by Sean Platt
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Will said as she led him to Sam’s room. Trudy said she’d wait for him in the waiting room.
Will nearly fainted when he saw Sam getting eaten alive by an army of wires, all being fed by the bank of machines behind him.
There was a tube in his mouth, electrodes crawling all over his body, IVs, and a catheter tube, which emptied Sam’s piss and stored it in a bag. His face was swollen and violet, a severe gash marked his left cheek, where surgeons had stitched his skin back together. His head was shaved and bandaged.
Will’s knees buckled as he drew closer, and he swallowed his grief.
The nurse hovered in the background, “I’ll be back in a few minutes. If you need anything, just call down the hall.”
Will thought about the dream he had before Trudy woke him. He shrugged the déjà vu from his shoulders, recognizing the nurse from the dream. She had left him alone in the room in the dream, too. Minutes later, Sam was dead.
No, no, no.
Tears painted his face.
Please, God, whoever, don’t do this to him. He is such a good, kind, sweet man. I’ve never known anyone so selfless and caring as Sam. Someone who would give you the shirt off his back even if it were snowing.
Will thought back on how they’d met, five years earlier at one of those gaudy chain stores, no less. They met in the poetry section. Will noticed Sam staring blankly at the neat rows of books for more than five minutes, and wondered if he were checking him out. It wasn’t often Will saw anyone in the poetry section, let alone another guy, except the occasional college student trudging through a paper or looking to impress a girl.
“Are you familiar with this stuff?” Sam asked.
“A little,” Will said. “Looking for a gift, or something for yourself?”
“Neither,” Sam said sheepishly, “I’m trying to impress someone.”
“Ah,” Will said, “And is this someone a classical romantic, modern, maybe a fan of beat poetry?”
“I have no clue,” Sam said, “He’s this cute guy I saw, and I . . . Ah, I’m just gonna come out with it. I just wanted to strike up a conversation with you.”
Will smiled, surprised that the guy was gay, since Will had a pretty damned good gaydar, but also surprised that he was approaching Will. He seemed a bit too pretty to be attracted to a guy like Will, who was a bit too casual about his appearance.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, “This is so awkward. I never do stuff like this. But I saw you here last week, and I wanted an excuse to talk to you, but I’ve gotta be honest, I don’t like poetry. I’m a Lawrence Block guy. My name is Sam.”
“Will,” Will said, shaking the man’s hand, firm but soft.
“You into poetry?” Sam asked.
“A bit,” Will said, “I used to have a big collection, but I moved around a lot, and don’t really feel like building the bookshelves again. So, I come here on the weekends and thumb through some classics, and check out what’s new.”
“That’s cool,” Sam said, shuffling his feet on the carpet, obviously trying to think of something to say.
“You’re new at picking up guys?” Will said so matter-of-factly that Sam burst into laughter.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Well, most guys don’t dress up so nicely on a Saturday morning to hit the bookstores, unless they’re leaving their John Hancock on the first page.”
“Was that a compliment?” Sam asked, flirting fairly well for a rookie.
“Maybe,” Will said, smiling back. “Tell you what. How about I recommend a good poetry book, and you tell me which Block book I should buy.”
“OK,” Sam said, as Will took his time perusing the shelf for a great first read.
Will could feel Sam trying not to look at him. Will would have blushed if he were a few years younger. He wasn’t a committed relationship guy, and hated to let himself get carried away with the idea of new relationships. He preferred them short and sweet. Sam seemed, even in their first exchange, serious and long-term. Will would entertain the notion, though, and see where it led. He moved closer to Sam, caught his scent — a light cologne he didn’t recognize, a bit of lavender, but not overpowering like many men wore. This scent accented Sam, not defined him. Will loved the confidence.
“Okay,” Will said, walking toward Sam with two books in his left and one in his right. “Good things come in three,” he handed the first book to Sam, “and I figured these were good to start.”
Sam looked at the collection of Poe. “Really?”
Will shook his head. “No, not really. He’s just someone you’re supposed to like. Start here instead.” He handed Sam a copy of Tarantula by Bob Dylan. “You’ll love that,” he said. “Dylan at his best. Twisting words like they were tiny tornadoes, better here than on a lot of the records. Like Guthrie and Whitman got stoned together. It’s great, I promise.”
Sam was wearing the widest smile Will had ever seen in a bookstore. Will held up a copy of e. e. cummings.
“Isn’t this another one I’m supposed to like?” Sam asked.
“Well, yes. But because he’s great, not because your teacher told you to. Cummings is a master of metaphor and blather. He’ll have stupid, random words and phrases thrown in a poem, then suddenly make you laugh out loud with the beauty of a perfect phrase, right there in the middle of his mess. Like a rose in a war zone. Hidden meter, gorgeous imagery, comfort, and inspiration. Plus, it’s sexy.”
Sam’s smile finally stretched itself all the way into a laugh.
Will continued.
“Cummings said one of my favorite things ever: ‘To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.’ Buy this book. You will read it often.”
Will handed the book to Sam. Their fingers touched, and Will felt a chill. The good kind, not the creepy kind he got from so many men.
Sam led him to the fiction section and picked out a book, The Sins of the Fathers. “You’ll love it,” Sam said. “Maybe?”
Will smiled, “Maybe.”
They met for coffee a week later so Sam could rave about cummings. Will read his book cover to cover, then picked up the next in the series. “Pretty damned good,” he said. “I’ve never been much of a fiction guy, save for some old science fiction stuff back when I was young. But I liked it; thank you.”
Will hadn’t thought he’d like crime fiction. And he hadn’t thought he’d like a long-term relationship. He was happily wrong on both accounts.
The coffee turned to dinner, turned to six years later, turned to now — Will standing in the ICU, watching his love leave the world of the living.
He touched Sam’s arm, hesitantly, afraid he might set off alarms, or cause Sam to die on the spot.
Sam’s eyes opened.
Will’s heart swelled.
The dream was wrong! Which means that . . .
No, don’t jinx this.
Sam’s eyes tried to surface through confusion, just like his tongue tried to get itself to talk. Maybe he finally realized that he was hooked to a ventilator; his eyes and tongue stopped trying at the same time.
“You’re in the hospital,” Will said softly, “But I’m here now. So is Trudy.”
Sam’s eyes filled with water. Will hoped he wasn’t feeling much pain.
“Don’t try to talk; you’re hooked up to a ventilator. I should probably get the doctor.”
Sam shook his head no, his eyes now tearing, and he spoke.
“Don’t, Will. I’m dying.”
Except he hadn’t spoken.
He was thinking. And Will was hearing it.
Will was certain he was imagining it, wanting to hear Sam speak to him, but no, Sam’s voice spoke again.
“I’m scared.”
Will turned to him, crying, “I’m scared, too.”
Will turned, and called out, “Nurse! Do
ctor!” Then Will hit the alarm beside the bed.
The monitor began to beep faster as alarms rang on the machines.
“What’s happening?” Will asked the staff rushing into the room.
“Sir, I’m gonna need you to wait outside,” a surgeon said. One of the nurses stepped in front of Will to push him away.
“Will? What’s happening?” Sam called out in his mind.
And then Will was outside the room, looking in through the window.
That was the last thing Sam would say, if Will had even really heard his thoughts.
“Will? What’s happening?”
He died afraid, as his lover was wrestled from him. Inside, Will died that night, too.
He thought he’d found a loophole.
He’d saved Sam from one fate only to deliver him to a worse one.
Will walked down the hall and found Trudy, but could not bear to tell her she missed Sam opening his eyes. Fate might be cruel, but Will was not.
Fifty-Four
Will Bishop
The Sanctuary
March 25, 2012
7:11 p.m.
The cold night air was as cruel as the goodbyes, freezing Will’s joints even beneath the thick pants and jacket he wore. Will walked to the car, a black Honda, which John said was his to keep, along with a bag of supplies.
Will wished they hadn’t been waiting outside by the gate to see him off. Yet, there they were — Mary, Desmond, Paola, Luca, Linc, and even John. Brother Rei kept a respectable distance, surprisingly, back at the porch in front of the main house. He couldn’t tell for certain, but he thought the weasel was smiling.
Desmond was first to say goodbye, reaching out to shake Will’s hand.
“I’m sorry to see you go,” Desmond said, pulling Will into an embrace.
“Luca told me. Don’t worry,” Desmond whispered.
Will pulled away, and Mary came to him, tears in her eyes, “Thank you so much for saving Paola. I will never forget your selflessness and kindness. Or our many weird conversations where I always felt like a kid in grammar school pretending to keep up.”
She laughed through the tears, as did Will.
Paola hugged him, “Goodbye, Mr. Will. Thank you for everything.”
“Anytime, sweetheart. You stay good for your mom, okay?”
She smiled, wiping tears from her eyes.
Luca was next, the closest thing to a son he’d ever have — this child turned teen in the span of months. Tears streamed down Luca’s face, real tears, even though Will told him he’d be back. Maybe Luca knew more than he’d let on. Maybe he’d had the same dreams Will had. Or maybe the boy had read his mind, even though Will thought he’d been able to guard those thoughts.
Will hugged him, hard, both of them crying.
“Thank you,” Luca said, collapsing completely to tears.
“Please, come back,” Luca thought. “Please don’t forget us.”
“I will. I will find a way,” Will thought back, unsure whether Luca could hear him.
“OK,” Luca thought, like a blanket on Will’s uncertainty.
Will left Luca a final thought: “I’ll meet you in your dreams. Call on me if you need me. You’ll know when the time comes.”
Luca nodded, and Will winked.
Linc was next. He pulled Will into a big bear hug. Surprisingly, his eyes were wet, too. Guy was a big old teddy bear inside, after all. “You take care of yourself, alright?”
“You, too,” Will said, eyes meeting Linc’s. “And take care of them like they’re family.”
“Sure thing,” Linc said, a bit shaken as if Will had called him out on his betrayal. “I will protect them like they’re my own. And if you change your mind and come back, our doors are open,” Linc said with a smile so sincere he must’ve believed the words, and not been part of the plot to have Will exiled.
John was last in the line. He had a smile on his face that seemed odd, even odder than he normally was.
“We’re going to miss you,” he said. “Please, feel free to come back, anytime.”
“OK,” Will said, reaching out to shake the man’s hand.
Will felt his body go dead cold, as if he’d shaken hands with Death himself. He met John’s eyes and the two exchanged a lingering gaze with equal unease. Will was sure John felt something, same as he did.
Will could see the pieces in his head, mostly in place. John was not John after all. This was a big development and something the dreams had overlooked.
Will bid the group a final farewell, eager to put The Sanctuary behind him before John realized he knew what he really was and stopped him. He had to get away and plan. He started the car, heard Luca and Paola call, “Goodbye, Will!”
He waved as he drove out the gates.
As Will drove and The Sanctuary grew smaller in his rearview, he knew it wasn’t the last time he’d see the place. It was, after all, where the battle would soon occur. The battle that would result in Luca’s death.
And try as Will might to find one, there were no loopholes.
TO BE CONTINUED …
::Episode 12::
(Sixth Episode Of Season Two)
“REVOLUTION CALLING”
Fifty-Five
Boricio Wolfe
1987
Lauderdale Greens, Florida
Boricio had been playing Pik-Up Stiks with Ricky for about 15 minutes, and had been bored for 14 of them, when he decided he would hurt the kid.
He wished there were other kids on the street he could play with. It would have been nice if they had cool toys, or more interesting personalities, but he would’ve settled for a pulse. Ricky wasn’t just the most boring boy Boricio had ever met; he was the only other white boy on the block.
There weren’t many white kids in Boricio’s neighborhood. Weren’t many white adults, either, and Joe didn’t let him play with “the darkies.” The white people had left seemingly overnight, and the property values plunged, effectively turning the neighborhood into a ghetto of peeling paint, broken windows, and endless yards of chain link fencing off lawns of concrete and rust.
Boricio had seen pictures of the neighborhood from back in the old days. They had a fire safety assembly at school one time, and the fireman showed them slides of life in the city, before the neighborhood went to hell and the smelly rock was sold in the streets. It seemed like everyone on his street was a buyer, even his own mom. Maybe not Ricky’s mom. Boricio had never smelled the smelly rock at Ricky’s. He wrinkled his nose imaging the smell of the smelly rock’s smoke, like cat pee and burning plastic.
The neighborhood was pretty in the slides from back then. There had been so many trees and green lawns. Most of the trees had been replaced by patches of hard dirt with a few spindly branches sticking out like fingers.
Boricio’s street had no trash cans. There used to be a few when he was younger, but that was before the Fourth of July that some kids filled a bunch with firecrackers. The bottoms of the plastic bins were blown out and garbage exploded everywhere. The city came out and cleaned up, but hadn’t replaced the cans. So, now people just threw their bags out on the curb, which invariably were torn into by stray animals, and nobody cared enough to clean up the resulting messes.
Boricio never really liked Ricky, though he used to like Ricky’s older brother, Julian. Julian was 13, five years older than Boricio. He was nice to Boricio, showed him dirty magazines and let him use his slingshot to shoot at the cans on the lawn and the cats in the alley. He let Boricio hang out with him, whenever he had to watch Ricky anyway. Julian didn’t really like Ricky all that much either, called him a fag all the time.
He would often disappear, taking different girls into the back of the house and leaving Boricio and Ricky alone, and bored. Granted, it was better than being home and listening to Joe scream at his mom, or worse.
Boricio couldn’t play with Julian anymore since Julian was sent away a few months ago. Ricky didn’t know where he’d been sent to, only that it was
for his own good on account of their mom saying Julian was gonna grow up bad if she didn’t do something quick. Julian once told Boricio that his dad left about an hour after Ricky was born. Boricio figured that made the two of them lucky. Boricio’s real dad had left an hour after he’d been born, too. At least their mom never ended up with a Joe.
Boricio didn’t want to play with Ricky anymore, but he didn’t want to go home. So, Boricio balled up his fist, just like Joe, and clocked Ricky in the left ear as hard as he could. It was mostly out of curiosity, wanting to see what would happen, though a little was from the stuff that comes when your inner hate starts to simmer, but instead of taking his turn.
Boricio had taken plenty of hits, but had never thrown one, not like Joe gave him, anyway. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do, but figured it couldn’t be too hard since Joe did it all the time. Ricky had the sticks in his hand and his eyes on the pile, so he never saw Boricio’s fist.
Ricky’s face filled with surprise, the emotion quickly followed by pain, then fear – in an order that fascinated Boricio, even though all three flashed by in less than a second. He used a punch to Ricky’s gut to knock the wind from him, then erupted in laughter as Ricky exploded in tears.
Ricky doubled over the scattered pile of sticks, clutching his stomach, which made Boricio picture Joe, and the way he smiled down on Boricio when he was doubled over just the same.
Ricky cried “NO!” as Boricio’s foot landed hard on his face. It was the last intelligible sound he made, everything after that was just screams and cries and sobs and whimpers as Boricio started on Ricky with his fists, then finished with a pile of sticks, grabbing them in handfuls and stabbing them all over Ricky’s twitching body.
Suddenly, a scream.
Ricky’s mom, who rushed over to the boy to make sure he was okay. The boy was bloody, but he’d live.
Then she grabbed Boricio by the back of the neck, dragging him away, as Boricio kicked, swung, and cursed at her, trying to break free.