Eli sucked in a breath.
"Is that – "
Grant stared at him, bag filled with dark red fluid in hand, one eyebrow arched in questioning.
"What?"
Eli swallowed. His throat clicked.
"Blood?"
"You know it's blood. But you wanted to know if it was more than blood."
Grant's tone simmered, repressed. Eli assessed him from a different light. Maybe this wasn't the way to pierce his façade, to coerce him to open up and give him what he wanted, Eli decided. He changed tactics. The skin on his back felt like it sprouted lizard legs and was climbing up and down his spine.
"It's been a long time since algebra class, man."
"Trig. It was trig. Glad you paid as much attention to me as you did to your studies."
Eli forced a smile to his face. Inside, he wanted to vomit onto his shirt front.
"Of course I remember you, buddy. You did really well. Read a lot of books."
Wheedling. Eli cringed to hear his own ingratiating voice, worming his way into Grant's good graces like a used car salesman. Please buy it. Please buy this lemon with unknown mileage and dirty stains. Hybrid model, gallon of twilight blood per mile.
Grant didn't buy it. He didn't look interested in leasing, either. Instead, he let the blood bag fall onto the counter with an accusatory plop!
Eli struggled to hold onto the shredded fragments of his dignity and failed.
"Please, old pal, I just need – "
"First," he hissed, crossing the distance in seconds, "it's Grant to you, not old pal, not buddy, not hey, do you remember the high school years and wasn't it great. Second, kiss twilight blood goodbye. You had your last hit last night, while your buddies were trolling for fresh blood to fill their fridge and found me instead."
Eli thrashed in the chair, baring his teeth in the buzzing florescent light, a muzzled dog. He hurled curses, dredging up every bitter, school-yard insult he could summon from the depths.
"Good," Grant snapped, returning to the counter. He separated a piece of garlic from the main bulb and took out a garlic press.
The hairs in Eli's nostrils tingled with the smell. His belly churned with adrenaline.
His eyes widened as Grant took out a syringe.
"Hey, uh, Grant, I know we weren't besties, but don't you think this is a little drastic?"
"The high school years," he ignored him, contemplating.
His eyes glazed over as memories resurfaced in pieces, and then went about the business of peeling clove after clove, snapping open the press and clenching his fist. Tendons and muscles stood out in his arms, and after a moment, he took off his trench coat. Time had torn the softness out of the bookish boy. Experience had rendered him lean and muscular.
Eli tapped his foot, struggling to keep his thoughts in single file, straight lines. Even a drink would have helped, taken the edge off until he could get the real stuff. Much more of this, and he wouldn't hesitate to take Grant as a snack, high school alumnus or not.
"You were one helluva guy. The kind of guy I wished I could have been, do you know that, Eli? People liked you. All-American, apple pie. Church every Sunday, nice clothes, your own car. I can't think of a guy who didn't want to be you, Eli."
"That was a long time ago."
"What's this, now? So eager to bring up the past when you wanted something a moment ago. Now, you can't wait to bury it."
Grant poured the garlic juice into a glass, and with a syringe, plunged it into the garlic syrup. He withdrew it when it was full, and with a flick of his fingers, he held a lighter flame against the needle. The smell made Eli want to gag, but he watched, transfixed. Grant pushed a tear drop of garlic from the tip.
"What are you doing, Grant?"
Grant's silence was more unnerving than listening to him talk about high school, but he'd been right. Eli hadn't been prom king, but damn close. He'd been, well, popular. Grant had been the background, a wallflower.
Eli frowned. Through the shuffling of his feet, the nervous lick of his tongue on his lips, the insistent pulse of his hungry blood – a memory like a shredded ribbon wound through his consciousness, and then was gone.
"Weren't we at a party one night?"
Grant stopped in his tracks, syringe in his hand, held aloft.
"Do you remember the party?" Grant whispered.
"Graduation. Nineteen ninety-eight."
"Oscar's house."
The memory came back like a sledgehammer blow, and Eli paled.
Grant smiled.
"You do, now. Cynthia broke up with you and you tried to kill yourself with a bottle of Jack and your dad's revolver. I stopped you, and you were so thankful, you said you'd give me anything I wanted. Do you remember what I asked for, Eli?”
"A kiss." Eli's voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
He'd forgotten.
"You said you'd rather die," Grant filled in. "Love hurts, doesn't it?"
With that, he leaned forward and jabbed him with the syringe.
*
Like fire. Like being on fire.
Eli woke up a few hours later. A few hours that could have been a few days. Garlic didn't kill vampires. That was just a myth. You only wished you were dead after touching, eating, or being anywhere near garlic.
He woke up in time to hear the garlic press, to hear the papery sound of Grant's fingers peeling back layers of garlic clove, rolling it back into the press. The room smelled like a pizzeria, it felt like hell.
Grant leaned in close to tap the vein in Eli’s arm, his skin warm against the inside of his wrist. Eli played dead, waiting until he was close enough, and then lunged for him.
His face brushed Grant's like sandpaper against his cheek, warm flesh against his cold, monster skin. A second too late, he missed, his coordination and balance thrown off from the detox. Grant plunged the syringe and liquid glass flooded his veins, rolling his eyes back into his head.
He felt like he could tap dance across the ceiling, his feet were on fire and moved even in his sleep. He woke up with his fingers in claws, teeth gnashing at the air.
Through it all, Grant was there, restraining him, tightening the wires, always out of reach.
In the darkness, he collected snatches of images, Grant on the edge of the bed across from Eli and the damned chair he was tied to. Grant watching him from a corner of the room with his arms crossed, his eyes like coal. Time became elastic, expanding and contracting until he passed out once more.
*
When he woke up again, five days later, he had the strength to do something more coherent than fling obscenities.
For an hour, he pretended to be asleep, hoping to stave off the moment when Grant would start the ritual anew, injecting liquid fire into his veins.
Instead, he worked at the wire around his wrists. A loop had come undone, a loop Grant had failed to notice. If he could work it over his thumb, he'd be seconds from home-free. He could be out the door, hit the streets, and find twilight blood before sunrise. He'd sip a Bloody Mary made with his own, special ingredients. Maybe find the Russian junkie he liked so much to keep him warm on the lonely nights.
Grant closed his book with force, a noise designed to wake him up. Unable to keep up the pretense, he continued to work at the loose loop, and decided the best course of action would be to distract him while he worked himself free.
"What happened to you since high school? You're different."
Grant moved back to the counter. His hands moved in relentless rhythm, clove to press, clove to press. Eli's hands worked the wire loop like a guitar string.
"I went into surgery in 2005 to fix a faulty heart valve."
A long silence followed. In that silence, Eli worked the loop over his hand. The wires slackened, a sensation of victory, excitement flowed through him. He swallowed and forced himself to remain still, not to give himself away.
"Then what?"
"When I woke up, it was 2015."
Clove to press, c
love to press. The syringe appeared, and then the lighter flame, licking the end of the needle.
He worked the rest of the wires from his wrist. They came off like cheap bracelets, and he maintained his pose as if still cuffed, curious enough to remain seated and listening.
"They milked me," Grant continued, "for twilight blood. A decade hanging in an endless limbo between worlds. Not sure if I was dreaming or if the nightmare was the reality. Keeping me under the chemical veil. Breathing in ether until I forgot what oxygen tasted like. I had time then, you know that? Time to be philosophical. Time to think about what it all means. Love and loss and the whole existential bit. And most of all? I had time to think about you. I lost ten years of my life. To feed you, people like you, Eli. Imagine that. You'd rather die than kiss me, but my blood? My twilight blood? You'd drink that by the truck load. You'd drown in me, if you could."
He stood before him, syringe in hand, and Eli felt small, reduced in size and sorrowful. The nervous tic was gone. No foot shuffling. His nerve endings uncoiled and laid flat, at rest. He felt . . .
Better. He was getting better.
The garlic shots weren't killing him – they were purifying the blood, pulling out the twilight poison shot by shot.
"What happens after this?" Eli asked, watching as Grant knelt, pulling up his sleeve and teasing out the vein. He felt it with a cold fingertip, and then poised the needle.
"We part ways. You stay clean."
This was the moment – the time he'd fantasized about, knocking the hated syringe from Grant's hand, knocking him back and closing in like a hunter, long enough to taste him, share a fraction of the pain he'd put him through. Maybe even let him live, turn him and then show him what a garlic shot felt like. Tie him to the chair, just like he was now and –
Spend more time with him.
It was an excuse, like every excuse he'd ever poured out about twilight blood – a reason to ensure these motel room days and nights didn't end. To keep Grant close, to watch him across the room when he was pretending to sleep, or the press of his fingers on the sensitive inner flesh of his arm as he tapped a vein. The problem had never been escape, but how to remain Grant's captive.
Escape; and his opportunity slipped away with every second he continued to sit there, unmoving.
Grant's fingertips made him shiver, lingering on his arm longer than they should have. His touch made Eli shudder, with a pain that bordered on pleasure. His pupils dilated and blew wide with the rush of the contact, the endorphins intoxicating.
Eli's mouth parted as he looped the wire back into place over his wrists. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of garlic rising from Grant's hands as they pressed and pinched, waiting for the blood to rise and show him the vein.
Stoned and wrecked and high, and chasing a dragon named Grant.
Tabula Rasa
Brad C. Hodson
The attic floor creaked above him. Gabe sat on their bed and stared out the window, twirling the ring on his finger round and round. Outside, a young couple walked by holding hands and laughing.
Inside, a moan drifted through the house.
The rhythm of the creaking floorboards above grew faster, almost frenzied. Gabe couldn’t listen anymore. He clutched his cane and struggled down to the first floor. He turned the television on, letting an infomercial for eHarmony drown everything else out.
It had started early today. He had rolled over before the alarm went off to find the bed empty, the sheets still warm from where Tomas had been sleeping. Gabe put a pot of coffee on and remembered how they used to take each other in the mornings, how their skin had crashed and flowed together in the breaking light.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs and the television clicked off. Tomas entered the kitchen wearing only his boxers. His golden skin glistened with sweat.
“Good morning,” he said and moved to kiss Gabe on the cheek.
Gabe placed a hand on his chest. “Not before you shower. Please.”
Tomas nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.” The red light blinked on the coffee machine and he poured them both a cup. “I’ll take a quick one,” he said, sipping from his cup as he left the kitchen.
Gabe normally loved the way his husband smelled, how the thick musk of him lingered under accents of lavender. But after he had been in the attic, the scent was wrong. It was sour. He was filthy and ruined and Gabe didn’t want that touching him.
The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Dad.”
“Jeremiah. Early morning for you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. New site going up. Trying to get a head start on the scaffolding.” Engines rumbled in the background, muffled voices muttering incoherently around them. “How you doing?”
“Great,” he lied. “Fantastic.”
“Good.” A pause.
“Jeremiah?”
“I better go, Dad. I just wanted to wish you ‘happy birthday.’”
“You and Ashley should bring the kids down. Nothing like summer in the Keys.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“I miss you guys.”
“We’ll see. Mom hasn’t been feeling well so we’re probably not going anywhere anytime soon.”
“What’s wrong?”
His son sighed. Gabe expected him to say, what do you care. He wouldn’t have blamed Jeremiah if he did. Instead he was silent and that was even worse.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, Dad. Just tired. She’s breaking her back working.”
Gabe didn’t know what to say. She’d only worked part time when they were married. Between that and the alimony, he had never thought she’d be hurting for cash. He wanted to dig deeper, but he knew his son wouldn’t open up. It had taken Jeremiah two years to get past the anger and resentment enough to contact him, and that call might never have come if not for Gabe’s accident. He knew his son still wasn’t at a place where he was comfortable with the circumstances of the divorce, or with his father’s coming to terms with his sexual orientation at midlife.
“I gotta go, Dad.”
“Love you.”
“Yeah.”
The line went dead.
“Who was that?” Tomas wore a flannel bathrobe, his dark hair wet and messed. He kissed Gabe on the cheek and hugged him from behind. The smell of soap and lavender hovered around them and Gabe could almost forget what Tomas had been doing all morning.
“Jeremiah.” Gabe sat the phone down.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Wanna walk and grab some breakfast?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll get dressed.” Tomas kissed his cheek again and rushed upstairs.
It wasn’t until he was gone that Gabe realized his husband never mentioned his birthday.
*
Mornings in Key West were slow affairs. The entire island took hours to stretch and yawn and pull itself awake. Before noon most of the people encountered were tourists, couples on their honeymoon or the elderly trying to remember younger days. All of them shot wary glances at Gabe and Tomas as they walked arm in arm down the street.
When they had first begun seeing each other, Gabe had assumed the glances were because they were gay. These days his paranoia ran a different route and he imagined that every couple they passed whispered to one another as to why such a young, beautiful man as Tomas would be walking around with someone twenty years older and crippled.
They stopped at the tiny outdoor café where they had spent their first evening together. Gabe waited for Tomas to mention it, to tell him this was the start of a romantic birthday, but he never did. They ate their food and chatted about inane subjects like politics and celebrity arrests while some of the island's numerous stray roosters begged for scraps at their feet.
That first night together over three years ago, sitting in almost this exact spot and listening to reggae music sprinkle from tiny speakers on c-stands, Gabe had scattered breadcrumbs on the ground and a f
luttering of tiny wings surrounded their table.
“You’re a sweet man, Gabriel.” Tomas’ crystal eyes swallowed him and, for the first time in his life, Gabe had wanted to kiss another man.
Now his husband treated him with almost the same detachment as he regarded the roosters. The passion they used to share, once a palpable thing that hovered between them, had thinned to a few gossamer strands that still wound around Gabe but seemed to barely tickle his husband.
Tomas talked about a news story he had seen about the economy as he watched camera-toting tourists gather around the tacky signpost announcing the southernmost tip of the United States. Gabe had the feeling that Tomas wasn’t talking to him; he was simply talking.
“Do you love me?”
Tomas looked his way and blinked. “What?”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course I love you.” He grinned. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
After breakfast they made their way down the street, the humidity sticking Gabe’s shirt collar to his neck. This was the route they had taken that first night, drunk, leaning against one another to keep from stumbling. They had met at one of the myriad bars claiming to be Hemingway’s original hangout. Gabe had been in the Keys for a real estate seminar. He counted the dollar bills covering the walls of the bar when one of his fellow seminar-goers entered into a tequila-drinking contest with four young men. The two groups slammed shots around the trunk of a giant tree growing through the building’s center. Eventually everyone trickled off except for Gabe and Tomas, who suggested grabbing a bite before calling it a night.
After leaving the café they had walked through the ancient streets of Key West, shrouded by thick tropical growth and buffeted with the sounds of a never ending party that seemed to stay two blocks from them at all times. Tomas had told him the island’s stories while showing him the sights; an old pirate well rumored to still hold treasure at the ocean’s bottom, the antebellum house where James Audubon painted his birds, and the home that once held Robert the Haunted Doll.
He explained that the name Key West was a corruption of Cayo Hueso, the Isle of Bones. “When the Spanish landed, all they found were bones. Bones everywhere. In the trees, scattered across the ground, stacked against rocks. One tribe of natives had slaughtered another here and left them to rot.”
Abominations of Desire Page 12