When All the World Sleeps

by J. A. Rock

  That was a start.

  The guy looked like he was about to say something to Daniel, but then the door opened and everyone turned, listening to the footsteps descending the stairs into the basement.

  Daniel didn’t turn, because he was looking at his hand. The back of it had red, scaly skin. Little purple marks. Was dry and cracking, lines appearing even as he watched.

  He’d been burned. He was still burning.

  That reminded him of something. Thoughts weren’t connecting in his head, and they scattered each time he tried to pull them together. But he remembered Belman, wanted to ask the guy who’d been talking if he knew where Belman was. Maybe if he offered to blow the guy, the guy would take him to Belman. Then maybe he could offer to blow Belman.

  Daniel licked his lips. Some reason that couldn’t happen. Belman didn’t want that. Hard to find Belman anyway. Had to wait until he showed up.

  Daniel looked at his hand again and it didn’t look so bad. Belman had told him the fire was gone.

  Belman had saved him.

  Saved him. Those two words took on a shape, a presence in his mind. They crowded everything else out. But Daniel couldn’t hold on to them. He didn’t even notice the man who’d come up behind him until a hand closed over his shoulder.

  “Pussy.”

  Daniel heard the word, even if he didn’t entirely understand who’d said it or why. The hand jerked him back in his chair, and he turned and saw a big guy. Balding. Stomach hanging down over his jeans. Master Beau.

  The fear came into Daniel slowly, like a tendril of smoke. Wasn’t even fear at first, just uneasiness. There was a shuffle in his mind, like a slot machine when you pulled the lever and all the pictures scrambled.

  Belman, Marcus. The guys at the table. Master Beau. Greenducks and the cabin. Fire. A dark stain.

  “Hi.” Daniel tried to smile. Scooted his chair out and stood.

  Master Beau raked a hand through Daniel’s hair and grabbed a fistful in the back. “You gonna run from me again?”

  Again?

  “No, sir.” Seemed like the best answer. Daniel’s gaze drifted to the back of the bar, where there was a dartboard and board games no one ever played. He tried to tilt his head to get away from Master Beau’s breath, but Master Beau tightened his grip on Daniel’s hair and shook him.

  “You thought I’d let you get away with that, Boy?”

  The guys at the table laughed. Daniel heard one of them say something with “slut” in it. That was good. When guys started saying that, it usually meant Daniel would get fucked. His cock hardened.

  “No, sir,” he murmured again. His eyes suddenly filled with tears. Belman and the fire washing down the walls. Belman thought it was a good idea to fix the cabin up. Things were quieter with Belman. Belman didn’t smell like this, and his voice wasn’t so rough.

  And Belman hated him.

  With a grunt, Daniel slapped at the arm holding him. He planted both palms squarely on Master Beau’s chest and shoved him away. Master Beau staggered back.

  “I don’t care!” Daniel screamed at him. It felt good to say that. “I don’t care! I don’t care!”

  Terror flared through him as Master Beau stepped forward and grabbed his jaw. “You’ll care when I’m done with you.”

  Daniel tried to shove him again, but the back of Master Beau’s hand connected with Daniel’s cheek. Daniel fell back against the table, almost into the lap of the guy sitting closest. He launched himself up and drew back his arm. Hit Master Beau as hard as he could, the crunch making him wince. It was too familiar—suddenly Daniel was lying in the slick grass, Kenny Cooper standing over him. Everything almost black, but some part of Daniel was still awake, begging please leave, please leave. He kept losing the full picture, as though someone were shaking a blanket out over him, and each time it billowed up, he could see the stars, the silver clouds, the universe, for just a few seconds. But each time it fell, he was in darkness again.

  He was pleased and a bit alarmed when he saw blood pouring from Master Beau’s nose. I’m on my feet this time. Not on the ground. And you’re the one bleeding, asshole. He drew back for another blow. Someone grabbed his elbow. He twisted, trying to get free, trying to hit anyone he could reach. He was screaming again, and it hurt his voice, but he was glad for it. Another pair of hands grabbed him, and Daniel was forced into a chair. His arms were yanked behind his back. He screamed again and threw all of his weight to one side, falling out of the chair and sprawling on the floor.

  He stayed there.

  Felt a boot shoved against his dick, pressing harder and harder.

  “Fucking pussy.”

  Daniel didn’t notice the pain. Stared at the wall behind the guy. Watched it melt, and waited for the fire to come.

  Water came instead, cool and fresh, soothing his burned hands. He was at the river with Casey and her friends, that summer before he graduated. That little kid was watching him. Well, not so little. Must’ve been thirteen, but already almost as tall as Daniel. Skinny, in his baggy shorts, bones sticking out everywhere like a half-grown pup. All elbows and knees.

  “Hey,” the kid said.

  “Hey,” Daniel answered. Didn’t look up from his chemistry book.

  “You coming in? It’s real nice.”

  “No.”

  The Belman kid walked away again, leaving wet footprints on the grass.

  Wet grass smelled like blood, didn’t it? Blood and beer and sweat.

  “Hey, Whitlock?”

  Daniel smiled. Jake was kneeling over him. Jake was kind of cute. Daniel tried to reach up and touch his face but couldn’t move his arms.

  “He’s fucked up, you guys. Hey, Whitlock, you good with this?”

  “Yeah,” Daniel said. Jake had nice eyes.

  Jake disappeared, and then Master Beau was there instead.

  Flick, flick, flick went the slot machine.

  “Get him up. Get him over that table.”

  “Hold on now! You wanna fuck, you take it outside!”

  “I wanna fuck,” Daniel told the voice as he was hauled to his feet.

  “Pussy,” Master Beau said. “Slut. Slave.”

  Flick, flick, flick. Jackpot. Daniel laughed.

  * * *

  Bel was writing up a ticket on the highway and getting a lot of pleasure from deflecting every obscenity thrown at him with a polite “Yes, sir.” He’d learned from Uncle Joe that nothing pissed an asshole off more than a cop who wouldn’t rise to the bait.

  “Yes, sir,” he said again as the driver told him he wasn’t worth shit and why didn’t he go catch a real criminal? “Well, speeding is against the law, sir, so I’m doing that right now.”

  “It’s a stupid fucking law!”

  “Yes, sir,” Bel agreed. “You can write a letter to your congressman and maybe get that changed, but in the meantime I am going to give you this ticket.”

  The guy tore the ticket up, so Bel wrote him one for littering.

  That was one of Uncle Joe’s favorite tricks as well. And then, when the guy didn’t pay either one of them, Bel would get the fun of arresting him and slinging his ass in jail for the weekend.

  “You have a pleasant evening, sir,” Bel said.

  The guy looked like he was going to pop a vein in his temple, but he snatched the second ticket from Bel’s fingers, wound his window up, and drove off.

  Bel put his pen back in his top pocket and closed his ticket book.

  His radio burst with static.

  “Gonna need some backup on Main Street.” Day’s voice.

  Bel swung back into his cruiser. Wasn’t Day supposed to be out at Kamchee Road?

  “What you got?” That was Ginny.

  “Got a fight outside of Greenducks. Gonna need some more bodies here.”

  Bel waited until Ginny had responded, and then did the same. “On my way from the 601.”

  He hit the lights and siren, and headed for Logan.

  The fight was outside Greenducks, like
Day had said, but it was obvious it had started inside. The door was open, noise spilling out. Jake Kebbler was sitting cuffed in the gutter when Bel pulled in. Ginny was restraining some other guy, who maybe had more teeth when it started. Ginny was all of five foot nothing, but she packed a mean punch. The guy was struggling, but she got cuffs on him.

  “It’s still going on inside!” she shouted at Bel.

  He headed for the steps, barreling down them into the gloom that was the dive’s attempt at ambience. The music blared, so loud that Bel could feel it vibrating through him. It knocked him off-kilter for a second, then he hit the floor at the bottom of the steep steps and headed for the fight.

  Day and Avery were pulling a pack of fighters apart, laying them on their assess one by one. They were mostly too drunk or too high to resist much, but that was often more dangerous. A drunk guy might not be the most coordinated fighter out there, but a lot of times he also didn’t know when to stop.

  Bel grabbed one of the guys by his belt loops and hauled him backward. Saw a pale face in the middle of the brawl.

  Daniel! Jesus Christ.

  “What the fuck you doing here?” he shouted, but Daniel didn’t seem to hear him. Maybe it was because of the music and the yelling, but maybe it was because he wasn’t even in the fucking room. Not really. That look on his face, that weird, spaced-out look. Bel knew what it meant.

  Over by the bar, Mike finally turned the music off. Nothing then but shouting and grunting, and working at keeping the men apart.

  “He wanted it,” some asshole was yelling at Avery. “He fucking asked for it!”

  “That’s his fucking thing, man!” one of the others said. “Fuckin’ freak.”

  “So why you all fighting like a pack of dogs?” Avery demanded.

  Bel stared at Daniel.

  “Okay, everybody settle down and we’ll get this sorted out,” Avery said. “Whitlock, you start this?”

  “What?”

  Avery glared at him. “I asked you if you started this.”

  “Burns,” Daniel said.

  “Ain’t no good asking him.” Mike wiped his bloody nose with his shirt. “Danny Boy’s so fucked up he don’t know what day it is. I told this asshole here to take it outside, but he wouldn’t. He’s the one that started it for real.”

  Bel looked at the guy Mike pointed out. Looked like a reject from the cast of Deliverance. Wasn’t a local.

  “Little bitch told me to meet him here!” the guy blustered. “Then he threw the first punch!”

  “That right, Whitlock?” Avery asked.

  Daniel smiled at him.

  “Okay,” Bel said. “Get over here, Whitlock.”

  Daniel trailed over, rubbing his face. Bel sat him down in a chair, crouched in front of him, and searched his eyes for any sign he was awake.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” Daniel smiled.

  “You need to wake up now,” Bel told him. “Might be in some trouble here.”

  “Don’t wanna get in any trouble,” Daniel murmured.

  Bel resisted the urge to reach up and touch his bruised jaw. So quiet and compliant like this, but Bel couldn’t trust it. It could turn in a heartbeat. He’d seen that, hadn’t he, when Daniel had gone for his gun and Bel had taken him down? “You punch that guy, Daniel?”

  “He’s got no right to call himself a master,” Daniel said.

  Bel looked at the guy again, his heart beating faster. This was the hillbilly Daniel didn’t want to fuck? Not Bel? That probably shouldn’t have made him as pleased as it did.

  “What’s a master, Daniel?”

  “Supposed to lock me up, not let his friends gangbang me.”

  Jesus. Bel felt ice slide down his spine. “He do that to you?”

  “Nah, I ran away. Pussy.”

  Bel sighed, relieved but still confused. “So what happened here tonight?”

  “You went swimming in the river.”

  “That didn’t happen, Daniel.”

  “Oh.” Daniel exhaled slowly. “Was there fire?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Bel stood. “You stay here for me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Bel walked back to Avery. “Got no sense out of him.”

  “Meth head,” Avery muttered. “Well, Mike’s not gonna press charges for this guy starting the fight, so long as he don’t press charges on Whitlock.”

  “I don’t want the fucking trouble,” Mike said. “You’re banned, asshole.”

  Deliverance guy glared at him.

  “You’re banned too, Danny Boy!” Mike yelled, then shook his head. “Makes no fucking difference. He never remembers.”

  Avery looked around the bar. “Anyone else want to complain about anyone else punching ’em, you sober the hell up and come down to the station in the morning. Y’all got that? Good, now get the fuck out. Bar’s closing early tonight.”

  The small crowd cleared out.

  Bel walked back to Daniel. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Daniel stood and headed for the bathroom.

  “Other way,” Bel told him sharply.

  Daniel turned toward the stairs.

  Bel followed him up, watching his ass in those jeans. Thinking about it naked. Would be too damn easy to fuck him when he was like this, but then Bel would be no better than any other asshole in Greenducks.

  He saw the outline of Daniel’s phone in his back pocket. Reached up and took it, and Daniel didn’t even notice.

  Outside in the parking lot, Jake was still sitting in the gutter, bitching and moaning as Day unlocked his cuffs. “I didn’t do nothing!”

  “Shut up,” Day told him.

  “It’s Jake,” Daniel said, smiling again. He started toward him.

  Bel caught him by the back of the shirt. “Go wait by my cruiser, Daniel.” He pointed it out. “Go on, now.”

  Daniel shuffled over.

  “That boy is high as a kite,” Ginny said.

  Bel couldn’t tell if she was talking about Daniel or Jake. He nodded curtly.

  “We all good?” Ginny asked. “I reckon I’ll stick around here, make sure none of these boys try to drive.”

  “Yeah, I’ll take Whitlock back to his place,” Bel said. “Gonna get himself in more shit if he walks.”

  “Sure, Bel. See you later.”

  Bel loaded Daniel into the back of his cruiser, then sat in the front seat. Turned the air on, and went through Daniel’s phone. Saw his own text message first: Can’t come by tonight. Sorry.

  Then saw the one Daniel had sent to the guy listed on his phone as Master Beau: I’m at Greenducks most nights. Maybe I’ll see you there.

  It had been sent this morning, after Bel had left. And Bel knew what Daniel’s texts looked like when he was asleep. This one was coherent. Correctly spelled and punctuated. Which meant Daniel had most likely been awake when he’d sent it.

  * * *

  When Daniel woke up it was more than his jaw that hurt. It was his throat, like maybe someone had grabbed it too hard, and there was a bruise on his collarbone. And hell, his right hand ached like fuck. He flexed his fingers. The sunlight streamed in the back windows of the cabin. The canvas was still holding on the front ones. Maybe he ought to call someone to come and put new glass in.

  Took him a second to notice there was someone sitting in the chair in the shadows. His heart stuttered, but he didn’t know if it was from fear or something else. Bel looked good in his uniform.

  “Thought you couldn’t make it.” Daniel swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed the knuckles of his right hand. “Did I punch you last night?”

  “No,” Belman said, leaning forward. “You punched some guy at Greenducks, got in a brawl, and got banned. I dragged your ass back here before you offered it to the whole town.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “That all you got to say?”

  Daniel ran his hands over his head. “What do
you want me to say, Belman? I do crazy shit when I’m asleep.”

  “Yeah, you do.” Belman threw something toward Daniel, who caught it on instinct. “You do crazy shit when you’re awake as well. Want to explain that?”

  His phone. Daniel looked down at the screen and saw the message he’d sent to Master Beau. Wondered if he’d been there last night. Probably. Wondered what sick shit Daniel had let him do. Mostly he wondered how to explain himself to Belman. It wasn’t like he owed the guy an explanation. Not like Belman had any right to tell him how to lead his life. Not like they were anything.

  But he was here, and he was listening, which was more than most people.

  “You weren’t coming,” he said suddenly, wishing it didn’t sound like an accusation. “And I need someone I can count on.”

  Belman narrowed his eyes. “You gonna count on that fucking freak before you count on me?”

  “He was there, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah, good for you. Good choice.” Belman shook his head. “Avery ran his name. Your Master Beau tell you he spent eight years in jail for raping a fifteen-year-old girl?”

  “No.” The thought made Daniel sick to the stomach.

  “That the kind of man you want touching you?”

  “No!” Daniel dug his nails into his palms. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Belman gave a disbelieving laugh.

  “I killed a guy,” Daniel said. “Pretty sure I don’t get to claim any moral high ground.”

  “Maybe you don’t. But maybe you need to stop being so goddamn stupid.”

  Fuck you. You got no idea what this is like.

  “You don’t . . . It’s not that simple.”

  Belman stared at him. “Seems like it’s real simple. You need someone to lock you up, and I’m telling you that a ped rapist is not your best option.”

  “He’s my only option.”

  “No,” Belman said quietly. “No, he ain’t.”

  Daniel swallowed. “What do you mean?”