For Love of the Dead

by Hal Bodner

  “No. Just watch. Listen. And learn. When all is ready, I will do that for you.”

  The strings hung loose and with infinitesimal slowness, Tyler began rolling down the cloth past the black briefs he wore, over his hips and down his thighs, baring more of the honeyed-brown skin, inch by torturous inch.

  “My great-grandfather was houngan. Tito was meant to follow when Grandfather passed to be with the gods. But it was not to be.” His face hardened. The pants puddled at his ankles and he stepped out of them to stand barefoot on the earthen floor. Jake had not noticed him removing his shoes but from the way his eyes were fixed on the gigantic bulge outlined under the briefs, his lack of observation did not strike him as unusual.

  “Mark Hartner came to our island.”

  He spat the words with a venom that made Jake flinch.

  “So handsome, like an angel from heaven. Hair yellow like the sun and a body...well, you have seen his body.”

  Jake recalled and shuddered.

  “Until Hartner arrived, Tito was the darling of everyone. Tall, taller than even I am now, his muscles were like those of the tropical cats that prowl the island jungles, sleek and tawny. His face...but, no...I cannot bear to picture him anymore. The young people of our town, boys and girls alike, all worshiped him, desired him. But Tito had dedicated his body to the gods. He accepted their admiration with kindness and affection and even returned it. But he knew he could not allow himself to be...touched in that way and remain pure.”

  Jake started as the meaning of the words penetrated.

  “You mean?”

  Tyler nodded. “The paths of the houngan are many and varied. Each has its different requirements. On our island, the successor must remain pure until he assumes the mantle of power and responsibility. After that...” He shrugged and Jake admired the bunching of his shoulders. “My great-grandfather could not have sired his son and in turn, my father and Tito and I were the new houngan not encouraged to be fruitful after he assumes his duties. But until then, it was a sacrifice of the spirit, as well as of the flesh, you see. One that Tito was willing to make; he knew his obligations. And then Mark Hartner arrived...”

  * * * *

  The night was warm and humid, tainted just enough by the breeze from the ocean and the hint of impending rain so it was not stifling. The rattle of the dried palm fronds high overhead provided a gentle counterpoint to the distant tinny beat of calypso from a radio playing somewhere nearby. Voices, no more than a soft murmur, rose and fell in the background as neighboring families chatted about the events of the day and prepared for the evening meal.

  Tito slipped through the door left carefully ajar, tugged it shut past the dirt which had mounded up over the threshold, and paused to allow his vision to become accustomed to the darkness inside the shed. He winced when his bare ankle brushed against a piece of jagged metal—a tool left carelessly on the floor—but it was only from the unexpected contact with the cold steel; he had not been cut. As his sight gradually adjusted, he saw a flash of whiteness which, he knew, surrounded the smoky grey pupils of the eyes of the man he loved.

  He knew what Mark wanted from him; the blond man had made that clear after professing to love him in return. But Tito had responsibilities. His family, a large part of the population of his ancestral town, depended on him. He had come tonight in a last-ditch effort to try to make Mark understand. There would be time for them to be together, time to spend with their bodies entwined, lost in the languor of love beneath island skies, washed in the salty scent of the sea and the fragrant blooms of tropical flowers. But Mark must be convinced to wait, just a little longer, before they merged, before Tito could unleash the passion he longed to share with this remarkable man.

  The click of a match. The soft hiss of a lantern. The glow warmed the dark corners, glinting off tools hung on their hooks, making the piles of burlap sacks in the corner seem almost as inviting as the pallet of his own bed. The windows were shuttered and extra sacks covered them to prevent a curious passerby from investigating the light seeping through any cracks in the frames. They were alone and not likely to be interrupted.

  Tito thought he had prepared himself. To explain. To plead, if necessary. He turned to chastely embrace the man he desperately wanted as his lover, as his companion, as his soul mate, for as long as he would live. He froze with his steely resolve threatened and weakening.

  He hadn’t expected Mark to be already naked.

  “I knew you couldn’t resist.”

  So enraptured by the sight of the blond angel’s magnificent nudity, so blinded by the hormones coursing in his eighteen-year-old veins, so caught in the throes of what he thought was his first true love—Tito heard the sneer in the slightly older boy’s voice, but did not register what it meant. Tito shivered. He’d made sure to wear a shirt tonight, though living in the tropics he went bare-chested most of the time, as he’d not wanted to send the wrong signals. He adored Mark, virtually worshiped him, and cared too deeply for him to risk offering temptation when he knew he was not permitted to follow through on the promise. But now the thin shirt seemed too feeble to hold back the chill of the night which had suddenly sprung up and, at the same time, seemed too oppressive on his body, making him far too warm, causing him to sweat and itch to remove it.

  “I... I cannot.” He choked out the words past a dry throat and parched lips. He moistened them with his tongue, hoping the movement would not be interpreted as an invitation and, at Mark’s step forward, he knew Mark would choose to see it as he wanted.

  “It’s just silly superstition,” he scoffed. “I told you that already.” He clasped both hands behind his neck and stretched mightily, consciously making his muscles stand out, the angles and planes of his body washed by the kerosene lamp so that they seemed to glow. Posing and tempting. “Don’t you want me? Don’t you want this?”

  Tito could see twin streams of perspiration trickling from Mark’s armpits down his sides and wanted to lick them up. He wanted to abandon everything he’d been taught since birth about his duty, to fling all doubts away and bury his face in this glorious stranger’s chest, resting his cheek against its hard smoothness. He wanted to lie back, vulnerable and willing, to allow Mark to ravage his body in ways he had only imagined in his wildest adolescent dreams. To take him, to hurt him even if that was what Mark wanted and, Tito realized, hurting him was definitely part of what Mark desired. But it did not matter. He was Mark’s to do with as he pleased, and Mark was his.

  Mark thrust his hips forward. Tito gasped at the size of his dick, prominently jutting out from the curls of silky caramel hair, the swollen balls dusted with the same light hair hanging below like oversized palm nuts in a tree, swaying a little with the movement.

  “I love you, Mark.” There was a plea in his voice.

  “Yeah, I know. You told me already.”

  “But we must wait.” Tito sank to his knees and held out his hands, palms upwards, in silent supplication. “It is only a little while. I will be nineteen in two months. You are only just twenty. It is a short time to wait when we have the rest of our lives to spend together, no?”

  “Whatever.” The comment was offhand. Mark rubbed his hands across his chest, pinching his own nipples, rubbing his flat stomach, and finally taking hold of his dick with one hand while cupping his balls with the other.

  “Patience is not my strong point. You want this.” It was a sure and certain statement, not a question. “And we are going to do this, boy. Now.”

  “No.” Tito whispered the word with ineffable sadness. He feared Mark would storm from the shed in anger and leave the island forever, abandoning him, never to return. But, though weakened by the sight of this veritable god standing nude and willing before him, he found an inner strength. Much as he wanted this to happen, his resolve against it happening now was even greater.

  “I don’t recall giving you a choice.”

  Tito tried to hang back when Mark’s hands dug into his shoulders and pulled his face
forward, but Mark’s grip was too strong. He found his face pressed into Mark’s groin, his nose buried in the soft hair of his pubes, inhaling the warm mushroom scent of Mark’s crotch, a pleasant musky smell with an undercurrent of sweetness, a scent like powdered sugar combined with the lingering traces of the suntan oil Mark had used to prevent being burned. It was unmistakably male and irresistibly virile.

  Tito gasped, feeling the length of Mark’s cock denting his cheek and Mark seized the opportunity. Before Tito could protest again, Mark grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back, causing him to cry out quietly, then jammed his dick into the boy’s mouth.

  The taste of Mark’s staff was more than Tito had ever imagined, much more. His resolve crumbled. The flesh was more than warm. It was actually hot; Tito hadn’t expected that. And he was surprised by the saltiness of it. It reminded him of plantain chips, fried and salted; no matter how full his belly, he was always tempted to eat just one more. Mark’s dick was like that. Tito wanted more.

  His reservations fled. His responsibilities to his parents, to his town, to his very gods, vanished in the face of what he was experiencing. The suntan oil with which Mark had coated his dick was like the sweetest nectar and Tito drank it eagerly. He opened his jaw wide and closed off his throat to encase Mark’s cock in the warm berth of his mouth. His tongue wrapped around it and instinctively his head began to move back and forth.

  “That’s it, baby,” Mark crooned, but there was no affection in his tone. “Suck it. Lick it!”

  Tito gladly complied. He moved his hands, gripping the tight muscle of Mark’s ass to steady himself, and he went to work in earnest. His tongue lapped at the head, his lips encased the glans. He bit gently at the fold of flesh that had once been a foreskin. He drew his mouth up and down the shaft, bestowing kisses upon it, shifting his crouch so he could reach Mark’s balls, running the strands of silky hair between his teeth, nibbling and licking and kissing.

  He barely noticed when Mark ripped open the front of his shirt, tugging it from his shoulders and throwing it aside. Tito only realized he was bare-chested when Mark’s fingers pinched his nipples. He gasped. It hurt, but it also sent jolts of pleasure through his body. His own dick stiffened even further and he paused for a second, reminding himself he could not go too far without risking the consequences.

  But Mark grabbed his head and positioned it so Tito’s lips were in front of his heavy, hanging balls once again—plump orbs hanging in their fleshy pouch, soft silky hair tempting. He could not resist taking one testicle entirely into his mouth and, at Mark’s moan of pleasure, he grew bold and added the other one. He sucked and licked, rolling them around on his tongue like ripe, juicy leechee nuts, softly closing his teeth around them so he could pull on the sack. His hands probed at the hole of Mark’s ass where the skin was moist and sweat-slicked, still slippery from the day’s anointing with oil. He thought he was being rewarded by a gasp when one of his fingers slipped inside the mounds of tightly clenched muscle, but he was wrong.

  “None of that, boy!” Mark growled. He pushed Tito away and stepped back.

  Tito lost his balance at the abrupt rejection and fell forward. The foul taste of stale earth filled his mouth and suddenly he was horrified by what he had done, by what he had been about to do. As yet, there was no permanent harm done. Mutual sex play amongst young men and women was tolerated by his people, even encouraged. So long as there was no penetration, a young woman—or a young man, should he be destined to become houngan—was still considered virginal. The gods were amused by the pawing and physical explorations the young bestowed on each others’ bodies. It was only the violation of purity which angered them.

  “Oh Mark!” Tito cried out with love, completely misunderstanding what he had said. “I knew you would finally understand!”

  “I understand completely,” Mark spat.

  The next thing Tito knew, he was trapped full length and face down on the dirt floor with Mark’s greater weight on top of him, preventing him from rising. He felt Mark’s body shift and heard him spit into his palm, though he couldn’t imagine the reason for it. Then his cotton shorts were torn from him with an audible rip, leaving his bottom bare and vulnerable. Mark’s hands fumbled at his ass and Tito panicked.

  “No,” he whispered. “I thought you loved me.”

  “I do, boy. I do love you.” The words came by rote and then, he added with a harsh leer,

  “And I really love your tight little ass.”

  The pain was like nothing Tito had ever felt before. Even as a boy, when he’d been stung by a jellyfish washed up on the beach, he’d not experienced such agony. His ass felt like it was being ripped apart, and as Mark thrust forward, his very bowels seemed to have been set aflame. He screamed and then, terrified of someone’s hearing and coming to investigate, he bit down on his own forearm hard enough to taste his own blood and stifled his cries.

  “Yeah, boy. That’s it. Take it. Take it all!”

  The words faded into the background as Mark’s hips continued pumping into Tito’s tortured rear. His teeth closed even more tightly over his own flesh and his flowing tears had little to do with the pain in his arm. On and on it went and Tito’s soul shriveled at the same rate the agony in his ass increased. Mark brought his face down, resting it next to Tito’s, and the young island boy heard his last illusions about how the man he loved truly felt about him melt away.

  “Jesus, you little shit. You could at least try to enjoy yourself. Do you know how many guys back home would kill for this?”

  At that moment, the gathering storm broke. The shed was sealed against light so Tito could not see the flashes of lightning he knew were bringing the houses and shops of his island into stark relief against the shadows of the night. But he heard the thunder and the wild drumming of rain upon the shed’s tin roof. With each rolling rumble, he sank deeper into his misery and pain. He’d thought he had come to his senses in time, but his brief lapse of virtue, even though it had been halted, had proved his undoing.

  Mark grunted like an animal and Tito could feel the man’s muscles tense. A moment later, it was as if molten lead had been poured into his butt as Mark came. He plunged deeper into Tito’s abused hole, the combined weight of the two bodies crushing Tito’s dick and balls into the ground.

  His chest slammed to the floor and the bits of gravel and tiny splinters of wood digging into his chest and stomach were as nothing when compared to the torture of his buttocks.

  He gasped and moaned when Mark pulled out. He imagined he could actually hear the wet plop of his ass closing as Mark’s huge dick left his asshole. He lay splayed out, his muscles turned to jelly, capable of doing nothing but resting his cheek in the puddle of blood from his bitten arm and crying.

  “You know,” Mark commented coldly, uncaring of the effect his words would have. “I expected more from you. All that running around half naked. All those beefy island guys. Roll over, dammit, and look at me!”

  Somehow, Tito mustered the strength to flip over onto his back, wincing at the dull throb of his ravaged rear end. Even after the rape, Tito still found Mark’s beauty unearthly. But now, he realized, it was not the entrancing splendor of an angel from heaven. No, for the first time, Tito saw this magnificent man as some kind of enticing demon, a soul black from the depths of the underworld, sheathed in a covering of magnificent temptation. He quailed at the sight.

  “You’d think you guys would have more experience with all the nudity that goes on around here.” He frowned and then, even worse, he affected a false air of compassion. “But buck up, kiddo.” His face lit with a nasty smile. “I’m sure if you practice, and there’s sure as hell enough pretty boys around here to practice with, eventually, you’ll figure out how to get it right. Not to just lie there like a dead fish, whining and crying while a real man takes over.”

  Tito felt his heart break at the man’s obvious contempt.

  “You think I’ll be able to get a plane out of this godforsaken place
tonight? With this storm going on?”

  He bent from the waist and casually snatched up the wreckage of Tito’s shorts, using them to wipe the boy’s juices from his still engorged dick and, when he was finished, tossing the stained clothing onto Tito’s naked and abraded chest.

  “I mean, I’m sort of finished here anyway, right?”

  Mark dressed quickly while Tito lay sobbing and forgotten on the floor. Without even a backward glance of disdain, he left, not even bothering to shut the shed door behind him. After a while, Tito managed to summon the strength to gather up his ruined clothes and crawl out of the shed where the cool rain mingled with his hot tears and dripped down his cheeks to quench the thirst of the island soil.

  * * * *

  “Great grandfather knew immediately what had happened, of course. A true houngan has ways of knowing these things. He was not angry, only sad and disappointed in Tito, though he realized it was not Tito’s fault. But the gods of my people are not as forgiving, and so I began my training.”

  Jake sat, both fascinated and horrified by Tyler’s story. Truly, Mark Hartner was a beast, and though he racked his brain, he could not fathom why Deauxfines would have wanted to bring such a monster back from the dead. He would have thought the priest would have rejoiced at being rid of him.

  “Revenge.” Tyler spat the answer. “Death is too peaceful for the likes of one such as Mark Hartner. He took my brother’s life, stole his soul. He must pay with his own.”

  “Took...took his life?” Jake was confused.

  Deauxfines nodded with deep, ineffable sorrow.

  “Word spreads easily among my people. It is impossible to keep anything secret for long. Where once Tito had been the pride of everyone, their hope for the continued smiling of the gods down upon them, now he was sullied, impure. They could no longer look upon him with the love they had once felt for him. For one such as my brother, who had been trained since birth to be a vessel for that love, it was as if Father Death had already taken him away. For him to die, to take his own life, it was merely final words in a story everyone already knew the end of. ”