Asylum

by Jason Sizemore

  Jarvis laughed then turned to the bartender and said, “Hey Gil, we’re gonna take one of these candles for a bit.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Jarvis wrapped his hand around the nearest candle and pried it lose from its base of wax, holding it at an angle so the wax didn’t drip on him. He took Curtis’s hand and pulled him along.

  “Where are we going?” Curtis asked.

  “Somewhere a little more private.”

  As he walked back behind the bar, Gil watched The Brit and The Virgin disappear into the Men’s Room, taking a bit of the light with them. He had a feeling that when they came back out, he’d have to come up with another nickname for the younger one.

  Now there were only three in the bar, Gil as well as The Snob and The Wannabe. He’d have preferred different company, but in a situation like this, he was just grateful not to be alone. Despite his gruff exterior and nothing-rattles-me demeanor, this whole thing had him shaken up. Zombies…that was horror movie shit; there was no way a person could be prepared for something like this, no matter how hard they were.

  Gil only became aware of the fact that he was running his fingers through one of the candle’s flames when Clive said, “Doesn’t that burn?”

  He watched his fingers as if mesmerized for a moment then looked up at the couple. “Not really, not as long as you keep your hand moving. The trick is to not stay in the flame too long.”

  Toby chuckled. “I hear that. Pretty sound philosophy, man.”

  “It’s not a philosophy,” Gil said quietly.

  Clive tried running his fingers through the nearest flame but pulled them back quickly, sucking air in through his teeth, and popped his index and middle fingers into his mouth. “Well, I certainly feel like we’re in the middle of the fire right now, and my ass is burning. I’d love not to have to stay around here too long.”

  Toby put a hand on the back of his lover’s neck. “It’ll be okay. We’ll get through this, and who knows? Maybe you can use it for inspiration for one of your novels.”

  “You know I don’t do horror,” Clive said, wrinkling his nose at the thought.

  Normally Gil wouldn’t have taken the bait, but he was bored and more than a little frightened and needed a distraction. “So just want kind of stuff do you write?”

  “Romance,” Clive said with a raise of his head, nose tilted in the air, looking every bit The Snob at the moment. As if romance weren’t an even more piece-of-shit genre than horror. “Started out doing mass market originals, but eventually I moved up to hard covers. My last book sold almost as many copies as the latest Danielle Steel.”

  “Well, don’t your shit smell like roses,” Gil said, and though his voice was dripping with sarcasm, Clive didn’t seem to notice.

  “The great thing about his books,” Toby said like a proud papa, rubbing Clive’s neck, “is that unlike most popular romances, the gay community is amply represented in his books.”

  “Not as the main characters, of course. That would never sell to the general public.”

  “Oh no, of course not, but there are still many gay supporting characters in Clive’s books. That kind of exposure into the homes of mainstream America is priceless.”

  Gil’s lips twisted into an approximation of a smile. “Let me guess, the female leads of your romances tend to have a lot of gay male friends that help them with their hair and pick out outfits before their dates.”

  “It’s not as cliché as all that,” Clive said with a pout to his voice.

  Toby was quick to come to his lover’s defense. “These aren’t the usual neutered ‘gay best friends’ you’re used to from modern romantic comedies. The gay characters in Clive’s work are just as fully realized—and more importantly, just as sexual—as the straight characters.”

  Gil merely grunted and turned away to pour himself another beer. He didn’t know why he felt it necessary to needle The Snob and The Wannabe; it wasn’t as if Gil gave a damn about those books, and he certainly wasn’t ever going to read one. And let The Wannabe think his lover’s trashy romance novels were somehow changing the very foundation of society, what did it matter to Gil one way or the other? He was just feeling exceedingly irritable. The scratches on his chest were itching something awful, worse than any case of poison ivy he’d ever gotten. He thought maybe that was a good thing, maybe meant the slashes were healing, but there was also an underlying burning sensation that made him worry about infection. Plus he was feeling a bit feverish and queasy.

  Gil took a swig of the beer then scratched idly at the scratches on his chest.

  Jimmy and Lance were making out on an old sofa upstairs. Lance was sitting with his back against one of the arms, Jimmy straddling him and grinding the bulge in his pants against the bulge in the other man’s pants. Their kisses were hungry and ferocious. At one point Jimmy felt the older man bite down on his tongue, drawing blood, but Jimmy didn’t mind. He just bit back, and harder.

  In the back of Jimmy’s mind, the scene from outside the club earlier kept repeating, but he pushed it away. It was too gruesome and threatened to send him over the edge again, so he chose to build a wall around it, blocking it out as best he could. It wasn’t perfect; there were chinks in the wall, but he just kept his eyes averted from whatever he might see in the gaps. The two best ways Jimmy knew to keep his mind off of things he didn’t want to think about were booze and sex. So he was indulging in both.

  “I want you to fuck me,” Jimmy gasped, pulling back so he could unbuckle Lance’s belt, pulling it through the loops in one fluid practiced motion. Working like a pro, Jimmy soon had the other man’s pants off and hung over the back of the sofa. It was dark up here with no candles, but Jimmy found the other man’s dick with his mouth and tested its length. An acceptable six and a half inches, a nice mouthful without causing any mood-breaking gagging. Jimmy worked on it with his mouth for a few minutes, gobbling it to the root then slowly sliding back up to the head, teasing the tip with his tongue.

  “I gotta have that ass,” Lance said, his voice a snarl, and grabbed Jimmy roughly by the fur coat, turning him and bending him over the opposite arm. Jimmy sighed as he felt his pants jerked down over his hips, exposing his firm round ass to the open air.

  That sigh turned into a muffled scream that he buried in the crook of his arm as Lance penetrated him with two fingers, all the way up to the second knuckle. The pain was good, the pain focused him solely on this moment. There were no zombies outside, there was no accountant that had been torn apart then got back up with his guts hanging out, there was no possibility of death hanging over Jimmy’s head. There was just here, there was just now, there was just the feel of Lance’s hands on his shoulders as the older man entered from behind, going slow but not stopping until he was ball’s deep.

  Gritting his teeth, Jimmy began to push back, meeting each thrust with enough force to cause a loud slapping sound as skin met skin that could probably be heard downstairs. Lance grabbed a handful of Jimmy’s hair and yanked his head back, even as he reached around with the other hand and gently massaged Jimmy’s balls.

  Hearing a sound behind them like a squeaking floorboard, Jimmy turned his head and glanced over his shoulder. At first he could make out nothing in the blackness, but there was some flickering candlelight filtering up over the balcony and as his eyes adjusted, he detected movement. A scuttling at first, but then the silhouette of Devon rushed forward, pool cue raised in his hands like a spear.

  Jimmy opened his mouth to scream a warning, but before he could make a sound, Devon brought the stick down against the back of Lance’s head, the impact making a loud crack like a bat connecting with a fastball. The pool cue broke in two, half going flying, the other half still in Devon’s hands.

  “God is punishing us for our sins,” Devon said in the hissing voice of a viper. “We deserve what we get, all of us. Maybe he’ll spare me if I help him out.”

  Lance had slumped over on top of Jimmy, and the young man struggled to push the dead
weight off of him. He held up his hands and started to plead with the DJ, but then Devon thrust the splintered end of the pool cue into Jimmy’s throat.

  Diva and Autumn had just come out of the women’s restroom when they heard the crack from upstairs. “My heavens,” Diva said. “What was that?”

  Toby shot Clive a knowing glance and smiled. “Sounds like Lance and that blonde kid are going at it so hard they might have broken some furniture.”

  Clutching a hand at her throat, the Adam’s apple cleverly hidden behind a choker with a large oval stone, Diva shook her head. “I just don’t understand how those boys can be at it at a time like this.”

  “I always said Lance could fuck through the end of the world,” Autumn said and laughed, the sound high-pitched and not entirely stable. “And I guess I was right.”

  Diva put an arm around the girl and kissed her temple. “It’s not the end of the world, dear.”

  “It’s not?” Autumn jerked away from Diva. “The dead have come back, haven’t they? That sounds like classic apocalypse stuff to me.”

  Clive raised a finger to his lips and shushed them. “Keep it down, guys. Gil’s trying to sleep.”

  Diva turned and saw Gil slumped over with his forehead resting on the bar. Reaching out a tentative hand and touching one of his hands, she said, “Gil, you okay?”

  He raised his head slowly, as if his neck barely had the strength to bear the weight. He looked awful, the candlelight revealing pale skin and a glassy stare. It seemed as if his eyes had packed up everything they owned in a couple of dark bags and were ready to go on sabbatical. “Just tired,” he said, coughed, spat on the floor, then lowered his head back to the bar. “It’s all a bit much, I just need to rest for a while.”

  Diva didn’t know what to say, but she was damn worried. Gil had seemed fine when she’d taken Autumn into the lady’s room, but now he looked practically on his deathbed. She hadn’t been gone all that long. She was aware of his HIV status, and she knew that despite all the modern discoveries and medications, there was still no cure, and she spent more time than she liked contemplating the time when Gil would get sick and not get better. It wasn’t what she wanted to think about, but she couldn’t deny the truth that Gil harbored an enemy in his blood that would eventually kill him.

  But this was a terribly fast deterioration to be related to his illness. From healthy to barely able to raise his head in half an hour or less, it just didn’t make sense.

  But he was scratched by those things, a voice in her head piped up. Who knows what kinds of diseases they could be carrying. Walking corpses, just teeming with bacteria, and they clawed into his flesh. AIDS might be the least of his problems now.

  Diva shook her head rapidly, the way one might clear an Etch-a-Sketch. She was letting her imagination run wild. In the movies, it only killed you if you were bit by one of the zombies, not scratched, but then again George Romero made fiction not documentaries. As far as she knew, this was the first time anything like this had actually happened in real life; who knew what the rules might be? Might be a good idea to keep a close watch on Gil, just in case.

  “Want me to get you some water?” she asked.

  Gil mumbled unintelligibly then started to snore.

  Autumn had joined Clive and Toby around the corner of the bar, and Diva followed, wringing her hands like a mother whose teenage daughter was late coming home from her first date. Autumn climbed up on a stool and sat staring at one of the candle flames, as if the answers to all of life’s questions could be found in its center. Diva remained standing, fidgeting from one high-heel clad foot to the other, finding it nearly impossible to be still for even five minutes. Almost as if she thought she could keep the tide of the undead at bay if she just kept moving.

  “Any sign of Devon?” she asked, glancing toward the staircase.

  Clive shook his head. “I’m surprised all the noise Lance and Jimmy are making hasn’t driven him back down.”

  “Maybe he likes it,” Toby said. “Maybe he joined in.”

  “Toby, please!” Diva snapped. “This is hardly the time for jokes.”

  Toby looked chastised, a bit petulant. “I’m just trying to keep myself from totally panicking. I figure a little inappropriate humor is better than me breaking down like Devon. Would you rather I go back to trying to call 911 every five minutes and barely keeping myself from pissing my pants?”

  Now it was Diva who felt chastised. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m just a bit on edge, I guess we all are.”

  Autumn continued to stare at the flame, and Toby and Clive clung to one another like children lost in a dark fairytale forest. She looked at them with such love; they were her boys, exactly the people she’d wanted to protect and wrap her mother-hen wings around when she opened Asylum. Not that she was keeping them particularly safe at the moment.

  From upstairs there came another clattering and some thumps like pool balls hitting the floor. “I think I better go up and check on those guys.”

  “I’m sure they’re okay,” Toby said.

  “I’m not so sure about Devon. Did you guys know he almost became a preacher? It’s true. He comes from a very religious family, and he started seminary and everything. Of course, he got kicked out when he was caught in bed with another male student. But to this day, he harbors a lot of religious guilt, and this whole situation is really bringing all that out. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to leave him alone up there; he should be down here with us.”

  Diva started back around the bar toward the stairs. Gil’s head was still down but he was no longer snoring. She considered stopping to check on him, but one crisis at a time. First she’d deal with Devon, then Gil. As she started up to the second floor, she heard Autumn say in a hollow voice, “Tell Lance if he gets another case of crabs, I’m not buying that special shampoo for him this time.”

  In the men’s room, Curtis was sitting on the sink counter, Jarvis standing in front of him. The stripper had discarded the jacket, and Curtis had likewise lost his shirt, his white skin looking even paler next to Jarvis’s dark pigmentation. They had been kissing for at least fifteen minutes, and Curtis’s lips and tongue felt on fire, but it was a pleasant sensation. When Jarvis’s mouth made a trail down Curtis’s throat and chest before finally latching onto an erect pink nipple, Curtis thought he was going to explode in his pants right there.

  “Do you want me to stop?” Jarvis asked, panting as if he’d just come up for air after a deep sea dive.

  “Why would you ask that? Have you heard any complaints from me?”

  “Well, no, it’s just that…I mean, I know that you’ve never.”

  Curtis felt a blush creep into his cheeks. “Oh god, that obvious, huh?”

  “A little bit,” Jarvis said with a smile. “But it’s okay. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “I want this, I really do. After all, this may be my last chance, my last night—”

  Jarvis put a finger against Curtis’s lips, silencing him. “Don’t talk like that. We’re going to make it through this, I feel it.”

  “Jesus, could you be anymore Titanic?”

  Jarvis playfully pinched one of Curtis’s nipples, both of them giggling. “I’m serious. Things are bad, I’m not saying they’re not, but I truly believe that somehow—”

  Curtis put a stop to Jarvis’s false assurances with another kiss. He ran his hands along the stripper’s smooth chest, his flat stomach, finally cupping the banana barely contained in that hammock. “Make love to me,” he said into Jarvis’s ear. “I want you to make love to me.”

  Without a word, Jarvis grabbed Curtis around the waist and lifted him off the sink counter. Rather gently, he laid Curtis on his back on the floor. The single candle stuck to the top of a paper towel dispenser shed a golden glow on them as Jarvis tugged Curtis’s pants and underwear off, tossing them casually into the corner. Jarvis’s thong soon followed, revealing a slender eight inch dick with balls that hung low l
ike ripe fruit. Breathing heavily, Curtis reached out and stroked Jarvis, liking the way the skin moved silkily beneath his fingers.

  “Wait,” Jarvis said, scuttling to his feet and across the room. By the door was a free condom dispenser, a sign above it reading, “TAKE ONE OR TWO OR TEN, BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY MEN.” Jarvis hit the button, a foil-wrapped rubber popping out like candy from a gumball machine.

  Curtis propped himself up on his elbows. “You don’t need that.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you—I mean, if anyone’s going to be clean, it’s you—but you should always use protection. There’s a lot of stuff out there.”

  Curtis laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Who are you kidding? We’re not getting out of here alive. So a condom is sort of a moot point, don’t you think? Now come make love to me, and say my name when you go inside. I want to hear you say my name with that beautiful accent.”

  Jarvis hesitated a moment, staring from the condom in his hand to Curtis on the floor. In the end, he ripped open the packet and slipped the condom over his dick.

  When Diva came up onto the second floor landing, she heard whispering somewhere in the far right corner, on the other side of the pool tables. She wished she had brought a candle with her because she could see almost nothing. Holding her hands out like some cheesy horror movie mummy, she worked her way past the pool tables as if through a labyrinth, using the sound of the whispering to guide her. She assumed it had to be Devon, because it certainly didn’t sound like the noises of passion. But in that case, where were Lance and Jimmy?

  When she reached the wall, she crouched down and reached out toward the corner. She touched a face, the bushy mustache confirming that it was in fact Devon. But there was something else on his face, something wet and sticky. “Devon, honey, what’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer, seemed to try to push himself further into the corner to get away from Diva’s touch. She held her fingers up to her nose and sniffed. She’d broken up enough bar fights to know the scent of blood when she smelled it. “Devon,” she said again, trying to make her voice as calm and reassuring as she could, “what happened? Did you hurt yourself?”