I Hear They Burn for Murder

by J L Aarne

  His other reason for climbing the stairs was a lot more simple. He moved to stand close to the door and cocked his head to listen. He could hear music at first—Nina Simone—but that was all. Then a moan.

  Rainer. He knew his voice. He said something to Thomas too soft to make out. Then he cried out and Ezekiel caught his breath at the sound of it and the images it conjured in his mind. He stood there with his head down, ear turned toward the door and listened as Rainer moaned and gasped. At his sides, Ezekiel’s hands clenched into fists. His breathing became harsher and his pulse began to race.

  “I love you,” Rainer said very distinctly on the other side of the door.

  Ezekiel stepped back, tearing himself away from it. He was so aroused that it ached a little and he quickly went down the stairs to get away from it. He shook his head and tried to banish thoughts of Rainer’s voice and laughter and pretty damn face from his mind.

  He crossed the street back to his car, trying to replace his sensual imaginings with images of Rainer’s death. He was a monster worse by far than Ezekiel. He wasn’t to be coveted except as a trophy kill. He imagined wrapping his fingers around Rainer’s throat and squeezing, the beat of his heart against the press of his fingers, the sound of him gasping for breath, the daring gleam in his eyes.

  He got back in his car and slammed the door too hard, annoyed with himself. He took a few calming breaths then looked at his watch again. If he wanted to go by Sol’s before he had to pick Jacob up at the airport, he needed to go.

  Chapter 20

  The migraine kept Rainer incapacitated for most of the day. It was his day off and he didn’t have papers to grade, so he had started the morning with a cup of coffee and Dexter book number two, but before noon his headache had grown in intensity and he had to give it up. He turned off the lights, left the TV and the record player off and lay on the couch with an arm flung over his eyes to shield them from the dim light. His head throbbed, his eyes hurt; it was like being thoroughly and repeatedly lobotomized with ice picks by sadistic demons trapped in his skull.

  He tried to fall asleep with some idea that it might go away, but he couldn’t. He tried to remember if he had any painkillers and decided that no, he did not. He’d had some OxyContin the month before but he’d taken it. Now he cursed himself for wasting it when he hadn’t really needed it.

  Then something else occurred to him.

  He had a few tabs of LSD that he’d been saving. LSD, among other things, acted on serotonin receptors in the brain and would cure his migraine.

  He got up and went to find it. It was in a small old film canister in a drawer of the desk in his study. Three little stamps with irregularly printed cartoon characters on them. He sat down at the desk, opened the plastic canister and placed one on his tongue. He swallowed around it and sat there with his eyes closed waiting for it to take effect.

  Pogo strolled into the study to see what Rainer was doing. He meowed and it smelled like burning brown sugar. Rainer opened his eyes to look at him. The cat started to purr and it looked like butterflies of prismatic light. Tiny but growing larger and brighter as they drifted away from his throat.

  Rainer’s migraine had reduced to a soft headache. Still there, but more easily ignored.

  “Here, kitty,” he whispered.

  He put his hand down and the cat trotted over to sniff, expecting food. When none was forthcoming, he turned and rubbed his side along Rainer’s fingers, asking to be petted. The softness of his grey fur was sea foam green.

  His headache was nearly completely gone. Where it had been, there was an ocean of peace.

  Rainer reached over on the desk and picked up the phone to call Thomas. Thomas was at home, but Saturdays were especially busy for his restaurant, so he was a little surprised to find him there at all, but pleased. He hadn’t seen a lot of Thomas since before the night in the desert and he hadn’t found the time to ask him where he had been. Now was not going to be that time either. He had other, more urgent things on his mind. Like the way the faint golden light through the Venetian blinds making stripes on the desktop made his mouth fill with the flavor of grassy sour apples.

  “Hello? Who the hell is this?” Thomas demanded.

  Rainer realized he hadn’t said anything after Thomas’s first hello. His voice was sharp like the shine of broken glass. Rainer liked it. “Thomas?”

  “Rainer? What’s going on?”

  He sounded less glassy and more fuzzy. Like teddy bear fur.

  “I had a migraine. It was awful,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, you need me to get you something?” Thomas asked.

  “Nope. It’s gone now, but Thomas?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you come over?”

  Thomas didn’t say anything for a little while, then suspiciously, “Rainer, what did you do?”

  “I don’t have anything for migraines. I’m out of… everything,” Rainer said.

  “Okay, I can pick you up some Advil or Excedrin or something from the store and bring it by,” Thomas said.

  “It’s okay. I dropped acid, so it’s gone,” Rainer said.

  “You did what?”

  “Acid. LSD. I took it.”

  “Jesus, Rainer. You’re stoned right now? On acid? What the fuck is this, the 60s?”

  “Heh, no. But it’s nice. Your voice is kind of pointy right now, but I like it. I like sharp objects, Thomas.”

  “LSD is not medicine for headaches, Rainer. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “It isn’t, but it works. If I had some antidepressants, I could take them and it would cancel the psychedelic effects, but I kind of like it and that seems like a waste. Besides, I’m not depressed. You should come over, Thomas.”

  Thomas sighed. He wasn’t unaccustomed to Rainer’s occasional recreational drug use and sometimes partook himself when he was with him, but LSD wasn’t a drug one expected to find a lot of in the 21st century. It was better than some things Rainer could have tried though. Meth for one thing was not a substance Rainer should ever try.

  “You want me to come over and keep you entertained?” Thomas asked. “Rainer, it’s Saturday. I have to work tonight.”

  “No, I want you to come over and fuck me before it wears off,” Rainer said.

  There was a thoughtful pause on Thomas’s end. “How long before it wears off?”

  Rainer looked around for the clock on the wall. “In about twelve hours. You better hurry.”

  Thomas laughed. “Well, all right. I’ll see you in a little while.”

  He hung up and Rainer put the phone down on the desk. He watched tracers, following his fingertips while he drew patterns with them in the air for a time. Then he got up and went back into the living room to lie down and wait for Thomas. He turned on the record player and watched the way the music painted pictures in the air above his head. At some point, he dozed.

  He woke to a pounding knock on the front door. Pogo was curled up and sleeping on his chest, purring, filling the room with bright ripples of light. Thomas banged on the door again and Rainer reluctantly moved the cat off him to get up.

  Thomas looked annoyed when he opened the door, but Rainer grabbed him, slipped his arms around his neck and kissed him and it went away. He cupped Rainer’s face in his hands and kissed him back as he walked him backward into the apartment. The door slamming closed made the air around them hum and Rainer moaned into Thomas’s mouth and felt like he was sinking. Sinking right into him as Thomas licked the light from his tongue and bit his lips leaving sparkling star trails on his mouth with his teeth.

  “Wait,” Thomas said, pulling away from him enough to speak. “Who’ve you fucked lately, Rainer?”

  The question didn’t surprise him. He didn’t have any evidence though, so Thomas would have to take his word for it. “No one but you, Thomas,” he said.

  “You swear?” Thomas said. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”

  “I swear,” Rainer said. He moved up against him and leaned in
to lick a trail up his neck just to taste his skin. “No one else. Not in ages. Touch me, Thomas. This is amazing. You’re so beautiful.”

  Thomas looked at him in surprise, but he slipped his hands beneath Rainer’s shirt and pulled it up and off him. His hands on Rainer’s skin raised goosebumps along his arms. Rainer hooked his fingers in the front belt loops of Thomas’s pants and drew him over to the sofa.

  It was amazing. The slide of the sofa upholstery on his back, the weight and warmth of Thomas above him, the dust motes catching the faded light like sparks drifting up from a fire; all of it. Rainer kept telling Thomas so until, laughing, Thomas put a hand over his mouth and told him to shut up. When he took his hand away, Rainer whispered to him that they were timeless and eternal. That they could do this forever if they wanted to because they existed alone outside of time.

  Thomas grinned and kissed him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this fucked up before,” he said.

  Rainer had his legs wrapped around him and his hands moving over the planes of his face as though mapping his features and committing them to memory. “I only tried it once before. In college. You weren’t there that weekend.”

  Thomas lowered his head to place nipping kisses over Rainer’s chest, up his throat. “Too bad.”

  Rainer ran his fingers through Thomas’s hair. “Yeah,” he said. “I did mushrooms once for it, but it was different.”

  “How?” Thomas asked. He got Rainer’s pants down and off and fumbled with his own fly. “I must have missed that, too.”

  “I don’t know. It just was,” Rainer said. “Doesn’t it feel like we could be one person, Thomas?”

  “Sure,” Thomas said.

  Thomas was radiant and Rainer had never felt closer to him. When he thrust inside him, it was more than sexual, it was an intimacy that went deeper than sex or blood or shared genetics or anything that could be expressed by a simple word like “love.” In every touch there were more than a thousand kisses and touches and shared moments.

  Thomas’s hands on him were infinite. Rainer’s entire body was an erogenous zone, every inch of his flesh aroused. Their lifetimes were wrapped up together like vines and each kiss and touch Thomas laid upon his body was a vow, a stamp on a moment evoking old memories and making emotions that were typically subdued in Rainer intense. He put his arms around him and held him, kissed him fiercely and knew that Thomas had no idea what he was feeling and that he would never suspect because Thomas wasn’t experiencing it as Rainer was.

  “I love you, Thomas,” Rainer whispered in his ear. It was inadequate, but there was no other word for it.

  Thomas went still. His warm panting breath on Rainer’s shoulder filled his mouth with sweetness like honeysuckle nectar. He kissed the side of Rainer’s neck and lightly set his teeth against his jaw.

  “Say it again,” Thomas whispered. “Say it again, Rainer.”

  Rainer wrapped his arms around his neck and said it again right in his ear, again as he kissed his shoulders, as he arched beneath him. “I love you, I love you, I love you… No one but you, Thomas. It’s always been you. I love you so much.”

  Thomas growled and hefted his weight under his thighs, pushing him a little up the couch, grinding against his ass on the inward thrust in a way that sent shocks of pleasure boiling through him. Rainer cried out and shuddered, pulled at Thomas’s shoulders and back, wanting him closer, deeper.

  It seemed to go on forever, for hours and he became profoundly aware of the sensations of his body, not only the pleasure he felt as he and Thomas moved together, but the heat of Thomas’s skin, the wetness of his sweat, the movement of his cock stroking inside of him. Rainer’s own skin seemed at once to be too tight and too loose and his pulse filled up the world.

  Thomas kissed Rainer hard and deep, demanding and possessive, teeth and tongue mimicking the rhythmic motions of their bodies in a way that was as erotic as sex. Rainer moaned and cried out, every part of him rubbed raw and sensitive, attuned completely to Thomas. Then Thomas came and Rainer felt it as though experiencing it through them both. He felt the way it shot into him and the cramping pleasure of it bursting forth and he screamed.

  “God, Rainer,” Thomas hissed. He petted Rainer’s hair back from his face and kissed him, kissed his mouth and his cheeks and his jaw and his eyelids, his fingers touching his lips but not to silence him. “Goddamn. Hey, hey, come on. It’s okay. Fucking hell. Hey, honey. Are you all right?”

  Rainer shivered and clung to him, trying to catch his breath. “It’s how stars die,” he panted.

  Thomas let out a breathless laugh and picked his head up to look down at him. “Are you turning into a black hole now?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Thomas,” Rainer said. “We’re magnificent.”

  Thomas snickered and shifted to move off of him and lay with him on the couch. Rainer stayed on his back and lifted a hand in front of his face, waved it back and forth, watching his fingers with wide eyes.

  Thomas leaned over and nuzzled his cheek. “Say it again,” he said.

  Rainer smiled. “I love you,” he dutifully replied.

  Thomas kissed his face and relaxed. “So, we’re going to have to get you some Excedrin. Maybe you should go to a doctor about the headaches.”

  “No,” Rainer said. “I don’t like doctors. They’re nosy.”

  Thomas took his hand to stop him waving it. “Fine, but stop doing psychedelics.”

  “Sure, Thomas,” Rainer said.

  Thomas sighed. He wasn’t going to stop if he didn’t want to and Thomas knew it. Rainer had always been like that and on top of it all he had the worst impulse control imaginable for a man who still managed to function more or less normally, maintain a career and not end up in prison. He had awful impulse control, but astonishing self control when one considered what Rainer was.

  Still.

  “Rainer, they do piss tests at the university, I know they do,” Thomas said. “You want to lose your job? For drugs? You’d never get hired at another one.”

  Rainer shrugged. “No. Maybe… Thomas, do you believe in monsters?”

  “Yes, I’m laying here with one right now,” Thomas said. “I’m serious, Rainer.”

  “So am I,” Rainer said. “I met a monster in the desert.”

  Thomas propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at him. He was serious. As serious as someone could be while chasing tracers in the air with their eyes and smiling like a fool. Thomas took his hand again and made him put it down.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “What monster?”

  “A big one,” Rainer said, blinking up at him. He frowned. “It had pointy ears and it growled and it—” He made a claw of his free hand and swiped at Thomas. “I think it scared me,” he added a little wonderingly.

  “You think it scared you,” Thomas repeated. “Must have been a hell of a monster. What were you doing in the desert?”

  Rainer grinned. “I visited Eden,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” Thomas said, assuming it was more of his crazy acid trip nonsense.

  “I was elbows deep inside of Eden, then the monster started howling and he was really close,” Rainer said.

  “Oh,” Thomas said. “Oh. Ew, Rainer.”

  “Don’t worry about it, the coyotes will eat it if the monster didn’t.”

  “That’s not… Wait, did you say howling?”

  “Mhmm. Like a wolf. Want me to demonstrate for you, Thomas?”

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “Okay.” Rainer sighed then abruptly sat up. “I’ll be right back. I have to… I’m sticky and icky and I have to pee. So… I’m gonna take care of that.”

  Thomas watched him get up and leave the room. The cat came and hopped up on the sofa with him, sniffed around and hopped up on Thomas’s stomach. In the bathroom, the toilet flushed and the water came on. The cat curled up on Thomas and began to lightly knead with his paws. Thomas petted him and he purred.

  The water continued to ru
n.

  “Rainer?”

  There was no response and the water was still running.

  Thomas gently moved the cat off him and got up to see what was taking him. He knocked on the bathroom door and got no response, so he tried it and found it unlocked.

  “Rainer, are you—”

  Rainer was standing naked in front of the bathroom sink with his head cocked slightly to one side watching the running water. It was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “It’s so amazing, Thomas. It’s so… I don’t know. It’s so…”

  Thomas looked at the water over his shoulder and frowned. It was running water. It wasn’t that special. He reached around him and turned off the faucet.

  Rainer snapped to attention and looked around at him. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself,” Thomas said. “Did you get cleaned up?”

  “Not really. I got… distracted,” Rainer said. He was now staring at his own reflection in the mirror. “Whoa. Do I really look like that?”

  “No,” Thomas assured him. “Okay, let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “Hmm… or you could just fuck me again, Thomas,” Rainer said, swaying back against him. “That was fun.”

  Thomas put his arms around Rainer’s waist and urged him to walk with him across the bathroom. “Or we could do both. I bet the shower right now would blow your mind.”

  “Ooh, let’s do that,” Rainer said.

  Thomas started the shower and Rainer stared at the falling spray, enthralled, while he adjusted the temperature. He had to rouse him from his daze to get him into the shower, then he distracted him from his bizarre fascination with kisses. Between kisses, Rainer told Thomas about the colors, told him the story the pattering water was telling him and how he hoped he would remember it later. He said Thomas’s kisses sounded like rivers and when Thomas asked him what the water falling sounded like, he said it was blue.

  When they were cleaned up and dressed again, Thomas got Rainer to go with him into the kitchen so he could cook them something to eat on Rainer’s nice new stove, using Rainer’s much nicer new countertops, pots and pans and utensils. He made them breakfast for dinner—eggs Benedict with toast and hash browns—and he sang while he cooked because Rainer liked it. He sang “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” and Rainer said his voice made him think of lightning and rainbows, but whatever it looked like to him, it had the same old calming effect as it had ever had.