by Todd Young
Hunter stopped by the foot of the stairs and placed his hand on the small of Angel’s back, directing him gently but firmly to the staircase on the left hand side. Angel took hold of the bannister and began to climb, turning his head to the domed ceiling high above, where cherubim trumpeted in the clouds.
The corridor was wide and long, separated into segments, so that they were seemingly endlessly opening into another new vestibule decorated in gilt and lined with sofas and occasional tables and paintings. Finally, at the end, Hunter opened a pair of wide, double doors, and said, “This is the drawing room.”
He ushered Angel inside.
The carpet was blood red and impossibly plush. Angel’s toes sank into it, and as Hunter lit a gaslight on the wall, he stared at the contrast between the white skin of his feet and the geranium copper carpet. His toes, no even his ankles and shins were stained from the cells. Angel bent forward to inspect the stains, blocking Hunter and the situation he was in from his mind. He was abruptly reminded of it when Hunter took hold of his sac from behind, from between his legs, and squeezed. He trailed his fingers up the cleft of Angel’s ass, toying with his hole before he drew them away.
Angel took a sharp breath and turned around, distress distorting his features.
Hunter laughed.
Angel looked at him a little more pointedly, thinking the guy had to have some feelings, but in response Hunter simply smiled. “I could bust your nuts. You want that?”
Angel shook his head.
“Take a seat, then.”
It was possibly the most garish room Angel had ever seen. As Hunter wandered around attending the gaslights, Angel began to wonder where he was. Entering the house from the cells had been unexpected, but Angel had been distracted by the fact he was with Hunter. Now, as he sank into the sofa, he lifted his eyes. Awed by the size of the room and the furnishings, and feeling naked within it, he clasped his hands over his groin. The silky fabric of the sofa was titillating the hairless skin of his sac, his ass, and the backs of his thighs. Automatically, even if disgusted, he’d responded to the touch of Hunter’s hand, and now his cock was determined to balloon.
Protectively, and a little amazed as he did it, he curled his wings, folding them over his shoulders and around his chest until he was cloaked. Now, he found, with his wings between his legs, he could remove his hands, and he lifted them slowly, letting his cock unfurl until it was stiff, but frustratingly tickled by his feathers.
After the gloom of the cells, the gaslight was painfully bright. The fixtures sputtered, throwing waves of watery light over the room, light that muddied the confusion of colors and patterns already choking the enormous space. In the Victorian era, bare surfaces had been considered poor taste. Here, every spare inch of space was cluttered. Occasional tables littered the room along with a variety of styles of chairs and pillows and throws. The surfaces were muddled with a hodgepodge of litter, with bouquets of dried grasses in china vases, stuffed birds and scientific curios.
Hunter squatted by the fireplace and lit a match. The fire, already laid, sputtered to life, and as it caught, Hunter turned. He frowned, got slowly to his feet and regarded Angel for a moment, interested in something, it appeared, though Angel had no idea what it was until Hunter said, “That’s what little boy angels do.”
“What?”
“Sit with their wings around them.”
“Are there little boy angels?”
Hunter laughed. “I don’t fucking know. The only angels I’ve ever seen are you lot.”
Angel now understood that Hunter had meant it as a kind of joke. He smiled weakly.
Hunter took a seat beside Angel and put a hand on his knee. “How old are you?” he said.
Angel had sucked in a breath. “Nineteen,” he said, releasing it warily.
Hunter’s hand moved a little, sliding under Angel’s feathers. Knowing his cock was stiff and that he didn’t want Hunter to touch it, Angel jumped up. He gripped his wings and gathered them in front of his groin before turning to Hunter.
“Man. Your ass. Can’t wait to get my cock up it again.”
Angel started to cry.
70
It wasn’t as bad as the first time, or the first fifteen or sixteen times, and Hunter only did it once. By then, Angel was drunk and pumped up on tadalafil and ecstasy. And he’d been in Hunter’s “house” for hours.
After getting off the sofa, he wandered toward the windows in a desire to see the outside world. He tweaked the curtains aside, and then stood for moments, staring at the blank, featureless stone wall that was the glass. It occurred to him for the first time since he’d entered the house that this was an illusion, a haze, in exactly the same way as the cells were. And as he turned it over, he guessed it was something like living in someone else’s imagination, only somehow it was solid.
Dispirited, he let the curtain fall from his hand. Then he stood in silence, staring unseeing at the dark brocaded fabric.
At that point, something snapped in his memory or in his perception of time. Because the next thing he knew he was seated on the sofa again, though Hunter had now moved. He was sitting on a large winged armchair upholstered in an embroidered floral pattern. He’d laid his head against the lace antimacassar and was watching Angel calmly over his cheek bones.
“You okay now?”
Angel didn’t know.
Hunter got up with a start and poured them each a glass of whiskey. Angel accepted his with a hesitant smile, surprised, but pleased at the same time, because it did at least mean that Hunter had a considerate side. By the third glass, Angel knew Hunter simply wanted to get him drunk. Which wasn’t the end of the world, he supposed, as it would offer some measure of escape. He tossed the third glass back and handed it to Hunter, who’d placed the crystal decanter on a table beside his armchair. He accepted Angel’s glass, poured him a fourth, and then began to speak.
“Next month, I’ll be one hundred forty seven.”
Angel eyes widened. He forced his lips together and nodded, as though surprised to some degree, but willing to believe what he’d heard.
“I was born in 1867. In Nebraska.”
Angel lifted the whiskey to his lips. Hell, if he stalled long enough he could be shitfaced by the time anything happened.
“It was a large family, they were in those days. Thirteen kids. I was the youngest.”
Again, Angel nodded. He tossed the whiskey back, but with the fifth, Hunter handed him seven small tablets, four of them green and three red. Angel frowned at them before accepting them cautiously.
“What are they?” he said, lifting his eyes.
“It’s what I give all the boys.”
Angel twisted his lips, sickened at the thought of Hunter doing this on a daily basis, sickened at the thought of him pulling some poor broken guy out of the cells so he could drug and rape him. Then it occurred to him that Cole had been here, and only last night. That had been Angel’s idea, for Cole to come here and try to convince Hunter he was falling in love with him.
“Did Cole take these?”
Hunter nodded. A broad grin broke out. “Said he enjoyed it, if you want to know the truth.”
Angel drew his head back and stopped, wondering if this was true. Cole might have said it. It was after all the lure that they’d given Hunter, Cole’s apparent affection for him. “What are they?” Angel said, his voice rising angrily. The thought that Cole had been here and that he’d been with Hunter had been one thing, but now, seeing how much more to it there had been …
Angel glimpsed an inner vision of Cole’s face and hung his head.
Had he promised he’d never hurt the kid? Is that what he’d said?
Not only had he been fucking around with Finn, he’d forced Cole into this situation. And why would it have been any better for Cole last night than it was for Angel today? Angel’s chest heaved painfully and though he tried to repress it, a sob broke out. He glanced at Hunter in distress.
“I tell you w
hat, you keep crying, and I’ll hurt you. Badly. Nothing I like better than fucking a guy’s junk up.”
Almost immediately, Angel stopped, a fresh wave of nausea flooding his system. His cock had long since softened. Now it began to retreat along with his balls.
“We’re going to have fun,” Hunter said, rasping his hands together and grinning.
71
Hunter had worked as a farmhand as a child, as might have been expected, but at seventeen he’d left the farm and travelled to New York. In those days, the city had been booming, the streets thronged with carriages and pedestrians and paper boys. Almost immediately, Hunter had slipped into the underworld. He was young and extraordinarily attractive and, though Angel found it difficult to believe, naive, he said. A man had approached him. Hunter hadn’t understood, but in the space of a few minutes he’d had his first sexual experience in a grimy back alley. He’d seen animals on the farm, of course, so he got the basic idea, but it’d never occurred to him that a man could do to another man what had been done to him.
He’d found a room in a boarding house and here he’d met Miriam, a young, vibrant, single woman, certainly a rarity in the late nineteenth century. Miriam was an angel in utero who’d been infected with the plague when she was fifteen. Now, well into her twenties, she was desperate to find a mate to bind with. She was in love with Hunter, she said, and had finally convinced him to try binding with her. It hadn’t worked, because despite what had happened in the alley, Hunter did and always had liked men. It was simply that his natural inclination was to dominate.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, Hunter had little chance to play this role once he’d been infected. He quickly descended into the world of the dark, and here, against his will, he was used horribly by the men of the city.
At this point, as the first tendrils of sympathy licked at Angel, he pulled himself up and began to question Hunter’s motives. Was this a story he told everyone? Had Cole sat here last night listening to this? Hunter went on, and as he talked, the horrible reality of what was happening dawned on Angel. Hunter was trying to charm him. He was laying himself bare in an attempt to win Angel over, his teeth flashing winningly now with the occasional trusting smile.
Angel glanced at the floor, embarrassed, and gulped on his whiskey awkwardly. Discordantly, a wave of unexpected euphoria welled within his chest and began to spread throughout his body like warm water. He closed his eyes and knew it was the ecstasy. It was impossible not to smile. Again, his cock began to mushroom slowly, though he guessed he could blame the tadalafil for that.
“You feeling better?”
Angel nodded without lifting his head. The worst thing now was that he didn’t think Hunter was so bad. He could at least see the guy had a human side. How bad was it going to be to get into bed and …?
Angel lifted his head and glanced at Hunter, but as he met the guy’s dark, deep set eyes, he saw something dark and disturbing. He shivered spastically and jumped off the couch. His wings unfurled, revealing his boner.
“You ready?”
“What?” Angel said. He turned defensively, hiding his genitals with his wing.
“You ready?” Hunter nodded pointedly at Angel’s groin.
Angel closed his eyes for a moment and stood still, one hand clutching a fistful of feathers, within which he could feel the rigid shaft of his cock. Hunter’s top lip lifted. He leered, and again Angel felt sick. Yet he was cold now. And exhausted. Everything seemed to be turning to mush, and Angel was suddenly aware of how alone he was. He again felt as he had when he was a child, when daunted by the enormous prospect of being responsible for his own life. At times like those he’d wanted nothing more than to be comforted by his mother, and now, crazily, he was thinking it’d be okay to sink into Hunter’s arms.
The idea stunned Angel, and he fell backwards, plonking onto the sofa. He sat awkwardly, as he had fallen, with one wing trapped clumsily behind his back. It wasn’t painful and he left it, content to sit there gripping his erection through a fistful of feathers.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Angel’s mother felt very close. And with her presence came the sense that he’d forgotten about her, though his mother, if he wasn’t imagining this, didn’t want him to worry over this.
Hunter began to speak again, but Angel was beyond listening. He was lost in his thoughts — smashed — not only drunk but high on ecstasy, the Cialis feeding his cock. He began to feel a little numb, and as though he were disconnected from what was happening. He heard, “… Miriam …” more than a few times, as Hunter went on, but made no attempt to listen until the words, “… and so that’s how I learned to flip reality,” broke into his consciousness.
“What?”
“That’s how I learned to flip reality.”
“How?”
“Aren’t you listening?”
Without thinking of the consequences, Angel shook his head.
Hunter closed his mouth and sat in silence for a long time, contemplating Angel moodily. Through the misty haze of drugs overwhelming his body, Angel unexpectedly glimpsed something beautiful in Hunter, something fleeting, because when Hunter spoke again it vanished. “Right. Well,” he said, unable to mask his disappointment. “Let’s fuck then.”
“I gather that was hell,” Finn said, once Hunter had locked the cell and left them.
Automatically, Angel nodded. It had been. Of course it had been. But Hunter had made Angel fuck him. And in that act of symbolic revenge, Angel had found some measure of satisfaction. He’d been sexually aroused and active. He’d orgasmed, so it couldn’t not have felt good. Physically good, he said to himself, reaching for his ass, but mentally and emotionally fucked.
The tip of his middle finger kissed something wet on the tender skin of his hole. Angel drew it away and frowned. A moment later he recognized the dark, oily sludge for what it was.
Hunter’s jism.
72
“I feel sick,” Angel said.
It was the following day and they were warming their wings, lying on the floor under bright sunshine, a foot nestled between each other’s thighs.
“Just the thought that he … that I …”
“How does he make you …?”
“I don’t know. Pumped me up on alcohol and ecstasy and Cialis.”
“Cialis?”
“It’s for erectile dysfunction.”
A moment of silence passed. Angel rushed to fill it with, “But it’s like, more than that. You’re not even with it. You don’t know what you’re doing. He talks and talks and talks, and it’s like he’s hypnotizing you.”
Silence.
“Don’t you believe me?”
“What?”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
“Well, it’s not like I wanted it to happen.”
Finn answered in a measured voice, each word enunciated a little too clearly. “I never said you did.”
Angel let it go. A few moments passed, and then he said, “So how come he’s never — what was all that about him not touching you?”
Silence.
“Finn?”
“Nothing,” Finn said, his voice short.
“But—”
Finn lifted himself onto his elbows and twisted his body. “Look. Don’t think about it. Don’t talk about it, okay. Can you do that?”
“But you must have—”
“I told him I had AIDS, right. It’d kill him in utero. I told him Jason has it too.”
Angel compressed his lips in silence, a hazy sense of anger rising. Finn had sat here, safe from Hunter, and let Angel be … what? Hopelessly fucking humiliated? “So you guys get a free pass?” he said, all but spitting the words.
“Hell, Angel, what do you want me to do? I wasn’t expecting you to come along. You want me to protect you too?”
Angel tucked his head onto the flagstones and squeezed his eyes tight. Minutes passed before he started, sensing Finn near him. He turn
ed to see him kneeling clandestinely by his shoulder, his expression anxious. “Look,” he said gently. “Can you try not to think about it?”
“What?”
“The AIDS thing.”
“Why?” Angel said, lowering his brows.
“Other’s might pick up on it. Hunter might. And Angel, I really can’t be with him. I mean that.”
With these words a tone Angel hadn’t heard before crept into Finn’s voice. After gazing at him for a moment, Angel nodded. Finn smiled reassuringly, and in reply, Angel felt his spirits lift.
Minutes later, they were entangled quietly together again on the floor when Angel said, “This not eating thing is weird.”
“Not needing a toilet is weirder.”
“I guess so. But it never occurred to me I could exist on nothing but water and light.”
“Or not exist.”
“Well, we’re existing.”
“Barely.”
Angel nodded, thought for a moment, and then said, “Have you got any idea how this haze is working?”
Finn was silent for a moment. “Not really.”
“You know, he’s got a whole fucking house up there.”
“A house?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“At the end of the corridor.”
“What do you mean?”
“The corridor just sort of merges into it. The front of the house looks like it’s melted.”
Again, Finn was silent.
“It’s like, you can see the door, and the shapes of the windows on either side, and then it just fuses with the corridor.”
“What’s inside?”
“It’s a big old Victorian house. Two stories. He took me upstairs — we would have been on the grand concourse — so obviously this place doesn’t add up.”
“Not spatially, at least not in any 3D classical sense.”
“I was thinking about it. When I was in the house, it felt as though I’d stepped into Hunter’s mind, as though the house was a fixture of his imagination.”
“He’s strong,” Finn finally said, after another long silence. “He has us in the darkness with him, and somehow he’s able to master our perception of reality.”
