Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  “Advance.” The commanding officer threw his arm forward. All four men scrambled up over the icy mud and ran full pelt toward the wasteland that suddenly yawned in front of them.

  Immediately there was a series of flashes to Clive’s left. He realized it was machine-gun fire coming at them from a hidden Argie dugout. Clive fired back then dropped to the ground. In that second there was a thud then a blinding explosion. Phosphorus lit up the area and the man running in front fell, taking Clive with him.

  He lay facedown as pieces of shrapnel, flesh, and earth rained down, praying as the futility of his life passed through him like a night sweat. Not me, not me, not now, please God not me…. The chant went on until the thudding in his eardrums subsided and the external world rushed back, and with it an acceleration of time. Survival. A possible future. Check your limbs, eyesight, weapons.

  Everything seemed intact. Sound returning first, as a distant wailing that disorientated him, taking him back to the police sirens of Northern Ireland—the first thing you’d hear after a bomb attack—then the wailing intensified into screaming.

  Clive lifted his face. It was the soldier next to him, the cockney, his ashen face rolled toward Clive’s, eyes popping in terror. Blood spurted out of the stump where his leg should have been onto the snow. The Welshman ran over. Crouching, he pulled a torque tight around the wound and screamed for a medic. Clive reached for the headset Cedric had thrown down next to the dying soldier, then something hit him in the back of the neck. A bullet or a piece of flying shrapnel in the narrow strip of exposed flesh between his collar and helmet. The force of it knocked him back to the ground.

  Unsteadily he raised himself to his knees and touched his neck, terrified that it might be a serious injury and it was only shock keeping him alive. There was blood on his fingers. A bullet graze it had to be, a near hit by some invisible sniper.

  Something pale flickered at the perimeter of his vision; it looked like a piece of torn sailcloth rising and falling on the night wind, strangely incongruous over a battlefield. It disappeared into the hazy horizon and Clive forgot it.

  The bat licked the blood from its stained muzzle. The taste was a resounding medley of color fusing into harmony but there was a note missing, a complementary underpinning, high-pitched, pure, and soulful. The animal’s sonar moved forward over the rocky terrain, reading, searching.

  The landscape was rendered a smoky red with boulders translating as large dark stationary masses against the silhouette of a crimson sky. That was the trouble with these night-sight goggles, Juan thought, his head unnaturally heavy from the equipment, you couldn’t tell lumps of rock from abandoned tanks. Suddenly one of the masses began to move, running from one edge of his night sight to the other. Lifting the machine gun, he aimed and fired. The movement of the gun ratcheted up his arm. A howitzer to his right burst into action a second later, firing in the same direction. Gustavo. The mass stopped, then dropped to the ground.

  “Have we got them?” Juan screamed, pushing the goggles to his forehead. Gustavo joined him. Very cautiously Juan moved his head to the gap between the mounds of earth so he could peer out of the buried post. A tracer bullet whistled past, narrowly missing him, and buried itself in a sack in the opposite wall. Immediately sand began to trickle out.

  “Where are the bastards hidden? In the mud like fucking lizards?” Gustavo hissed behind him. Juan crossed himself, thanking Jesus for his survival.

  “If they know where we are, we are sitting ducks!”

  “How can they know? No one can see a fucking thing through that mist.”

  “Then how could they know where to fire?”

  “Some gringo got lucky, that’s all, relax.”

  The others began to argue about whether to abandon the post or not. Juan leaned against the freezing wall and felt for his rosary tucked safely in an inner pocket. Another four hours in this hellhole and he’d go crazy.

  “We’ll die of cold or boredom, or maybe both.”

  “So? It might be a better way than being sliced to pieces by some mad fat Englishman.”

  They laughed, but the youngest among them—Carlos, barely seventeen—looked frightened. “Listen, you guys, I have a fiancée, she’s expecting me home.”

  “You, a fiancée? You haven’t even popped your cherry yet!”

  “I don’t care what you say, I think we should cut our losses and fall back. We’ve been here for two days and what have we done? Nothing.”

  Arguing broke out again. The kid had a point: apart from a few sporadic bursts of gunfire and a few casualties, the post felt obsolete, like some forgotten island in the middle of a vast stormy sea. It wasn’t a reassuring feeling.

  When Juan turned to the others, everyone looked up to listen—even his superior officer—because the soldier was famous for speaking only when it was important. He paused for a second, secretly thrilling at the anticipation on the eager faces. Leadership suited him, he knew it; it heated his blood.

  “We should radio to see whether they have a position on the advancing troops and then make a decision.” He addressed the commanding officer directly, then, for the sake of decency, added a questioning “No?” so the man wouldn’t feel as if his authority was being threatened.

  “I was just going to suggest that myself,” the officer replied, glancing furtively at the expectant soldiers. Immediately the radio operator got to work.

  Satisfied, Juan reached into his rations and began to chew on some beef hash, the salt flooding his body with renewed energy. It was good to know he still had his sense of taste; hunger made him human again.

  “They have a position on advancing troops—five miles north of us. Base says they will have backup here within the day.”

  “Bullshit, they said that yesterday.”

  “I say we stay.”

  “Doesn’t our opinion count?”

  “This is the army, not a fucking democracy. I’m the highest-ranking officer here and when I say we stay, we stay.”

  Juan looked back at the terrain—it was eerily quiet, unnaturally so. Something had to give and that meant movement. He was almost looking forward to it, the waiting was worse than anything.

  “Relax, you guys, we’ll see action before dawn. I know it, I can feel it in my cock.” He grabbed his crotch for emphasis and the others laughed, the tension briefly dissipating then crystallized as thickly as before. Somewhere nearby an owl hooted, startling a couple of the soldiers who, after realizing it was a false alarm, laughed again. Juan slipped off his helmet and lifted his balaclava to scratch his scalp, which was itchy from days of dust and filth. A sharp blow knocked him against the wall and something flashed past his face and out over the trench beyond. He crouched, dazed.

  “What was that?” Dario asked. “White shrapnel?”

  “From what? There was no explosion,” Carlos piped up as he knelt beside Juan. “You okay, my friend?”

  Juan reached up to the back of his neck: it felt like a bullet graze, he was bleeding slightly.

  “I’ll live.”

  “Maybe it was an angel.”

  “Sure, where I come from angels don’t have fucking teeth. You’re fucking crazy.”

  “We’re all fucking crazy to be in this war.”

  “Hey, maybe I’ll just catch some sleep—you guys can take over for an hour or so. Wake me when the marines come.”

  “Sure, Mr. Smart-arse.”

  Juan curled up, pulled his parka hood over his head, and fell instantly asleep.

  Five miles north Clive crawled into the Argentine tent they’d commandeered. He wanted to see if he could find new boots his size. There was nothing but a couple of sleeping bags and some rations. Inside a biscuit tin Clive found some chocolate. He stuffed the dark bitter pieces into his mouth. He’d never tasted anything so delicious. He sat on one of the sleeping bags. The Argies must have abandoned the tent in a blind panic, there were still socks strewn across the bottom. He leaned back and, closing his eyes, slipped into a deep dr
eam.

  He is sitting in a crowded bar. There is a drink in his hand: whiskey, Jameson’s, he can smell it. The place is noisy—he recognizes it vaguely as a bar in Soho he used to go to, tucked behind the theater district. He liked it because it was like a Dickensian teahouse—there was even a portrait of Disraeli on the wall. He also liked it because, although the clientele was mainly heterosexual, it was a discreet pickup for men.

  Clive looks around. The crowd is mixed: young couples meeting after work, suits, secretaries, advertising geeks in denim, women in tailored elegance spelling money. Tourists stand out among the English with their suntanned blondness and beige leather. From the clothes and the rosy faces Clive guesses that it is winter outside. As the voices pull into an articulated focus he steps into the throng and immediately forgets that he was dreaming.

  There is a man sitting at the bar, his back to him. An empty stool stands to the right of him, almost as if people are afraid to sit next to him. On his other side two women chat loudly together. One, a vivacious blond in her early forties, attractive and confident, gestures dramatically with her hands, as if she hopes to catch the attention of the dark silent man.

  Clive doesn’t need to see his face, he can read the signs: the way the youth sits, his broad back tapering to his waist, below which his hard, round arse juts out over the wooden seat, smugly waiting to be fucked, to be toppled from all its glory; the way the women keep glancing furtively; the body language of the men, either puffed up or leaning slightly in that direction, as if they too would like to be looked at, or at least acknowledged by the mysterious stranger. It is the aura of the famous or the extremely handsome—Clive knows it is the latter.

  He pushes his way through the crowd. People keep turning to him, acknowledging him. They all look vaguely like people he knows, their features a composite of characteristics of friends, family, ex-girlfriends, even teachers from his primary school. As he passes among them, somewhere in his unconscious comes the dull revelation that these chimeras are composed of people who have played a significant part in his life, who have loved him in one way or another.

  He sits down on the vacant bar stool. The bartender, an uncanny mixture of his father and his maternal grandfather, immediately places another Jameson’s in front of him, as if he knows exactly what Clive drinks. The dark man continues to look directly ahead. Clive glances across—the stranger’s thighs are muscular and long under tight jeans, the legs of a working man or athlete. A fold of his white shirt exposes a glimpse of stomach, and the olive skin, taunting in its muscled, rippling perfection, fascinates him. It is an oasis of sex, a chink in the enigma into which he could slip his fingers and break the surface of aching desire. But he doesn’t. He plays the moment, eyes down—the stranger’s prick thickening under his stare, pushing the denim up into a solid curve below the belt.

  He can feel the heat of the youth rising off him even from where he is sitting; his aroma is rich, a sweet musk. Without saying a word the boy turns. Clive stays still, eyes averted, relishing the feel of the gaze traveling across his skin. Finally he looks up and smiles to himself.

  The boy is stunning, striking in the way of a roughly hewn sculpture, as if the artist, having carved such classical beauty, had been loathe to complete the task for fear the face would be too gorgeous, too perfect in its symmetry. Therefore his splendor lies in the infinitesimal imperfections: the nose, aquiline and noble, looks as if it might once have been broken; the strong chin—intensely masculine—is split by a deep dimple; the eyes, almond and almost lidless with golden irises flecked with green, are, at second glance, placed slightly at an angle, the right being fractionally higher than the left; but the mouth…the mouth is faultless.

  Just staring at it gives Clive an instant erection. Placed in a narrow face with very high cheekbones that hint at some distant Indian heritage, the lips are almost an obscenity. Curved and impossibly full, they jut out from the boy’s face as if they had been painted on at the last minute. It is the mouth of a far older and far more experienced man; a wry knowing plays at its corners, suggesting that the boy is acutely aware of his own beauty and finds its existence in such a body ironic. It is not the mouth of a boy but rather the mouth of a libertine, the lips of someone who, despite his intelligence, can’t control his own inherent carnality.

  The balance of his beauty is offset by a scar that runs from the top of one cheek toward the corner of his mouth. It only adds to the flawed edginess Clive finds so erotic; it is a mark of aggression, of experience, which sits like a paradox on one so young. The scar, Clive notes, is a deep mauve and looks as if it is still healing, the flesh beaded like the uneven lip of a vagina. He can almost taste it.

  They lock eyes and the youth’s desire cuts like a blade. Shaken, he stands. The boy follows and Clive is surprised to discover that the youth is taller than himself, his shoulders not yet settled into their adult width, his hips and buttocks a too narrow basket for the heavy cock, now a stiff rod pushing against the blue denim. They say nothing. Clive, knowing that the boy will follow, allows his dreaming to take him back through the crowded room toward a door with a neon Exit sign.

  The door leads into a stairwell, the kind that might exist in any building, the concrete spiral that always leads to a roof. Clive begins to climb, vaguely aware of the incongruity of walking out of a bar with the atmosphere of a Victorian pub and into a stairwell that belongs to a sixties’ office block. He doesn’t care; everything feels right, feels as if it has fallen into place, destiny running its course. The boy behind him shadows his steps, echoing his gestures, his breath, his heat, on the back of his neck.

  He begins to climb faster until he is running full pelt as the stairs wind up flight after flight. Finally, at the top, the stairwell finishes with a door marked Authorized Persons Only. Without hesitation, and without turning around, Clive pushes it open.

  He is on a roof high over a city he doesn’t recognize. Instead of the freezing English winter the temperature is balmy, the view below a bustling hornets’ nest of lights, cars, sirens blasting, waves of music, exotic, thudding, floating up like translucent bubbles. Behind him he hears the sound of the door closing and the panting of the boy as he catches his breath.

  He closes his eyes. Waiting. That dangerous, accelerating eternity before the first caress. Heart pounding like a frenzied drummer. Cock bursting. Skin a thousand sensors bursting with expectant desire. He could come right now, without a single touch. The boy’s breath is warm on the skin of his cheek as one hand pushes over his flat stomach, reaching down for his cock, which is like hard steel, and begging for freedom.

  The kid bites the back of his neck—pleasure bordering on pain as, in the same instant, his fingers unzip Clive’s fly and pull out his prick. Hands grip him firmly, encircling the tip, stroking him, pressing himself into Clive’s back, his own penis pushing against Clive’s buttocks. Clive—always the Top—struggles for a second, aware of the power of those muscled arms that are thicker than his own yet holding back their full strength. He twists in the youth’s embrace and, opening his eyes, takes that mouth into his own, hungrily kissing the fruit of his lips, his tongue probing, wanting all of him, now and forever. Hungrily the boy responds, hands everywhere, frantic under his shirt, around his arse, squeezing him, probing him. Clive, sucking at his tongue, wonders at the impossible sweetness of him. Am I dreaming? I am dreaming…so I am dreaming…let this be real, he thinks. Curling his fingers through the thick black hair, he jerks the youth’s head back suddenly, enjoying the surge of power, the fight. He pushes the boy down to his knees. The youth plays along, taking Clive’s cock with both hands, paying homage, running the tip across his cheeks, slowly over his mouth, over those lips (pleasure pounding dimly at the back of Clive’s sleeping mind), teasing, tonguing the eye, his hands encircling Clive’s arse, playing him as if he’s fucking him.

  Unable to bear any more Clive grabs the back of his head, pushing him hard toward his groin—the boy takes all of Clive’s prick d
eep into his throat without gagging. His tongue circling around and around, his rhythm increasing faster and faster, stopping only to suck Clive’s balls, then run his tongue down the length of his shaft before those lips eat their aching way over him again.

  Clive watches the beauty of the boy, his swollen mouth riding him. His orgasm sharpens and mounts suddenly, shooting from somewhere deep inside his body, and he comes with a profundity that shakes deep within him, the boy swallowing all.

  They stay there for a moment, the city noise swelling in the silence. The boy, after wiping his mouth, grins and stands, towering over Clive. He kisses him briefly on the mouth, then, taking hold of his hips, turns him around roughly, pushing one knee between his legs, forcing him to widen his stance. For a moment Clive wrestles with him, trying to twist away, but the youth overpowers him. Twisting one arm up behind his back, he forces Clive to bend over. It is strangely exciting, this moment before surrender—the boy’s cock a thickness blindly pushing against his buttocks. Clive shivers. He’s never been taken by a man and yet this time he wants it. He wants the feel of him inside, to be split like a peach. To be filled, rammed, to feel his shuddering violence. The youth spits into his hand, moistens Clive, then enters with a sharp thrust. Clive freezes, trembling with the novel sensation of being possessed, yet still in control. In control of his own pleasure and that of this youth’s. Feeling him tighten the boy pauses, then reaching around starts to caress him again. Clive hardens and slowly the boy begins again, this time pushing gently then becoming faster; he presses Clive’s buttocks wide apart, squeezing his flesh, now thrusting deeply. Clive gasps as the pain and pleasure fuse into one ecstatic understanding of being taken. This is abandonment, he thinks, this is how it is to be taken and to be the taker. The youth’s panting mixes with the cries of the city below, the screech of a night bird and Clive’s own cry of ecstasy as the thundering of the boy’s orgasm releases his own—more intense than ever before.