by Rick R. Reed
“You dropped this.” Tyler handed him his worn leather wallet. “You sure you don’t want a few bucks?”
Emory waved him away and then pulled money from his wallet, enough for the pizza and a generous tip.
“Queue up the movie,” he told Tyler. “I’ll get plates.” And he left him to go into the kitchen to lay out the Fiestaware, the knives and forks. He yanked a couple paper towels off the roll for napkins. The smell of tomato sauce, garlic, basil, mozzarella, and spinach were barely contained by the box. Normally, the aromas would have Emory’s mouth watering, but tonight, they didn’t have the same effect.
He was hungry, all right, but it wasn’t for pizza.
*
Later, after they’d worked their way through the entire pizza (somehow, Emory found his appetite) and watched both The Exorcist III and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they lay together on the couch, in front of the TV. The credits still rolled, and the dark screen managed to throw a flickering light on Tyler’s face.
Emory had to admit he liked the feel and the warmth of Tyler’s body next to his. During the second movie, Tyler wrapped his arms around Emory and tucked himself into him, laying his head on his shoulder. Normally, Emory might have been appalled or at least in shock if another man did this to him, especially right here in his own home, where he still felt Mother watching, looking down from a celestial perch.
But he was, surprisingly—and most of all, to himself—at ease.
“It’s late,” Emory said.
“That it is.” Tyler reached over to the coffee table and snagged the TV remote and the one for the VCR and switched both off. The room was lit now by a weird blue light pouring in from the windows. The moon outside was bright. Or maybe it was the night sky, grayish white because of yet another snowfall on the way.
Whatever it was, Emory didn’t want to move, didn’t want to break this fragile moment. It was the first time since Mother had died that Emory didn’t feel so alone, so isolated.
He knew Tyler would leave soon, to get home at even an indecent hour. He already felt an empty place in his chest, an acute longing. And Tyler had yet to stir from his place on the couch, let alone make a move toward the door.
The obvious didn’t occur to Emory.
It did to Tyler though. He lifted his voice up to penetrate the dark. “I could stay, you know.”
Emory tightened involuntarily. He hoped Tyler didn’t notice his sudden intake of breath, his shoulders rising up and stiffening. It was a big line to cross. In the end, all he could do was ask, “Really?”
Tyler stood and his figure was a black silhouette, backlit by the bluish light streaming in from the living room windows. The view emphasized that Tyler was a man, not a boy. His shoulders, in this light, were broad. Emory realized for the first time that Tyler was over six feet tall.
He wanted desperately to pull him back on the couch, to yank him down on top of himself. But he couldn’t. He was paralyzed.
Emory was certain Tyler sensed his desire and his hesitation because he took Emory’s hand, using it as leverage to pull him up and off the couch. Emory was unsteady on his feet and stumbled against Tyler, which made Tyler wrap his arms around him to steady him.
“Yes, really. Let’s go to bed. We can clean up in the morning.”
Emory stood close, smelling him, the clean, pure animal scent of him. “I should throw out the pizza box and rinse off these plates. They’ll attract roaches.”
“Let ’em feast. I’ve been waiting since last summer to get you into bed, and tonight seems to have conspired to make my dream come true.” Tyler met his gaze despite the wan light. He turned and stooped a little as he looked outside. “It’s begun snowing. I doubt if I could get home even if I wanted to. And I don’t.” He kissed Emory again. “Come on.” He tugged on Emory’s hand, already knowing the way. “If we’re lucky, the snow won’t stop. We’ll have a blizzard. And we’ll get a snow day tomorrow.”
Emory followed. He paused only long enough to glance out the window, at the cone of big, fluffy white flakes pouring down, highlighted by the streetlight just outside the window.
Was he dreaming?
Or was this a dream come true?
Even though it was Emory’s own apartment, he allowed Tyler to lead him to the bedroom. He stood still, breathing heavily, eyes squeezed shut, as Tyler slowly removed his clothing. When Tyler was done, he sucked in a breath and ran his fingertips lightly over Emory’s chest.
And then he pushed Emory down on the bed.
Emory simply lay there, still, unsure of what to do.
He could hear Tyler undressing, the soft snick of his zipper being lowered, the clatter of his belt as it hit the hardwood floor. And then… And then, he almost cried out as he felt the bed being weighed down as Tyler climbed on.
Emory thought he should be doing something. Saying something. Even moaning, as the guys did in the porn movies he sometimes watched at the adult bookstore up on Howard Street. But he felt frozen to the bed, unable to move. There wasn’t enough spit left in his dry mouth to speak, let alone do anything else.
Other than sleazy bookstore encounters, which almost seemed unreal to Emory, like something that had happened to another person, this time was truly his first. Not just with a man. With anyone. He couldn’t move for fear he’d do something wrong. He was terrified Tyler would laugh at him. Or, worse, run out of the apartment when he realized exactly how inexperienced Emory was.
After all, Emory was old enough that it was embarrassing that this should be his first time. Didn’t most guys have their first times in their teens? He wanted to tell Tyler, so he would go slow, be gentle, maybe even instructive. Paradoxically, he was desperate that Tyler not recognize his lack of experience.
Hence, the laying here, the immobility, the terror of even opening his eyes.
It’s not your first time, idiot. What about the guys you let fuck you at the bookstore? They don’t count? It was Mary Helen’s voice he heard.
Tyler rolled toward him, and Emory felt the silk of his skin as he climbed on top, their bodies fused together full length. The weight was crushing, but Emory wouldn’t have stopped Tyler for anything.
The next thing he knew, Tyler was kissing him—hard, his tongue thrust into Emory’s mouth. The kisses burned. And the pale stubble on Tyler’s face, almost invisible normally, was sandpapery against Emory’s skin. That sensation made his dick twitch.
After a while, Tyler pulled back. There was a pause in the room that went on too long. Finally, Tyler asked, “Are you enjoying this?”
Emory forced himself to open his eyes. He peered up at Tyler’s face, only inches away. Even in the darkness, he saw the concern and maybe even confusion in his eyes, the way his features furrowed. He reached up, so he could feel Tyler’s stubble beneath his fingertips.
Emory pulled his hand away. “Why would you ask that?”
Tyler’s lips flickered in a brief smile. “Um, because you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself. I just want to be sure I’m making you happy.”
Emory wanted to reply that what Tyler was making him feel was something beyond happiness. Maybe joy. Elation? A feeling of completeness? But it was as though he couldn’t get his lips and tongue to work together to form so much as a single word.
“Am I?” Tyler asked again.
Emory lifted his head and saw Tyler’s flagging erection.
No. I can’t do anything right. What do I say? What do I do? In the end, Emory was able to find his voice, even though it came out whispery, squeaky. “Maybe we could just cuddle?”
Tyler said nothing for a moment. Then he got up and pulled the bed clothes out from under Emory. “Sure. It’ll be cozy here under the blankets with you.” He pulled the blankets and top sheet down to the foot of the bed so Emory could move up and put his head on the pillow. Then he lay beside him, nestling himself into the crook of Emory’s armpit and pulling Emory’s arm around him.
“I’m a loser,” Emory whispered.
&nbs
p; “What?” Tyler got up on one elbow.
“Nothing.”
Tyler slid from the bed and moved across the room. Emory was certain the next thing he’d do was put on his clothes and beat a hasty retreat. And that caused a longing deep in Emory’s heart. “Where are you going?” he asked, mournful, certain he already knew.
Why would anyone want to be with me?
“Just to do this.” Tyler moved to the window and yanked the shade up to the top. The room was flooded with a pale-blue light from the moon’s luminance and the snow coming down.
It was beautiful.
Tyler got back in bed with Emory, pulling the covers up to their necks, and snuggling close.
Emory wanted to weep. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, but that was okay.
Yet he did sleep and, at some point during the night, he felt Tyler, pressed close to his back, slip inside him. It hurt, and Emory sucked in a breath but didn’t tell him to stop. He gripped the pillow tighter and waited for Tyler to finish, worried that he wasn’t using a rubber.
In the morning, the room was flooded with brilliant light from the sun in a cloudless blue sky and from the reflective illumination on the mounds and mounds of snow that had fallen as they slept.
Emory looked around the room, as though Tyler could be crouching behind his chest of drawers. “Tyler?” He sat up and felt a throbbing dull pain in his ass, which let him know he hadn’t dreamed what had taken place.
He pulled the covers back, praying that there wouldn’t be blood or worse on the sheets.
Everything was clean.
“Tyler?”
But there was no answer.
Chapter Ten
Tyler couldn’t do it.
He’d thought Emory would be someone he could get close to, someone he could love and care for. He even thought he could be the person to bring Emory back to some kind of semblance of life. Emory had hidden depths and, once upon a time, that was part of his appeal.
Now those hidden depths weirded him out and, frankly, terrified him.
Emory was unlike anyone he’d ever known. His oddness was, rather than repellant, magnetic. Tyler saw aligning himself with the man as the key to assuming his place in the adult world. None of his friends from school, none of the guys he’d dated or even hooked up with, were anything like Emory.
And that was a plus.
He thought he and Emory might have a quirky relationship, insular. Emory and him against the world. He imagined long weekends holed up in Emory’s apartment, cooking or ordering takeout, watching old horror movies that were at once terrifying and Mystery Science Theater hilarious.
Last night, things had gone as he hoped, better than he dreamed and then, along about three a.m., everything changed.
Tyler remembered waking and feeling several odd sensations. The first was that the bedsheets beneath him were soaked. There was a sour smell in the air. Tyler didn’t want to have to decide if the odor was sweat or piss.
He turned to tell Emory about his discomfort, if maybe there was another bed they could move to.
But Emory was gone. The bed was empty.
In the odd blue light of the moon, Tyler sat up. Emory was absent from the bed but was still in the room. Tyler sucked in a breath as his gaze moved to the corner where there was one of the chairs from the dining room table.
Emory sat naked on it, eyes closed. His erection poked up between his spread thighs. His naked form almost glowed, spectrally white, in the wan light.
What might have been sexy was decidedly not.
Emory whispered to himself, very rapidly. At first, Tyler could make out none of the words. Slowly, as though there were a wild animal in the room baring its teeth, Tyler slid back down on the damp sheets, much as he didn’t want to. He half closed his eyes, hoping that Emory, if he did open his own eyes, would think Tyler was still asleep.
Tyler watched, alert, listening. At first, only a few words came to him, “Mother” being one of them, repeated over and over. He said something like “I’m a good boy, Mother. I’m not like that.”
Tyler’s eyes adjusted to the dim illumination, and as he made that adjustment, he began to understand more and more of what was emerging from Emory’s mouth, his fevered whispers.
“Jeff. Jeff, I know what you want. I know what you need. I’m the only one. I’m the only one.” Emory swallowed and then went on. “I’d stay with you. No question. I’d be yours.”
He whispered these words like a prayer, a litany, and Tyler felt goose bumps rising on his skin. Suddenly the room felt a lot colder than he knew it actually was. One of the main things Emory had talked about since Tyler had met him the previous summer was his fascination with the serial killer from Milwaukee. Tyler shrugged it off. He himself had his own fascination with serial killers and had done his fair share of reading about them, especially if there was a gay angle to their cruelty, their obsessions. On his bookshelf at home, there were true-crime books about John Wayne Gacy and Larry Eyler, both from Chicago, and Dean Corll, from Texas. Between the three of them, those men had killed possibly close to a hundred young men. And now Dahmer had joined their ranks.
Tyler understood Emory’s fascination and had viewed it as simply the same kind of thing as his passion for horror movies. Creepy, but not out of the realm of the normal.
Tonight, though, Emory’s whispers to “Jeff” as though he knew Dahmer personally, had been too much. It demonstrated to Tyler that Emory didn’t just have a morbid curiosity about the dark side of human nature but was too close to that dark side himself.
The thought sickened Tyler and made him doubt his own judgment.
Tyler had lain frozen in that position for a good, long time, a half hour at least. He’d become so stiff, his muscles ached.
When at last Emory returned to the bed, Tyler made a sleepy grunt, and rolled over, away from him.
He lay staring at the wall until Emory let out a loud, bloodcurdling scream, and then went silent, his breath that of someone in a deep sleep. He shook a few times, as though in the throes of a seizure.
Trembling, heart pounding, Tyler forced himself to slide from the bed. He stood and tried to steady himself, staring down at Emory’s slumbering form. His mouth was dry; he almost couldn’t swallow. The thing that really made him shake his head, aside from his terror, was that only a couple of hours ago they’d made love. Not fucked but made love. It had been quiet and quick. But Tyler was sure he’d experienced a deeper intimacy than he ever had. Apart from Emory being passive, it had been good, a sign that even more was on its way.
This was a start.
Tyler had fallen asleep spooning with Emory, imagining scrambled eggs, coffee, buttered toast, and golden sunlight when the morning came.
And now he saw Emory as insane, someone to fear. Tyler hated himself for it even though he knew he had every reason for his feelings.
He dressed quietly and quickly. He considered a shower to wash the sweat, if it was sweat, off. But he feared waking Emory and, suddenly, even though it was still dark outside, he wanted out of here.
He tiptoed through the bedroom and then headed across the living room toward the door. He paused in his tracks and nearly shrieked when he heard Emory’s voice behind him.
“Where are you going?” There was an accusation in the question.
Tyler swallowed hard and turned. His mind was blank. He could think of no response. He simply stared at Emory.
And as he did, Emory laughed. “I get you. I should have known you wouldn’t stay. He understands that. He understands me. That was always his gripe—they never stay.”
Tyler had a hunch. “Are you awake?”
Emory’s stare was dead, projected at a fixed point just above Tyler’s head. Tyler wasn’t even sure Emory knew who he was talking to. His question, apt as it was, might have been just a coincidence.
For a long while, neither moved.
Then Emory turned and disappeared into the shadows of his bedroom.
Tyler hurried
out the door, Emory’s soft laughter behind him.
*
Now, he stood in the vestibule of Emory’s building, looking out. Because it was winter, dawn’s grayish light would not arrive for a couple more hours. The snow had stopped, and pristine mounds of the stuff lay untouched on the sidewalks.
There were few cars on the street this early in the morning. When one did pass, it threw up a spray of snow, its headlights illuminating the banks that had fallen during the night.
Tyler tightened his scarf and, taking a deep breath and bracing himself, stepped out into the dark.
In spite of the biting cold, exacerbated by the wind rushing off the lake just a couple blocks to the east, Tyler felt better outside; there was a sense of relief and liberation. He stood still for a moment, simply breathing in the bracing air and watching it emerge from his mouth as a cloud of steam.
He looked back through the doorway to the lobby, almost expecting to see Emory behind him. But not even a doorman stood watch.
What do I do with myself now?
Tyler looked up and down Kenmore Avenue, deserted for once. It was too late to go home and too early to go in to work. He wished there was time to get back up to Wilmette, so he could change clothes and shower. He wondered if he reeked from the damp bed he’d lain in.
It was a small problem compared to what he’d just seen. He shook his head. What did I see anyway? He wasn’t sure he could believe his own eyes, his own memory.
It’s one thing to think someone’s quirky and odd in a delightful sort of way. It’s quite another to see their delusions, and yes, their sanity laid bare. The image of Emory sitting naked and erect in that chair, mumbling not only to himself, but also to a serial killer, plagued him. Tyler didn’t know if he could purge it from his brain, even though it was already taking on the eerie shimmer of a dream.
Or a nightmare.
Tyler turned south and walked to the corner, his footfalls crunching as he made tracks in the newly fallen snow. At Granville, he made a left and, despite the arctic wind blowing his way, he trudged the few blocks over to Lake Michigan.
