summoned the courage to reply, her voice was reluctant, her demeanor lost and helpless, her eyes filled with sorrowful pity.

  “There was no one here, Alex. No one at all.”

  Alex sat on the floor staring up at her for a moment, gaping with stunned disbelief. Then without another word, his eyes rolled up to show their whites and he toppled to one side. By the time he hit the floor, he was out cold.

  * * * *

  “I don’t know,” Joey shook his head. “I just don’t know. What are the odds that both of them would come down with some unknown condition?”

  “Do you think it’s contagious?” Corey was concerned for his best friend, yet at the same time, given their close physical proximity in recent days, it was obvious he was also frightened for himself.

  “No,” Joey’s professional instincts overcame his dislike of the twink and he hurriedly reassured him. “The symptoms are completely different. Whatever the two of them have, I’m certain it’s not the same thing. Tony’s got some kind of virus. As for Alex...” He spread his hands helplessly. “Nervous collapse was my first thought, but just to be safe, we did a CAT scan and an EEG.”

  “And?” Charles prompted.

  He and Corey had followed the ambulance in Charles’s Bentley. They’d offered Nadine a ride but the older woman had an unrelenting terror of hospitals
– as much as she loved Tony, her phobia had prevented her from visiting even once. Dozens of Get Well cards filled the counter in Tony’s room, all signed with her brash handwriting. The vases of flowers were replaced faster than they could begin to wilt. To make up for her inability to set foot in the hospital, Nadine sent several new, outrageously gaudy bouquets every other day, and even after distributing the excess to other patients and taking the less ostentatious ones home, the nurses were beginning to run out of places to put them.

  Corey had called Joey en route and the young doctor was waiting for Alex when the ambulance arrived and took immediate charge of the case. Doctor Caprese pulled every string he could, ordering priorities for every test, and so it was only a matter of a few hours before the results were in. Once it had been determined that whatever Alex had was not contagious, Joey used every iota of his influence to make sure Alex and Tony shared the same room in the ICU.

  He’d vanished for a good half-hour, summoned to the chief of staff’s office presumably for a dressing down about his insistence that the lovers be together. From the smug and satisfied look he wore when he returned to fill Charles and Corey in on the test results, it was clear he’d won whatever administrative battle he’d fought. The fact that Charles Wannamaker was one of the hospital’s major benefactors, having donated most of the money for the pediatric AIDS unit and had established quite a few research grants, certainly helped mitigate any anger at what Joey had done. The calls Charles made to several of his cronies who were on the hospital board of directors while he and Corey were in the waiting room likely helped grease the administrative wheels further.

  The doctor sighed now. “There’s something going on inside that brain of his. But...” He paused and looked at Charles with angst in his eyes. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it before. His brain’s in overdrive – neurons firing like mad. We’re completely clueless.”

  The banker whipped out his cell phone, ignoring the annoyed stares of the nurse and her pointed glance at the sign forbidding their use on the wall behind him. “Who’s the best specialist in the country?”

  Joey gently reached out and took the cell phone out of the older man’s hand. “Sandy Grant in Boston is the finest neurosurgeon I know. He’s at a medical conference in Seattle but I managed to get hold of him. That was a minor miracle, I might add, because everybody who knows him knows how he is with cell phones – mostly he loses them all the time. He and I had a...thing awhile back.” Joey blushed at the confession and quickly continued, babbling irrelevant details in his panic and helplessness. “I used to kid him that he’d finish an operation one day and hear his phone ringing from inside the patient after he finished suturing. His lover, Mark, and I are pretty close. He uses my guest pass at the gym when he’s in town. I got the latest number from him.”

  “And?”

  “Relax, Charles.” Corey tried to lighten the mood. “You’re starting to sound like a parrot.”

  It was a mark of Charles’s concern for Alex that his only response was an uncharacteristic scowl at Corey.

  Joey went on. “Sandy’s taking some time to look things over thoroughly. At first glance, he’s as baffled as the rest of us. He contacted a colleague – an ex-lover of his – in Europe and faxed him everything to see if he had any idea what was going on. So far, nothing.”

  “What do you call a medical homosexual daisy chain like that?” Corey wondered aloud. “You guys are all pillars of the community while I was such a tramp. D’you think I could get the president on the phone if I worked a couple of connections?”

  “Was a tramp?” Joey shot back, annoyed at the attempt at levity.

  “I’m thinking about turning over a new leaf.” Corey took hold of Charles’s arm affectionately and rested his head on the older man’s shoulder. “Seeing what’s happening with Alex and Tony...” He shuddered. “Let’s just say I’m rethinking things.”

  For a moment, it looked like Charles was going to reprimand Corey for not taking things seriously. But an instant later, Corey’s gesture and words seemed to register and the banker’s face softened. He put one arm around the younger man’s shoulder and hugged him.

  “Well, at least maybe something good will come out of all this,” Joey grumbled, oddly pleased at the thought Corey might have finally matured enough to settle down, but unwilling to show his pseudo-nemesis how much he approved.

  “What do you know?” Charles demanded, frustrated and impatient.

  Joey gathered his emotions together and reined them in, seeking solace in the comfort of familiar territory. His voice assumed a clinical detachment, albeit one that was frayed at the edges. “These visions he’s been complaining about, they’re not completely in his mind. There’s a physiologic cause, I suspect, though we can’t yet pin it down. Fortunately, there’s no sign of brain damage and so far, no trace of any virus or bacteria that might be causing it. I’ve called in a genetic specialist to try to see if there’s a congenital condition, but it’s going to be tomorrow before she’s got enough data to crunch. Physically, aside from the weirdness in his brain, he seems perfectly healthy.”

  “What about the fever? And the fainting?”

  The doctor pondered the questions for a long moment. “I’m not so sure that’s directly related to whatever he’s got. I’m gonna go out on a limb here, but I’m guessing the fever was more of a reaction to the stress he was going through as a result of the visions and not due to anything organically wrong. As for the collapse, I’m almost willing to bet he was just overcome by everything going on in his mind and his body shut down.”

  “What about the sex dreams?” Corey asked. “He said they were very vivid. Like they were really happening. He finally told me why he was asking all the questions about some long-haired guy. He said he could have sworn we had a three-way! Trust me, from what he was telling me about it, if it had been real, I would have remembered it. Nothing against you, honey.” He squeezed Charles’s arm to reassure him. “That was before I decided it was time I start looking before...uh...plunging into things, so to speak.”

  “Hallucinations can seem quite real,” Joey assured them. “Especially when they’ve got a physical cause. The things we experience in real life are, when it comes down to it, nothing more than our brain’s interpretation of electro-chemical stimuli triggered by what our body senses from the environment. If Alex’s brain is, well, misfiring, it’s perfectly natural that he wouldn’t be able to distinguish fantasy from reality. His brain is interpreting the impulses exactly the same way.”

  “Electric?” Corey was alarmed. “You don’t mean he’ll have to have those things put on his head and get shocked, do you?”

  “It’s not something we’d consider doing except as a last resort. And you can relax. It’s nothing like those old horror movies you’re fond of. But there is a risk of accidentally damaging healthy parts of the brain, so we’d be reluctant to try it unless everything else fails.”

  “When can we see him...them?” Charles wanted to know.

  “Now is as good a time as any.” Joey shrugged. “I managed to bend the rules even further. Actually, you managed to bend ’em, Charles. I think Doctor Grainger was on the verge of firing me for putting the two of them together when he got a call from one of your buddies telling him to back off.” He blushed, a little ashamed of himself. “I sort of seized the advantage when I realized what was going on, so restrictions on visiting hours are waived. ICU’s on the fifth floor. Go on up and I’ll join you in a while.”

  Fearfully, not knowing what to expect, frightened by imminently seeing one of the most vibrant people they knew reduced to a mindless hulk, Charles and Corey moved off toward the elevators. They held hands as they entered the car. A gentleman in his mid-fifties, whose younger lover had just survived a tricky operation to remove a tumor which was fortunately benign, smiled at the gesture of affection and held the door open for them. Seeing himself and his boyfriend in what he interpreted as Corey and Charles’s casual gesture of affe
ction, he was comforted.

  Had he been more observant, he would have noticed their knuckles were white and the corners of both their mouths were grim.

  CHAPTER 9

  Verdant fields surrounded them for almost as far as the eye could see in every direction. Tall grasses waved in the gentle wind, broken up by clumps of heather and flowering gorse. Riots of wildflowers suddenly appeared on either side, vibrant, their blooms in colors that Alex only wished he could duplicate with his brushes and palette knives. Deep cerulean and scarlet so intense he had to narrow his eyes to avoid being blinded. Lemon yellows and startling bursts of violet and orange. Alex knew next to nothing about gardening, but he suspected the hues and tones of these amazing floral surprises were anything but natural.

  In the far distance, just at the edge of the horizon, he could see a range of snow-capped mountains, sparkling with crystalline blue, shimmering in the haze where their peaks pierced the summit mists. Above, the sky was a gorgeous conglomeration of salmon and melon, the clouds tinted like Easter eggs from the reflection of the warm sun on their fleecy tendrils.

  They rode along atop their magnificent steed, the gentle rhythm of the gallop soothing and kind. With a sigh of blissful contentment, Alex leaned back into the folds of Tony’s warm embrace, feeling his lover’s bare chest press up against his equally naked back. The sun warmed his shoulders and presumably Tony’s as well, as he could smell the familiar sandalwood and fresh olive scent of his lover’s perspiration. Tony’s arms wrapped around him, holding him tightly and infusing him with the feeling of being protected, though the very idea of any threat penetrating this Eden they were in was laughable.

  Alex leaned forward, and Tony’s body followed to stroke the long mane of rich, luxuriant hair that ran down the center of their mount’s back. Alex admired the play of the muscles in Tony’s shoulders and triceps. The feel of the soft hair between his thighs was vaguely erotic – not coarse or irritating as he would have expected. And the sense of power emanating from the equine haunches, the muscles extending and contracting as the Archer’s massive thews ate up the leagues beneath his hooves was enough to cause a pleasant stirring in the artist’s loins. He grinned, knowing Tony was sharing his experience. He could feel his lover’s aroused dick slapping at the base of his spine with every bounce of the centaur’s gait.