Authors: SM Johnson
He walked and tried to remember more about his last night as a living breathing human. It seemed to be coming back in bits and pieces. He wanted to remember. Roderick had described finding Tony in an alley, and what he described sounded a lot like murder. Murderers should be punished.
He remembered the room. The blindfold had slipped for another few seconds, and he took in a room with sandstone walls, recessed lamps backlighting images stolen directly from the Kama Sutra, drawings fleshed out, faces in an agony of pleasure, male, female, all the same. The carpet cradling his feet stark white. His dark skin and hair capturing the eyes and heart of any present who were not blindfolded.
His stomach went the way of his nipples, tightening, his cock following suit. He was ready for anything.
A murmur of voices became apparent only as they suddenly quieted into that same safe silence. The hands urged him forward. A soft male voice directed, “Stand, arms at sides.” The voice then spoke to the room, this apparent despite its lack of increased volume. “Gentlemen, may I present the evening’s entertainment?”
Tony’s knees trembled. His stomach erupted in a frenzy of wild butterflies, one escaping to flutter up the length of his spine.
Unbelievable.
He knew how he looked to these men. He was young and strong, his slender limbs graceful. Hips slim. His hair black and a little wild. His mouth bowed and innocent. He added a trembling lower lip to the vision when he realized his lower lip was trembling. He licked the upper bow, pink tongue darting out, to make the tremble even more visible. Innocent. Endearing.
He noted with a sense of satisfaction that he was mildly terrified, terribly tense, and feeling an intense humiliation in his nakedness and chains. He could feel eyes upon his vulnerable body, hungry eyes, and he wanted to cross his arms over his chest.
Smart boys obey, he thought, and held still. Delicious fantasy.
He could smell the arousal of women, musky but clean, caught then gone, subtle. A turn-on.
They stood for what felt like hours but was actually only five or ten minutes. Excruciating. The murmur of voices resumed, conversation, soft laughter. Tony wondered what they found to talk about while naked slaves stood in a row, arms at sides, waiting to be used.
He heard a whisper, felt a rush of air. Then there was an emptiness at his left where another body had stood until just that moment. Were they started? Had the person beside him been taken somewhere private? His heart started to pound. He wanted to speak to the person at his right. Maybe she’d been here before. Did he dare? He was desperate to try. “The girl beside me is gone.” It was barely a whisper. He was terrified. He didn’t even know if he’d been heard.
But then the body to his right leaned close. He could feel the heat of her skin near his, smell sweet shampoo. “It’s okay. It’s to get rid of the blindfold.”
Get rid of the blindfold? He didn’t understand.
And then a hand was on his arm and a whisper in his ear. “Come with me.” He let himself be led several paces, his feet leaving carpet to shiver on cold tile. He heard the click of a door and then a woman spoke to him in a sweet musical voice. “You are free to speak to me.”
He tested his voice. “What’s your name?”
“I’m called Angel.”
“I’m Tony.”
“I know. There’s been a request to see your face. I have opaque contacts to put in your eyes, but obviously this can only be done with your cooperation.”
Opaque contacts. Weird. Too prepared. Tony wondered if he would eventually freak out. The blindfold almost knocked him off-balance, and he was completely aware of blindness. But at the same time he could feel the blindfold, never forget it, never really panic because he could pull it off if he had to.
“I’m already wearing contacts. My own,” he said to the woman, amazed how natural his voice sounded.
“Oh. Well. There’s a dressing room behind you with a mirror. Here’s an empty.” Hard plastic scraped across his hand. A contact case. “There’s saline in the dressing room and another case with the opaques inside. Can you put them in yourself?”
He couldn’t think of an excuse to refuse—it was all too surreal. “Probably.”
Talking like a normal person made the chains feel awkward. Hell, made this whole scene feel awkward. Like he’d been acting in a play and had now broken character.
Angel pushed him into the stall.
Tony yanked off the blindfold. The chain across his neck looked like a choke collar. He watched his cheeks flame in the mirror. Oh hell. It was a lot of money. The mirror reflected a blank stall door behind him. He shrugged. If they were going to pay him a thousand bucks to give blind blow jobs that was okay by him.
The memory faded as he reached his home. He pushed in the window that led into the old brick building where he lived. Home-sweet-basement.
He’d kept the secret of his home for almost a year, now, and breathed a sigh of relief each time one of his friends was forced to move from their squat, while his own had so far proved secure.
In a year’s time he’d made a lot of improvements. It was almost a nice place. It hadn’t been easy sliding sheets of drywall stolen from various construction sites through the small window. Hell, it hadn’t been easy dragging them here at all, one awkward, heavy sheet at a time, then cutting them in half to fit through the window. He hadn’t gauged the thickness of the different sheets very well, so the walls weren’t professional or anything. One sheet might be a half-inch thick, while the one next to it was five-eighths. But what the hell. The walls were clean and the drywall insulated the place a little. It was the nicest place he’d ever called home.
And the safest. No “fathers” or “uncles” or “mom’s friends” —no jackasses at all, actually, to climb into his bed to bother him. No one to tell him what to do. Home sweet home.
He pushed past the dark comforter that hung inside the window to keep it looking unoccupied. Motel curtains, he thought, I’ll change the comforter to motel curtains. He dropped down onto the first of several wire crates that made up a crazy kind of staircase from the window to what might be the equivalent of a front hallway. He called for his roommate. “Lily? Are you here?”
She should be here because she only went out to collect her half dozen newspapers at dawn.
After the strange couple of nights he’d just had, he needed her to listen to him rave. He needed her to soothe him and help him sleep. Damn. What was happening to him? What had that joker Roderick done to him?
“Lily?”
She was here. He could smell fresh paint and turpentine.
He pulled the looped rope that served as a doorknob in the makeshift door that led to their main living area. It wasn’t a real door—it was a sheet of fake wood paneling, the sort used as a quick fix to cover poor plaster, and used in every mobile home manufactured in 1966. Tony had fastened hinges to one side and punched holes for the rope handle. Lily had primed over the traditional dark brown wood-grain finish and had painted it to look like a brick wall. Exactly, in fact, like the real brick walls of the basement.
Beyond the door, Tony had built a cozy room.
It was furnished mostly in pillows and blankets, and a soft rug Tony had found sitting near a dumpster. Practically brand new. It was too hard to bring furniture in. Tony had brought 2x4’s in though, and had fashioned a large crude bed with a plywood bottom. It looked kind of like a waterbed. Except instead of water, it had a futon mattress that he had pilfered from the back of a pickup truck. He had left the futon itself because he didn’t he had time to dismantle it without getting caught.
Lily was in the bed now, fast asleep, her newspapers scattered on the floor.
Even in the midst of his extreme excitement he had to hold his breath and spend a moment just looking at her.
She had the small, delicate features of a beautiful little child, with her tiny nose and kissable pink lips. In sleep, the unusual upward tilt of her eyes was almost more exotic than when her eyes were open, if such a thing were possible. Her eyelashes were so thick and dark they made her closed eyes into black slashes across her tiny fragile face. Her hair was soft and black, in perfect contrast to her smooth white skin.
When she opened her eyes the irises were a startling shade of bright blue, with dark rings around the edges that defined the inside of her eyes like her thick lashes defined the outside.
She was magnificent.
She was art.
Lily.
She did open her eyes, and before she even sat up he said, “Lily, you won’t believe what has happened to me. Last night—or was it the night before? Anyway, I went to this strange and frightening party where strange and frightening things happened to me. Do I look different to you? Do I?”
She looked him over. Then said in her soft, modulated voice, “I told you not to go. I told you. Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Her voice was velvet, not the voice a person expects to hear coming from a child’s mouth. But then, she wasn’t a child. She was twenty-two years old. Old enough to buy cigarettes. Or vote. Or drink alcohol in a club.
“I’m fine. Truly. But do I look any different? Do I?”
“I don’t know. Why are you wearing sunglasses?”
“Oh!” He pulled the dark glasses from his face. He had forgotten they were there.
When he left Roderick’s apartment the sun hadn’t bothered his skin, but oh, his eyes! He found himself squinting so hard that tears flowed, and he could hardly see at all. He’d ended up inside a convenience store, whirling the tall rack of sunglasses until he found a pair the girl at the cash register said looked sharp.
He blinked. Even this room seemed too bright, though Lily had only one small lamp and two votive candles lit.
She rose off the bed and came to stand in front of him, tugging the glasses out of his hand and gazing into his face.
He let her stare.
Lily was beautiful, but like him, her background wasn’t. She had the unfortunate luck of childhood beauty and crappy parents. She was even worse damaged goods than he, her right to childhood tossed into the garbage-pit of child pornography.
She had once told Tony about the earliest photo she had ever found of herself, from when she was about two years old. What she described was so revolting that Tony felt physically sick to his stomach.
Somehow the Gods allowed them to find each other. Lily to heal; Tony to learn, oddly enough, about innocence.
She was what some people called a “sensitive,” a sweet child-woman unable to tolerate the suffering of any living creature. She couldn’t watch television or movies, or read anything but the most careful of books. She read newspapers, though, black and white print from Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Miami. She could usually handle the cold, factual delivery of the news. And if a headline screamed, “Young child shot by sibling with father’s handgun,” well, she just skipped over that article.
She had incredible beauty and impenetrable sadness.
And no sense of humor whatsoever.
Tony had spent the last year trying to make her laugh spontaneously.
And he had failed.
But she was healing. She slept. She painted.
She brought what she knew of love and sex and perversion to Tony for explanation and exploration. They guided one another into understanding.
Here was safety. Here was possibly the only undemanding love either of them had yet to know. A haven where it was okay to say “no,” and “leave me alone,” and “please go away.”
This was home.
Now she framed his face with her hands and smiled. It was a sly, teasing smile.
“What?” he asked.
“Strange and frightening things, hmm? Did it finally happen?”
“Did what finally....” He let his words trail off as he had a sudden recollection of cool vinyl, stirrups, and the terror of helplessness. He had forgotten all that in the excitement and wonder of Roderick.
“Were you, umm... penetrated?”
“That’s blunt.” He felt his cheeks grow hot.
Her smile widened. “It is, isn’t it? Wow, I believe it did happen. Well, well, well. How’d that go?”
He squirmed. “That’s bit personal, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It is. Now spill.”
He found he didn’t want to talk about it at all. And that was strange because he and Lily talked about sex all the time. Use and abuse is what they had in common. And only Lily knew how absolutely terrified he was of anal penetration. About how it was the one violation he had somehow managed to avoid despite all the “fathers” and “uncles” that had passed in and out of his life. About how his fear and curiosity had grown to be an obsession, a perversion. A goal. Lily had offered to help him in the discovery but he had declined. Too personal, for real. Even between them, the two lost and damaged souls.
He hadn’t had time to reflect on the party, or that new experience, to examine it privately to know how he felt about it. So he put her off.
“I must spare you the sordid details, my dear, for that is the least strange and frightening event of the past couple of days. The most is this.” He raised a hand and pointed a finger at her face. She swooned. Literally.
Tony caught her in his arms and held her until she opened her eyes. And then he kissed her.
She let him.
She let him pull her over the bed, lie her down, lie beside her.