Skin Puppet

by Jeffery Craig

  He encircled the base with one hand and tentatively flicked out his tongue. Toby’s dick bobbed a happy greeting, and when Jon slowly worked his lips over the head and inched downward, Toby’s head began to spin. Once Jon had refreshed his memory on how this was supposed to work and had established a more than satisfactory rhythm, his own mouth moved to match him.

  Time stopped for a while, and Toby couldn’t tell where his body ended and Jon’s began. He decided he didn’t care when his balls begin to tighten. Jon paused for a moment, and when he resumed, one long, wet finger delved between Toby’s cheeks and found what it was searching for.

  Toby approved of the idea, and copied it shamelessly while Jon’s mouth worked and the finger circled and teased. Toby found the small, puckered opening and pressed gently. Jon’s legs spread wider, and Toby felt the muscle give slightly before opening. He forced himself to relax, and his skin pebbled as one long, sure finger slid home.

  “I’m close, Toby.”

  Toby doubled down with his efforts and rolled his hips to guide Jon’s finger deeper. Soon, another was added, and Toby matched his play. In tandem, they probed and worked each other until there was no longer any question of holding back. Jon came first, thick and bitter and salty sweet, and as it filled his mouth, Toby shot.

  Toby lay back, panting and waiting for his cock to ease itself down. After a minute or so, he glanced down. He touched the still engorged skin, and flinched at how sensitive it was. He looked over at Jon, and when he noticed the single arched brow and quizzical expression on the man’s face, he lifted his head to discover things over there appeared ready for some more attention, too.

  “Well, this is a first. I’d ask what was up, but it’s pretty obvious.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “Me either, I just find it unusual. Any thoughts?”

  “Just one.” Jon leaned over Toby’s body and opened a small, concealed drawer built into the wide wooden railing. He withdrew a small bottle of lube and a condom. “Waste not, want not.”

  “You seem pretty prepared for a guy who’s been living like a monk.”

  “Went shopping this afternoon,” Jon told him. “I was thinking positively.”

  Jon unwrapped the condom and eased it over Toby’s cock. It just showed that old skills came back if you gave ‘em half a chance.

  Once he was suited up, with a generous coating of lube covering the condom, Jon straddled him. “It’s time to test your theory.”

  “What theory?”

  “The one about riding a bicycle.” Jon took a deep breath and then positioned himself.

  He had to concede, Toby had been right. Once you got back on, it was just a matter of time before you found your balance.

  Later, when they were laying side by side—still slick with sweat from their exertions, but finally breathing normally—Jon rubbed his hands lightly across Toby’s thigh.

  “You want to shower first?”

  “No, you go ahead. I’ll wait. I’m still trying to recover.”

  Toby heard the shower start, and he rolled over on his side to watch the show through the glass enclosure. Jon caught him watching and slowed his activities to provide a little show. The dragons flexed and coiled. Jon tilted his head back under the streaming shower and rivulets of water cascaded down his head and shoulders while he gently soaped his chest and abs.

  The shower door gave a soft squeak when Toby opened it.

  “I thought you were going to wait.”

  “I was. I changed my mind.” Toby worked the bar into a lather and the scent of citrus and sandalwood rose in the hot, damp air. “Jon, do you have a big hot water heater?”

  “I have one of those on-demand systems. It never runs out. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  Twenty minutes later, Jon handed him an oversized bath towel.

  “Thanks.” Toby wiped drops of moisture from his shoulders and chest then looked up, startled by the loud banging on front door. “Who could that be? What time is it?”

  Jon wrapped his towel around his waist and looked at the alarm clock. “It’s two in the morning. I’ll be right back.”

  Toby quickly finished drying off, and walked to the center of the room and retrieved his jeans from the floor. He could hear Jon’s voice and another, but he couldn’t make out who else was in the loft. Jon came into the room and reached for his own clothes.

  “What is it, Jon?”

  “Melba’s here. She tried calling us both, but didn’t get an answer. My phone was turned off.”

  “Mine too. I didn’t want to be interrupted over dinner, and then one thing led to another and….Anyway, what’s so important she had to track us down at two in the morning? Oh, God! It’s not Madame Zhou, is it? Please tell me she’s okay.”

  Jon reached down and tossed him his shirt as he answered. “She’s fine, but she needs us downstairs. Apparently, something has happened with Moon.”

  Toby tugged on his shirt and finger-combed his hair. He hurried into the living room and found Melba waiting by the bar. She was dressed in jogging suit, and it was obvious her hair had been hurriedly confined in the bright blue scrunchy. A few escaped strands hung around her face, adding to her tired, bedraggled look. “Hey, Melba. What’s going on?”

  “I think it’s bad, Toby. Sorry to interrupt your…ah…dinner. When I couldn’t get hold of you by phone, and you weren’t at your apartment, I remembered you had...ah…plans. I was going to stop by here anyway to get Jon, but I...I…”

  “Don’t worry—it’s fine. As soon as Jon finishes dressing, we can head downstairs. You need water or anything?”

  “No, I’m okay, but I’m going to need an IV drip of caffeine in another hour or so.” She snuck a look past him and then made a comically wide-eyed face. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I had no idea Jon was hiding all of that. I mean…damn!”

  “I know, right? Try not to make a big deal out of this, though. We haven’t decided how public we’re going to be yet.”

  “Okay. But I want some details…tomorrow…when I’m awake—after coffee.”

  Jon entered the room and grabbed his keys and phone. “Ready?”

  “I guess.” Melba answered as she headed to the door. “This better be a problem of epic proportions to justify rousting us all out of…um…bed...at this time of night.”

  “Damn!” She knew better than to toss that kind of challenge out to the universe. It never failed to pick up the gauntlet and throw it back. And usually, it hurt like a total bitch when it hit you right smack in the face.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Zhou Li was waiting just inside the door of Green Dragon when they arrived downstairs. She opened it and ushered them inside.

  “Has she said anything else?” Melba asked the minute she crossed the threshold.

  “No.” Zhou closed and locked the door. “I haven’t pressed. I thought it best to wait until we were all assembled.” She turned to her nephew. “Jon, thank you for coming. I am sorry to interrupt your night. And you, Toby, have my thanks and apologies as well.”

  “It’s no problem, Madame Zhou. Where’s Moon?”

  “She is in the back room. I prepared some tea for her. I think we should join her now.”

  Zhou Li led the way to the curtain of wooden beads, and after a quick, worried glance at each of them, parted the beads and walked through.

  Moon was sitting in one of the chairs by the carved tea table with a cup cradled in her hands. She looked up as they entered, and Toby was struck by her appearance. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a yellow plastic band, exposing the sharp angels of her face, bare of makeup. Her skin was unnaturally pale and drawn and there were dark circles underneath dull, brown eyes. Suddenly, Toby wondered exactly how old she was.

  “Hey, Moon,” he whispered. “What happened?”

  For a moment, he wondered if she heard him. Then, she placed the mug on the table and looked up to meet his eyes. “I think…I need help.”


  He took a seat next to her while the others found their own places around the table. He leaned forward and took her hands in his, shocked by the cold, clammy skin. “Sure, Moon. You know we’ll do anything we can.”

  Her eyes moved from his and rested on Melba, and then, Jon. “I didn’t know what else to do except to come here.”

  “You did exactly right,” Zhou Li assured her. “But we need to know what you need in order to lend assistance.”

  Moon slowly extracted her hands from Toby’s, and sighed. “Yes, you’re right.”

  As she sat collecting her thoughts, Toby realized the ever-present adjectives and dramatic variations in cadence were missing from her speech. That worried him even more than her physical appearance.

  Moon hugged her arms to her chest and rocked slowly back and forth for a moment or two, then realizing what she was doing, abruptly dropped her hands to her lap. She closed her eyes, and sighed. “My…someone…someone in my family is missing.”

  Toby glanced at Melba and then exchanged a worried look with Jon and Madame Zhou. “Who’s missing, Moon?”

  “My…niece. Her name is Diane. Diane Jefferson Jones.”

  “How long has she been missing?” Melba asked.

  Moon shrugged. “A few days now. I’ve been trying to find her.”

  “Have you gone to the police?”

  Moon’s hands slowly crept back up her arms. “Can’t,” she replied as she began to rock once more. “They won’t understand.” Toby watched her sway in the chair, and noticed a couple of long nails on one hand were jagged and broken. The red polish was chipped and peeling on the others. Moon once again stopped her erratic movements and sat straighter in the chair. One hand carefully adjusted the hairband. “I must look a mess.”

  Concerned glances sped around the table. Toby leaned a little closer. “Yeah, Moon. You kind of do look like a mess.”

  She narrowed her eyes at his blunt agreement, and her shoulders tightened in affront. And then, she laughed. “I am a mess. You don’t know the half of it, Toby Bailey! Oh, Lawd!” Her manic laughter trailed off into silence. “You don’t know the half of it,” she whispered.

  “Moon? Why can’t you go to the police?” Melba’s calm voice captured Moon’s attention. “What won’t they understand?”

  “Everything.”

  “Then, tell us. We have to know what’s going on if we’re going to help, Moon.”

  “Might be you won’t understand, either. Might be you’ll decide Moon is plumb crazy.”

  “Could be,” Melba agreed. “But we’d still help. You’re our friend, Moon.”

  “For sure?”

  “For sure. Now, pull yourself together. I’m tired and getting crankier by the minute, and I really need a huge cup of coffee. Most of all, I’m worried about you, and I don’t like worrying unless I have good cause. So, just tell us what’s going on. Okay?”

  Moon turned wide eyes to Toby. “She always like this?”

  “It’s two-thirty in the morning, Moon. She’ll be fine once you tell us what’s happened. It’ll give her something to focus on.”

  Moon fiddled with the chipped varnish on one nail. “Okay, then. Here goes.” Melba quickly dug a notebook and a pen from out of her purse while Moon collected her thoughts. “Diane went missing a few days ago from my momma’s house. She stays there, even though they fight like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Is Diane your sister’s child.”

  “No. I don’t have no sister.”

  “Okay. So, she’s your brother’s daughter?”

  “Nope. No brother neither.”

  “Did Diane’s parents pass away?”

  “No.”

  “Then…?”

  Moon hesitated, and Toby could see her trying to decide how to answer. “Diane’s…not really my niece. We just call her that. My momma thought it for the best, back when Diane was born.”

  “Okay. If she’s not really your niece, is she some kind of cousin?”

  “No. Diane’s…my daughter.”

  The room was quite as everyone worked through that piece of news. Melba tucked a few hanging stands of hair behind one ear, and made a note. “Did Diane know you were her mother?”

  Moon shook her head. “No, ‘cause you see, I’m not her mother — at least, not technically.”

  “Is she adopted?”

  “No. She’s…well, it’s kind of complicated. Her momma didn’t want her after she was born, so she left her with me.”

  “You’re not officially related?”

  “Yes. We are. I told you already. Diane’s my daughter. I just wasn’t her mother back then. I’m her…I’m her daddy. Or, I was when she was born.”

  Toby was the first to put the pieces together, although he should have picked up the clues a little faster than he did. “You were a man.”

  Moon bowed her head and gripped her hands tightly together. “I used to be.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Right after Diane was born, I knew I had to stop being someone I wasn’t. Even when I was little, I knew I was really a woman. I tried to tell everyone, but it just made my life worse. My own momma thought it was a sin to even consider changing what God made. ‘God don’t make them kind of mistakes, Jefferson,’ she told me. That was my birth name. Jefferson Jones, named after Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. ‘That devil, he’s tryin’ to confuse you.’ She talked and hollered and begged, and when that didn’t work, she tried to beat the demon out of me, or starve him out. She even hired a preacher to come to the house and pray him out while I was tied to a chair with a bunch of scarves and belts. It’s funny, you know. While that old skinny man was hollering up to God and slammin’ his fist down on his Bible, I was thinking how pretty one of those scarfs would look draped around my neck, with some kind of sparkly pin to hold it in place.”

  She reached out a hand and grabbed the mug in front of her and took a drink. “If you think it’s hard being a poor, little black boy in the South, you should try being the kind of black boy who grows up knowing he’s really a woman. At the time, I couldn’t imagine anything worse, though circumstances sure taught me different.” Her hands shook as she placed her tea back on the table, and she stared at them for a minute or two before picking up where she’d left off.

  “Somehow, I managed to keep it together long enough to get through school. The day I graduated, I grabbed up a few things and crammed them in an old duffle bag and went down to the bus station and bought me a ticket to take me as far away as I could get with what little money I’d managed to save. I made it all the way to Texas. Houston, Texas. It was hotter there than there, if you can believe it. The next couple of years were bad. I fell in with some rough folk, and ended up hooking on the street. Had myself pretty busted up a time or two when some man buying what I was sellin’ found out I was packin’ a few extras. ‘Course, sometimes, they liked it. They got the best of both worlds. Got to take a walk on the wild side, but told themselves it was okay, since I was just another whore turning tricks when they put the cash down. I even managed to save up a little, by crashing with seven other people in a tiny, one-bedroom flop in the fifth ward and tryin’ to survive on packets of noodles and ketchup and mustard I’d swipe now and then. I scraped together enough to get me these little titties from some doctor from Mexico. I thought I was doing pretty good. Finally livin’ like a lady, or close enough. Makin’ my own damned way, even though hookin’ ain’t any fun.”

  She turned to Toby and smiled, sad and knowing. “You got a taste of that last year, but what you experienced doesn’t even come close to how bad it gets. One night, a couple of fat-assed rednecks decided they didn’t like my boy bits. They beat the shit out of me—right after ramming their dicks up my ass. When they finished having their fun, they dumped me in a downtown alley. Turned out to be the luckiest night of my life.” Moon paused, remembering the past.

  “Why was it lucky, Moon?” Zhou Li asked gently.

  “I met Mar
gie. Her full name was Marjorie Kellington, but she liked to be called Margie. When I came to in the county hospital, she was sitting by my bed. This small, thin older woman, just sittin’ there reading a book and hummin’ a little under her breath. When she saw I was awake, she put the book down and walked over and held a little plastic cup with a straw up and asked me if I needed a drink of water. I was pretty done up with painkillers that morning and was sure I was dead. I asked if she was an angel, and she laughed. It was the best sound I could imagine hearing. Margie had a wonderful laugh. It came from deep inside and just bubbled up ‘til it had to spill right out. She told me she sure as shit wasn’t no angel and I wasn’t dead—though I’d been close to it for a while. Then, she told me to close my eyes and try to rest a little more.”

  While Moon talked, Zhou Li filled another pot with hot water and set a new batch of tea to brewing. When it was done, she refilled Moon’s mug. “Would anyone else care for some?”

  Melba indicated she would, and Zhou fetched another cup, filled it and passed it over, and then prepared a cup for herself. Jon retrieved a couple of bottles of water and passed one to Toby.

  “Margie stayed with me for a few hours while I drifted in and out,” Moon continued. “Before she left, she told me she’d be back later that afternoon. I figured she was just saying that to be nice, but damned if she didn’t show up —just like she promised. She stayed most of the day, every day I was in there. Once they started easin’ back on the drugs, we talked about all kinds of stuff. She had a funny accent—nothing like you hear much in Texas. I learned she was from Boston, but had been livin’ in Houston for a long time. She still said some words funny. She asked me if I had anywhere to go after I got out, or if I needed help. Well, I just started cryin’. She let me bawl myself out and told me it was all going to be okay. When I finished, she handed me a box of tissues so I could wipe up the tears and the snot.”