by Todd Young
Angel
Todd Young
Published by Mercurial Avenue
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Todd Young
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published in the United States of America
1st Kindle Edition
ASIN: B00MAM08LC
ISBN: 9781311072207
Original cover photography by Michael Sapienza
Photo-manipulation and cover design by Justin Baxter
Warning: This book is not suitable for readers aged under 18. It contains sexually explicit descriptions. All characters depicted in sexually explicit descriptions are aged 18 or over.
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Books by Todd Young
Corrupted
Dressing Up
Jumbo
Subject 19
Naked
Angel
Owned
Fracture
Jism
The Realm of the Father is spread out upon the earth,
but men do not see it.
— The Gospel of Thomas: 113
1
Angel had a disease. Something sexual. It was something off the radar, Hunter said, who’d fucked Angel mercilessly, fifteen or sixteen times.
Hunter said that Angel had the disease, and had it undoubtedly. “I pumped him full of my cum,” he said.
Sean said Hunter was full of shit. He said there was no disease, and he told Angel to get himself tested as soon as they got out of the institute — the Umberto Institute, where Angel and Sean, along with nineteen others, had taken part in a clinical trial.
Hunter said the disease wouldn’t show up on any tests. “You don’t know what I’ve given you,” he said. “Think you’re an angel? You’ll never be an angel.”
It took a few days for Angel’s head to clear. He’d been locked in the Umberto Institute for the past three weeks, testing a new aphrodisiac, one that had some pretty wild side effects. As the police were now discovering, the whole thing had been a scam, set up by Raphael Umberto, who’d wanted little more than to acquire a harem of beautiful young men for himself, men whom he might toy with as he pleased.
But now Umberto was dead.
The police had more than one hundred fifteen people to process, most of them the underground staff of the institute, who’d been arrested when Dr Riley raised the alarm. But what was driving Angel crazy was the fact that Hunter, the guy who’d given him the disease, had somehow managed to escape from police custody. Angel had tackled him on the morning they broke free of the institute, and he’d kept a grip on Hunter’s collar at the gate of the building. He’d passed him over to a police officer who’d taken Hunter to the station. The guy had been locked in a cell. But now, somehow, he’d managed to escape.
It defied explanation.
Angel spent more than three hours at the station being questioned by the police, who wanted to know precisely what Umberto had forced them to do. Now Umberto was dead, Angel wondered why it mattered. On his way out of the station he passed Brody. He lifted his hand and said hey, perhaps a little dispiritedly. It would have been good to talk to Brody, to someone, but Brody had his arm around Adam, whom he was comforting attentively. Brody lifted his eyes and acknowledged Angel with a nod, but that was all.
Angel hoisted his pack onto his shoulder and stepped outside. It was overcast. Dark clouds were churning over the city and he figured the storm would break soon. He called his mother from the steps of the station, but got no answer, so he hailed a cab, using the last of his change on a ride home. The $4,500 — the money he was supposed to receive for taking part in the clinical trial — well, he supposed he’d never see that.
“Mom,” he called expectantly as he came through the door. He’d argued with his mother before he left and he was looking forward to seeing her again.
In the hall he smelled the first tendrils of what he mistook for rotten meat, a stench that overwhelmed him as he arrived in his mother’s doorway. She was lying awkwardly on the bed. The bed sheets were twisted around her ankles, a lone hand stretched stiffly toward the phone. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped. It was very clear to him that she was dead, and that she must have been like this for days.
He collapsed and cradled his head in his hands as thunder broke over the house. He cried and then stared through his tears at the shifting patterns of afternoon light on the carpet. How could his life, which had seemed so carefree and untroubled, have run off the rails in a matter of weeks?
A flicker of stuttering images passed through his mind — scenes from the Umberto Institute — the guys in the cafeteria, dressed in their brightly colored suits, the daily injections, the shavings, the Orgasmatron, and amongst it all, Joel smiling wanly.
Where had Joel been this morning? And what about Sean? Angel hadn’t seen either of them at the station. He figured he’d like to speak to Sean, though he now realized he didn’t have his number — that he didn’t, in fact, have numbers for any of the guys in the trial.
He lifted his head and considered his mother’s face. Her eyes were as blank as stones, her mouth twisted in a rigor of anguish. Her case hadn’t been hopeless. With the proper treatment she would have had a chance. Angel would have done anything to see her get it. He’d even been prepared to sell his body to Umberto to get the sort of money she needed.
But maybe even then it had been too late. Maybe, while Angel’d been bargaining with Umberto that night, his mother had been lying here, reaching desperately for the phone. He sighed and turned away. He stood up and scratched his shoulder blades, worrying at the deep valley that was forming between them. Hunter had said this would happen, that Angel’d notice his shoulder blades growing bonier.
But what sort of disease would do that?
He turned to his mother and stared at her once more in silence. He felt as though his body were churning inwardly, as though it were full of turgid water while on the surface he remained calm. He leaned forward, kissed his mother on the brow, and then gently closed her eyes.
2
Angel had an aunt in Maine, a sister of his father’s. They’d never been particularly close, but after the police had been through the house and Angel had done his best at tidying things up, he phoned his aunt and told her about Denise, his mother, and explained that she had died.
“But that’s terrible, Angie. Dead?”
Angel nodded.
“How are you coping? Are you okay on your own?”
Angel was doing his best to hold back the tears. As he listened to the tone of his aunt’s voice he began to shake. It was a relief to get off the phone and let the tears come. Speaking with his aunt brought home the reality of the situation, and no, he wasn’t coping at all. He had no other family, no one to turn to. His mother had an insurance policy for fifty thousand dollars, and when that came through, he’d have to think long and hard about what to do with it.
Later that night, he closed the door to his mother’s room and lay in his own room, staring at the ceiling. The oak beyond his window creaked in the wind, its branches casting jagged arms, filling the ceiling above his head with murky possibilities. He’d never been particularly good at making friends, but there was Anton, his best friend from school. They hadn’t spoken for six months or so, but he figured he could call him. And then there were the guys down at the surf club.
Anton was surprised to hear from Angel. He was home from Dallas, where he was studying molecular biology at the University of Texas. This had
more or less put an end to their friendship, but when Anton heard about Denise, he wanted to come over. They hugged at the door, but it was awkward. Angel had had a thing for Anton since they were freshman, and when Anton left for Dallas, Angel had finally come out and told him he was gay.
Anton had taken it well, but he was obviously embarrassed.
“I kind of figured, dude,” he said, to which Angel had merely nodded, his face aflame.
Now, more than a year later, it wasn’t any easier. The conversation was awkward. Any feelings he’d had for Anton had mysteriously evaporated. It occurred to him they might now be friends in earnest. Yet there didn’t seem to be any way to explain this to Anton. And when he drove off, Angel had a sick, sinking feeling. He turned and paced through the house in silence, overwhelmed by regret and plagued by a leaden sense of loneliness.
At the surf club it was worse. The conversations were brief and strained, gruff platitudes, promises to keep in touch, but no one seemed to know how to react to Angel’s loss.
And there was something going on with his body.
On Monday, he took Sean’s advice and made an appointment at a clinic. He wanted the whole range of tests, everything they had to offer. The doctor, a bald man in his fifties, frowned.
“Some of these things are very rare.”
“Could you do them all — like, everything? I want to be sure.”
The doctor nodded, and three days later the tests came back. Angel was clean. Only he wasn’t clean. He knew that.
He’d been surfing for three or four years, but now, for some reason, when he stepped into the ocean, his skin stung, some kind of reaction to salt water. And that night, in the bathtub, his skin began to peel, sloughing away from his legs as though it were sodden paper. As he lifted his thighs from the soapy water, he frowned at the skin he’d revealed; it was smooth and clean and glowing. When he stood up to examine himself in the mirror, in a couple of places he could see faint traceries of veins.
He gave up surfing. Salt water was too painful. But his skin continued to peel, flaking away from his body until it was pale and smooth. Something about his face seemed to be changing as well. He’d always been good-looking, but now his cheekbones seemed decidedly more pronounced. His eyebrows dipped upward, and his eyes intensified, filling with light until they were a startling blue.
The following day in the street, he was stopped by a hand on his arm.
“Angel?”
“Joel?”
“No. It’s Finn. You might not remember me.”
“No. I remember you.” The boy who looked so like Joel they’d been mistaken for twins.
“You’re looking good.”
“Yeah?” Angel said a little uncertainly, and wondered if this was merely politeness.
“You sure got rid of your tan quick.”
“Yeah. I’ve been … keeping out of the sun.”
“I thought you were a surfer.”
“I’ve given it up.”
Finn nodded.
Angel said, “You haven’t seen Hunter, have you?”
“No. Looks like he skipped the country. Still, who cares? Anything to get out of that place.”
Angel nodded. “You got any of the guys’ numbers. I’d like to track a couple people down.”
“I have Tomas’s.”
“Yeah?”
“But he’s back in Norway.”
“Still. Could I have it? I’d like to talk to him.”
Finn gave Angel Tomas’s number and they said goodbye, but after he’d turned away, Angel glanced back and caught Finn staring at him like he was what? Like he was diseased?
3
Tomas said hello. It was the middle of the night in Norway. Angel hadn’t thought of that, though Tomas said not to mind, to give him a minute and he’d be awake. He was fixing himself some coffee. Angel paced the house, pacing toward his mother’s room and away again. He felt, somehow, though he knew it was irrational, that she was in there still, and the idea frightened him.
“You are there?” Tomas said.
“Yeah.”
“And how are you?”
“Good — fine,” Angel said, but at the sound of Tomas’s voice, who had always been so kind, he felt like breaking down.
“You want to talk?”
“I want … I was wondering. Do you have any numbers — numbers of the other guys who were in the trial? I need to speak to some people. I need to work out what’s going on.”
“Your disease?”
“Yes.”
Tomas sighed.
“Don’t, Tomas. Please. You don’t know what’s happening to me. My skin’s peeled.”
“Peeled?”
“Yes. All the outer layers. All of it’s peeled away, and my hair’s falling out as well.”
“You’re going bald?”
“No, the hair on my body. On my arms and legs. It’s washing away in the shower.”
Tomas sighed again. “Have you spoken to the police? That Warren. He will know what is happening.”
Angel hadn’t thought of that.
“He was in on all of it,” Tomas said. “Thick with Umberto and with Hunter too. He will know.”
The following day, Angel made an appointment to speak with the detective who was handling the case, a man named Johnson. The station was much like any modern office, utilitarian furniture arranged grid-like beneath wide expanses of fluorescent lights. Johnson led him through a door and offered him a seat.
“A disease?”
“Yeah.”
“They injected you with something?”
“No. That guy. Hunter. The one who got away. He,” Angel paused, “fucked me.”
Johnson smirked. “Sounds like there was a lot of that going on.”
“It’s not like … I didn’t want to.”
“He raped you?”
“No. It’s just. It wasn’t …”
Johnson nodded. “I’d say get yourself tested. See if there’s something, and if there’s nothing, well, I don’t see what we can do.”
“But I’ve been tested. There’s nothing showing up. Nothing coming up on the tests.”
“Well?” Johnson frowned. “What makes you think …?”
“They’ve done something to me.”
Just this morning, the last of Angel’s pubic hair had washed away in the shower. And when he’d stepped out, his pale body had taken on a rosy glow, as though he had the skin of a boy, flushed from exertion.
“I thought, if you spoke to Warren, if you asked him, he’d know.”
“That one!” Johnson said and threw back his head. He stared at the ceiling for a long time.
“Couldn’t you ask him? Or couldn’t I ask him? He was there when Hunter told me about it,” Angel said. “He knows.”
Johnson ran a hand across his chin. He stared at some paperwork on the desk in silence and then slowly nodded. “Okay,” he said, lifting his head. “We’ll question him.”
Angel waited out front of the building. He didn’t know why, but he’d bought himself a pack of cigarettes this morning. While he waited, he smoked three. When he’d tried them, when he was younger, he’d thought they tasted foul. He hadn’t been able to see why anyone would take them up. But now, drawing the smoke in seemed to somehow calm him. There was a curious lightness to his body, a feeling as though he might drift away, or merge with the air. The cigarette seemed to ground him, but when an officer came out to find him, Angel crushed it beneath his shoe and followed the officer into the station.
Warren had laughed, apparently. Thought it was some great joke. When Johnson asked him about the disease, asking what sort of disease it was, Warren had said it was “paranormal,” and then broken into an odd, cracked laugh that startled all of them.
Johnson said Warren had flipped. The doses of ZFU he’d been giving himself had wreaked havoc with his body, and now, coming down, he was making no sense, and was too dangerous to move to a penitentiary.
4
On the
way home, Angel turned the word “paranormal” over in his mind. What sort of disease would be “paranormal?” He checked the definition on his cell, and found that it meant something beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding.
Where did that leave him?
Nowhere.
The money from his mother’s policy came through, and Angel locked himself in the house, ordering in and leaving the house littered with takeout boxes.
Tomas had given him numbers for Jesse and Steve, neither of whom Angel particularly liked. He’d also given him the number of a guy named Jason, who in the institute had always seemed to be on the periphery of anything that was going on. Angel didn’t think he wanted to speak to Steve or Jesse. He didn’t feel he knew Jason well enough to simply call him up. And anyway, what could he hope to learn?
His bones started to ache. He woke the following morning, twisted his body, and heard every bone in his spine crack. It was an incredible relief, as though he’d been holding himself hunched, and when he stood up to use the bathroom, he was sure he was taller.
All of the guys had gained a little height in the institute, a side-effect of the ZFU, but as Angel stared at himself in the mirror, he wondered if he’d grown again. He’d never been particularly tall, but now he had the feeling that his body was lanky. Also, something was going on with his hair. It had always been dark, dark in a way that gave it a purple sheen, but it had been coarse and unruly, battered by the ocean and the sun. Now, this morning, when Angel ran his hand through it, it felt smooth.
Silky.
It seemed to have lost some of its body as well. It was sliding forward and flopping over his forehead.
He decided to go out, to get his hair cut. When he came back he would clean the house. He couldn’t leave it like this, and for some reason, no matter how hard he tried, he was dogged by the feeling that his mother was here, in the house and watching him.
“What sort of conditioner do you use?” the hairdresser said.
