For Love of the Dead

by Hal Bodner

  But he remained conscious, tugging against the leather cuffs, twisting his body the few fractions of an inch the restraints allowed, trying ineffectively to avoid those cruelly moving hands. His stomach was next. He sucked in the muscle to avoid the touch of what felt like hot irons, the heat somehow moving beneath the skin to take up residence in muscle and tendon, deeper until his very organs seemed aflame, to finally settle in searing place in the bones of his spine.

  Tyler’s voice rose and Jake could hear the pain in it. His hands must have been blistered and raw by now, but he continued undaunted. Jake’s legs were next. The sinews of his thighs bulged with agony, every striated muscle tensed and corded. Involuntarily his heels began to drum and twitch, slamming against the cold stone, his legs trying to kick and thrash but restrained by the chains. Soon the entire front of his body from the neck down felt like he had been lashed chest first to a red-hot steel boiler.

  It was not until Tyler paused in his invocations that Jake realized with unspeakable horror that there was still one part of the front of his body which had not yet been subjected to the searing agony of the potion.

  “No,” he whispered, through chafed throat. “Please, no. Not there!”

  Tyler smiled down on him; Jake supposed it was meant to offer him reassurance and strength for what was to come. But in the end, it made no difference.

  Poised with a handful of the substance—not dripping this time, thank God!—Tyler positioned it over Jake’s crotch. Mentally, Jake felt his penis shrivel and his balls retreat into his pelvis, but he knew in reality it was as hard as ever and his testicles were still engorged and tight. The hand descended and Jake’s previous screams were as mere whimpers.

  Excruciating, indescribable pain lanced through his dick and balls. At the first touch, he knew his body could not stand it, that his mind would shut down from the agony, but it grew even worse. The unguent was absorbed through the thin skin of his dick, penetrating to the center of the shaft, seeping into the piss hole at the end and flowing down toward his groin. He felt like his balls had been dipped in napalm. Penetrating, searing heat. Once, back in school, he’d had a similar experience when he he’d accidentally gotten muscle balm on his jockstrap, only this time the intense heat continued to grow slowly and incessantly. Inside the shaft itself, Jake felt like his cock was being reamed by a red-hot auger studded with fragments of sharp broken glass, while the outside seemed blistered as if abraded by scalding sandpaper.

  He could scream no longer; he had no voice left. Jake could only lie there, pinioned in place, his body shuddering like he’d been stricken with seizures, sweat pouring from his sides in rivers, teeth gritted until the pain drained him of even making that effort and his mouth fell slack. On and on it went until Jake’s tormented being was suffused with a single thought: Please, God! Let me pass out! But the solace of unconsciousness was denied him by some rare spice or other stimulant in the voodoo priest’s potion.

  Lost in a scarlet, blazing veil of pain, he almost missed the light when it came: a cooling blue effervescence which appeared in the deepest recesses of his mind. Just a pinprick at first, but it offered respite from the relentless heat, however little, and Jake’s entire being strived to reach it for the small comfort it might provide. He rushed down an imaginary tunnel, hearing the flesh on the bottom of his bare feet sizzle on the molten lava floor with each step. He stumbled and found he could scream again, if only in his mind, when his shoulder slammed into the semi-gelid stone of the tunnel wall. Only his sweat, streaming from him like he’d been doused in a bucket of water, prevented his skin from crisping and charring.

  The light grew clearer as he approached and finally, through the red, red haze obscuring his vision, Jake saw it was a doorway. Not caring what horribly fiendish tortures might wait beyond it, grasping at any chance to reduce the heat, he plunged through, gasping and crying out for mercy from whatever or whoever might be waiting beyond.

  The pain vanished. He blinked, surprised, then immediately relieved. Jake looked down at his body, expecting to see scorched skin and charred muscle, oozing and raw, but his flesh was unblemished. Even his dick, which he had thought was seared to the root, jutted from its hairy bed in the fullness of its male splendor, hard and erect, his balls filled with surging juice as if Jake were just about to make love with the most beautiful, wonderful man in the universe.

  It was a full minute before his mind cleared enough for Jake to realize he was not actually looking down at himself but instead was seeing his body reflected by a pool of crystalline clear water at his feet. Once he was sure all of his body parts were intact, he raised his eyes, and with a sharp intake of breath, he took in the beauty that surrounded him.

  It was a cave, and though he could still see the inferno raging in the tunnel just outside the door, the threshold was a barrier to the tumultuous fire and what little heat penetrated was warm and soothing on his bare back and buttocks. The walls were made of sparkling faceted gems of purest brilliance which could have been diamonds had they not glowed in a riot of subtle pastels: pink of all shades, pale blue, daffodil yellow, and lavender. The placid water of the lake caught their glimmer and cast it back so the entire chamber was like a child’s fairyland of shimmering delight.

  Polished marble benches surrounded the shore of the little lake at scattered intervals, interspersed with fluted white columns placed haphazardly with no particular pattern or design. From them hung delicate lacy cloth, transparent and iridescent, in blues and greens the likes of which Jake had never seen but perhaps had only imagined in long-forgotten childhood dreams. As he stood transfixed by the beauty, the surface of the lake stirred and began to swirl—not violently, but with a steady churn, and Jake had the strangest thought that the movement of the water indicated a distinct purpose.

  Suddenly, with a whoosh so quiet it could barely be heard, the water parted to reveal a path of white sand lined with gorgeous seashells, huge things the size of basketballs, deep purple and vivid electric green, buttercup and scarlet, tangerine and burnished silver, colors found neither in nature nor on any earthly artist’s palette. And on the path stood a young man.

  Nude, just like Jake was, he had a body that was slim without being skinny, toned without being sculpted. Perhaps in his early twenties, his genes had given him a graceful form with smooth, sleek muscles moving under the skin as if oiled within their fleshy covering, not the bunching and flexing movements of a more mature man. When he took a step, it was with the lithe spring of a dancer, not an athlete’s confident stride. He was beautiful, of that there was no doubt, and when he matured into himself he would be quite handsome. But for now, in the prime of his not-quite-finished youth, he was ethereal.

  When he smiled, the sparkle of the gem-studded walls paled in comparison. It was not the whiteness of his teeth, for his smile was shy and secret and his lips remained closed; it was a look shared between him and Jake, for Jake alone to see. It was so subtle that from the position of his mouth alone, it would have been impossible to state that he was smiling. But his eyes, ever so slightly almond-shaped, betrayed the emotion.

  Green, green, the verdant green of the leaves at the top of the jungle canopy washed by the sun. Mint overtones—not the pale mint of hospitals and institutional walls, but the shiny cobalt tinged edge of a peppermint leaf plucked fresh from a garden. The fresh piercing green of a lime, just cut and dripping pungent acid-sweet juice. Fantastic greens plucked from a world where they are seldom seen and if they are, are not paid sufficient attention or are too transient to observe for long. The blade of newly mown grass in those scant seconds when it is first cut and before it begins to turn brown. The froth of a wave at sundown when the last rays illuminate the emerald water just underneath the blue-gray surface. All these colors and more swarmed within the young man’s eyes.

  He took another step and Jake saw his hair was a tawny brown, streaked with golden highlights as if washed by the sun. His body was completely smooth, as if nature had not wante
d to mar his physical perfection by the addition of even a single hair. Even at his crotch, where hairlessness would have looked odd on a man who, while emanating youthfulness on the brink of adulthood was so obviously a virile male, the honey thatch was discreetly restrained and grew close to the base of the boy’s penis.

  The dick itself was...amazing! Jake’s eyes widened as he took it in. Long and slender like the rest of the youth, it complemented his physique perfectly. It was not huge; merely in exquisite proportion. No veins could be seen along the shaft, the organ was sheathed in skin of smoothest, creamy velvet and the head was a plump attractive mushroom shape, tilted up at the end. Jake would have called it perky had he been able to catch his breath to speak. There was something about the boy’s dick that, for some incongruous reason, made him think it belonged on the body of an elf—not a cutesy garden sculpture elf, but a young elfin warrior in the prime of his youth and strength preparing for his first battle but one who, at least until the order for the charge sounded, still retained his innocence and hopefulness. He giggled at the thought and the boy’s smile deepened.

  Jake frowned, not in annoyance or anger, but with the effort of trying to remember. There was something—familiar about this young man. He could not quite put his finger on it and he was sure he would not have forgotten him had they ever actually met, not someone this beautiful. Yet something nagged at him, a feeling that he had somewhere seen him before.

  Something Tyler had said leapt into his mind. His jaw dropped as a suspicion took root.

  “I know you,” he said with wonder.

  “Daniel,” came the soft response in a voice that seemed to be just finishing a smooth transition from the tenor of youth into the baritone of manhood.

  He was close enough now to reach out and place both of his palms on Jake’s shoulders.

  “When you knew me, I was not as I am now.”

  He winked, about to let Jake in on a secret, and slowly closed both of his eyes. Suddenly he became still, incredibly still, as if the last breath of life had fled his body. The knowledge of who he was fell into Jake’s consciousness like a stone dropped from a great height. He gasped.

  “On my wall. The picture.”

  The verdant green eyes met Jake’s blazing blue ones.

  “The Dead love you.” Indeed, he spoke the words with a lover’s tenderness. “For the memories you keep. For our hopes which you keep alive. For the chance to dream about what never was allowed to happen.”

  The lake developed a sudden froth, and while Jake stood, comforted and healed by Daniel’s light embrace, the water parted. Tiny pockets formed as it drained away to reveal the paths it had previously concealed. A small group of men rose up from the sandy bottom, most of them young, but not all. Every one of them handsome and strong, made even more beautiful than they had been in life by some magic, and all of them nude to show their physical glories to the utmost.

  They approached, kindly but hesitant, as if fearful of frightening Jake by descending on him en masse. They clustered around where he stood with Daniel, their arms on each others’ shoulders, filled with an unspoken but nonetheless evident yearning. Jake thought he should be worried; it was clear these men all wanted something from him. The hard-muscled blond man who gave new meaning to the description “ripped,” poised with one hand pressed against his heart atop the mass of thick, dark curly hair; the wasp-waisted shorter boy with coffee-brown eyes and the build of a gymnast who stood with one foot out as if halted mid-step, his thick, squat dick semi-tumescent and hanging to brush gently against his inner thigh; the tall, lanky slightly older fellow—perhaps forty—with the shaven head and the dopey grin and the huge nipples with aureoles almost the size of demitasse spoons; the young one, probably even several years shy of Daniel’s age, with the white-blond bleached hair and russet-tinted, mahogany bronzed skin with the washboard stomach of armadillo-like plating, the striations made even darker by his deep tan. All standing, patiently expectant.

  And Jake knew them all, recognized them, though he had last seen them cold and still, their bodies drained of the vibrant life that now suffused them, lying on the prep table at Gentle Rest. The blond man killed by a hit-and-run driver, the gymnast who overdosed, the bald man who hanged himself, the surfer stabbed—the details swam into his mind and his emotions overflowed with pity at their plight mingled with his joy at seeing them so restored.

  “Will you allow their touch? Their thanks? To give them a chance to feel what they died too soon to feel?”

  Jake nodded. He could not speak, so tight was his chest with both happiness and sorrow. The gymnast came forward first, turning Jake to face him. He saw such tenderness in those deep brown eyes, such gratitude. Gently, the young man pressed his lips to Jake’s; he had to stretch upwards to do it given his shorter stature, and he placed his palms on Jake’s chest to steady himself, putting the mortician off balance for an instant. But Daniel was right behind him to support him and he allowed himself to press back against the green-eyed youth’s chest, thrilling at the touch of the other man’s hard dick against the back of his thigh.

  The gymnast’s lips tasted of earth, of smoky sod, loamy and pungent, natural and rich. It was an unexpected flavor, one Jake had never before associated with a human being, but it warmed him and seemed to welcome him, inviting him to partake of it and to feel safe as a sailor feels safe upon returning home after a harrowing voyage. The tongue outlined his lips, moving down across his throat and eliciting muted grunts of pleasure, tracing a line of warm moisture down Jake’s chest, across the center line of his stomach and along the shaft of his dick, now rigid and pulsing, and finally licking at the tender hole at the very tip.

  The bald man moved in behind Jake when Daniel shifted out of the way. He could feel the man’s stiff nipples brush his shoulder blades and the man’s hands reached forward and cupped Jake’s balls in a soothing cradle, his fingers teasing the hairy orbs. He knelt and Jake moaned when his mouth closed on his rosebud, the bald man’s tongue probing at the opening. The young surfer boy was next. His hands brushed Jake’s torso as he gazed upon his physique with awe, seeming to discover new delights in the hard planes of Jake’s body. He looked up with such sweet tenderness, with such excited wonder, that Jake could not resist folding him in his arms, guiding his cheek to rest in against the silk of his chest, cradling him like a parent cherishes a child, inhaling the sea notes of his body scent, salty and sharp with undertones of the fruity musk of suntan oil.

  The gorgeous blond with the abundant body hair was more aggressive. His tongue pushed past Jake’s teeth, his large hands caressed Jake with a barely suppressed urgency, kneading the muscle of his shoulders and upper arms. When he paused for breath, Jake glanced down and saw the man’s huge dick springing with eagerness, dripping milky fluid, the veins standing out in ridges.

  Jake’s vision blurred and when it cleared, he saw Daniel standing back, eyes glittering with pleasure at what he was witnessing. The other four started in on Jake’s body in earnest. Their hands and mouths moved with unceasing motion, teasing him, stimulating him. Like the sensation induced by Deauxfines’ unguent, the effect was overwhelming and Jake felt he might not be able to stand the feeling, though this time it was one of pleasure and not of pain.

  The muscles of his butt relaxed and a tongue probed deeper, entering his hole. It might have been the bald man’s or someone else’s; Jake neither knew nor cared. Whoever it was clasped his thighs to support himself but even then, the fingers were busy massaging the muscles of Jake’s legs. Someone squeezed one of his nipples, hard but not unpleasantly, while someone else enveloped the other nipple in a pouch of moist lips. Then they switched, alternating with the sharp tweak of pain and the succor of gentle licks. Hands separated the individual strands of the treasure trail leading from Jake’s chest down the center of his stomach, stimulating each follicle and sending waves of delight shimmering up, up, ever up, until Jake threw back his head and released the pleasure in a long, guttural moan. />
  They spared his rock-hard dick and pendulous balls not one bit. He felt his testicles tugged gently, then surrounded by a mouth—or perhaps two!—sucking and licking. Fingers, or a tongue perhaps, lavished attention on that secret and sensitive spot just behind the base of his balls where the sack emerged only scant inches from the bottom of his ass crack. Two—yes, Jake was sure there were two of them this time—mouths worshiped his dick. One encased and swallowed him, moving back and forth down the shaft with excruciatingly delicious languor; the other used teeth, not to bite but to provide the contrast of hardness, nibbling as if at a cob of corn when the other one’s mouth had moved out of the way to lap at the sperm oozing from the tip.

  Jake had never felt such intense physical pleasure before. And even during the few times he remembered that he might have come close, he had never felt it combined with such an outpouring of unconditional love. His muscles clenched and even his fingers and toes were so taut and poised on the brink of something that they felt like they would burst from the tension. His chest tightened so he could barely breathe; his asshole puckered and released, stinging from being moistened by the sweat trickling down his spine. Nipples throbbing, aching to be touched yet again and again, the skin of his stomach fluttering, the flesh on the side of his throat and neck tingling from the ceaseless caresses and kisses, Jake felt a gathering deep within him. The roiling grew into a thick, prickly welling in the pit of his stomach in tandem with a not-to-be-denied urge building in the base of his balls.

  Like a whirlpool rotating about its center, growing even smaller and more turbulent as it descended into the depths of the maelstrom, the sperm gathered until he feared his balls would simply burst from the pressure. He wanted to come; he ached to come. He had reached that point where the muscles around his dick had prepared themselves, had already contracted for that final gargantuan spew of hot fluid. It had not happened yet though it was imminent, and could no more be forestalled than dynamite could be contained once a match had been set to the fuse.