Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 09:01:06 +0200
From: Sebastian Oakland <sebastian.oak@gmail.com>
Subject: Cuts

This is a short story about the ttribulations of a married gay man, the
relationship he has with his wife, and the encounters he have had in his
other life.  It is less sexy and much darker than B,B & B. It too is utter
fantasy, so do not indulge in this behaviour if it risks your health or
freedom.  Neither should you read this if you're not supposed to.  This is
my second attempt at writing a short story in my second language.  If you
liked it please send a note saying so to sebastian.oak@gmail.com, if you'd
like to point out improvements, you're very welcome.

Cuts
a short story by
Sebastian Thomas Oakland

Abe was walking home from work on a rather mild autumn evening.  His
bearing was slow but determined as dusk fell.  The steady march of seasons
made the twilight come sooner every day, it did little to illuminate the
drab office clothes he was wearing or the dustiness of the pavement he was
walking on.  As Abe went he clutched anxiously at his upper left arm with
his right hand.  A steadily growing stain of blood seeped from under his
pressing fingers through the polyester of his long sleeve shirt.

`Stupid, stupid man!' he rebuked himself quietly.

Abe had walked this way for near on twenty years.  He knew every tree and
lamppost along it.  He had seen all the little shop fronts with their goods
on display a thousand times and more.  He delighted in the pretty little
gardens of the houses as he got closer to home, and sometimes, just
sometimes reached across some of the fences and low walls to pick little
flowers for his wife, Lily, who was at that moment waiting for his return
from a day behind a desk at the department.  He had stuck out his time and
had climbed through the ranks by working hard, meeting deadlines, and not
rocking the little boat that was a career in civil service.  He had left
the crowd of clerks years before, but not after years among them.  Now, in
the summer of his life he had his own office, and a young lady that brought
him tea at approved times.

He really loved Lily, and the dinner she would have waiting for him in a
dining room decorated with lace, and blue china on a sideboard.  His place
would be set at the head of the table, which with chairs was a wedding gift
from her uncle when they were married twenty-three years before.  She had
pushed it up close to a large picture window that overlooked the goings on
of the street in which they lived.  Lily would be sitting at the table and
watch for him through dainty window dressings she had made herself.  It was
Friday and years of routine had taught him that a piece of hake, deep fried
in a batter of flour and egg, was to be accompanied by a serving of potato
chips and salad, and would be offered to him proudly.  `We're having your
favourite,' she would announce as he came through the door and she would
take his jacket and lunch box from him, begging from him a kiss and
companionship.  Abe knew that he did not have the heart to tell her that it
was not his favourite meal in the week, she so relished in his approval.
He liked the fish, but his favourite was the sausages and mash with peas
she gave him on Monday evenings.

Abe's left hand felt stupid as he grappled with the latch of the gate to
their front yard.  His right was occupied, and soaked in blood.  He could
not stain the gate, neither would he let go of the wound that still bled a
little.  When he released it a fresh gush of lukewarm blood spilled from
him and took even more time coagulating.  He closed the gate behind him and
looked up to see warm light spill from the front door as Lily opened it for
him.  She came toward him worriedly and concerned.  She had obviously
already seen that his going was laboured and that he was holding onto his
arm.  Her jaw relaxed in an expression of shock.

"Oh my man, whatever came your way this time?" Lily asked of her husband as
she took hold of his arm carefully and helped him up the steps into the
house.  "It's the crime in this city," Abe replied with his head bowed down
as if shamed by the damage to his arm.

"Did they rob you?" She glanced apprehensively into the dark street behind
them.  "Where? Are you hurt anywhere else?  How many were there?" Alarm
rang in her voice.

"I'm fine, Love, I'm fine," Abe told his wife soothingly.  "And there were
none of them, I wasn't robbed.

"Then what crime did this to your arm," Lily pried away his hand and looked
at the gaping wound that surprised them both with its scarlet colour under
the light in the welcoming and homely entrance hall of their house.  Lily
bunched his folded jacket onto a hook in the wall and started to guide Abe
to the bathroom down the short passage.

"It wasn't crime, it was something to stop crime," he started an
explanation, "Ironic, really."  Lily made him sit on the lid of the toilet
bowl.  She reached into the little cabinet that nestled under the bathroom
sink and brought out a big bottle of antiseptic liquid and a wad of cotton
wool.  She had already started to fill the sink from the hot water tap.
Abe stripped his shirt off as he sat.

"I cut myself on the barbed wire when I reached over the wall into
Mr. Benson's rosebush to get you a blossom," he elaborated.  She was
reminded of the tenacious gesture with which he have delighted her since
they started seeing each other, she thought it was romantic, he told her it
was cheap, and a smile came to her face.  She touched a cloth to the
antiseptic water in the sink and gingerly dabbed at the cut relieving it of
clotted blood.

"It's going to need stitches," she said, "Do you want me to do it?"  He
turned his face, flushed with trust, toward her.

"Would you?" he asked.  Lily left the room and he could hear the opening
and closing of a cupboard in the kitchen.  She returned and sat down on the
edge of the bathtub.  In her one hand was half a bottle of cooking brandy,
and in the other two glasses, one of which she offered to Abe.  She
clutched her sowing kit under an arm.

"Only if I can get a bit of bottle courage first," she sighed.  This was
not the first time Lily had to close a wound on Abe; she had always known
him to be a slightly awkward, but not really clumsy man.  Yet, she has seen
how he knocked his thumbnail as black as night assembling a shelf.  He was
always the one who stepped on the blue bottles when they walked on the
beach.  Accidents always happened to Abe, and sometimes his injuries needed
closing.

"It's not Mr. Benson's fault really, he is just trying to keep the crooks
out, you know," he took a swig from the full glass.  The comforting glow of
the brandy on his tongue and down his throat held the promise of numbness,
and at least a bit of delivery from the pain of having stitches put in an
open wound.  The very first time he asked this of Lily was the first day of
their honeymoon.  He had gone for a walk on the beach by himself and
returned hours later with a cut as long as her little finger and alarmingly
deep on the bottom of his foot.  He had refused to go to the hospital and
insisted that she did it for him.  They had improvised with needle and
thread, compliments of the hotel at which they were staying, and had robbed
the little fridge in the room of all its little bottles of liquor. They had
done it successfully and ever since, Abe had trusted his wife with a needle
in her hand and a bit of bottled courage in her belly.

Lily drank from her glass deeply too.  She hated doing what she was about
to and never really understood why Abe would not trust a job like this to a
doctor.  He had always insisted that something this small would only invoke
laughter from the professionals, and that `vultures like them are just out
to rob us of our hard earned money'.  She knew better than to argue with
her husband over issues such as this.  Apart from the fact that he had an
open wound on his arm he was amiable.  He even started smiling a bit, the
brandy working its magic on him.

"Don't you have something more flesh toned, Love?" he teased her choice of
cotton thread colour, "was that the green you used in the dining room?"
She gave him an annoyed look.

"If you stop your joking maybe I can rake together the guts to do this."
Lily tried to thread the cotton through the eye of the needle. "How many
times has it been, Abe?" She dropped her hands and looked at him counting
the times in her head. "God, it's just too many to count, isn't it?"

"Nine, Lils," Abe said smiling, "nine times only.  It's not that much, and
by now you're quite good at it."

"I'd still rather you went to the doctor with this."  Lily pinched the
thread between two fingers and let the needle dangle from it.  She
suspended it over the brandy bottle lowering it slowly until it, and some
of the thread, sunk beneath the ochre liquid.  She swirled the bottle a
number of times expecting the alcohol to disinfect the needle and the
thread.  She took it out, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed.

"Better hold on to something, Love," she warned him, "This will hurt."  She
measured the cut with her eye, picking a spot at which to place the first
stitch, not too far away from the rim, and close to the centre.  She
estimated that it would take five knots to pull it close, the first one in
the middle and alternatively adding two to either side.  They couldn't be
too deep or she would not be able to pierce the needle through and out the
other side, nor too shallow for she might tear through the muscle when she
pulled the severed flesh back together.  She knew this from trial and
error.

Abe reached for the little towel ring, hinged into the wall over his head,
and braced himself.  He had installed it not long after they had moved into
the house.  Lily had gone to help her sister with the birth of their little
niece for a few days; he wanted to surprise her with a newly fitted
bathroom when she returned.  He had laid the white tiles himself, but when
she came back she scarce had time to see what he had done.  That time he
told her that he cut himself breaking a tile to fit around the base of the
toilet he was sitting on.  He trusted the veracity of his own handy work,
the towel ring would hold.

The first prick would by no means be the worst.  He forced his lungs to
breathe deeper, and slower.  His heart rate increased nonetheless,
anticipating the resistance the uppermost layer of skin would present to
the needlepoint.  The pink skin, swollen, and inflamed by the proximity of
an open wound was very sensitive.  Sensitive to the point that ordinary
touch would send aching waves through his arm, but now Lily was audibly
straining with the effort of breaking the skin with her small sowing
needle.  The tissue in his bicep was even more resistant than the skin.
The needle had to tear sinuous fibres from each other to create a corridor
for the thread trailing it to pass through.

"Nearly there, Love." Lily declared when she could see the silvery point
emerging from inside the flesh exposed by the cut.  Abe cradled his
contorted face in the crook of his arm, tears rolled first down his nose,
then onto his elbow, from there to drop to the shiny tiles below.  I
deserve this, he thought to himself, she trusts me, and I did it to her
again.  The grain of the thread she was sowing him up with was rough and
uneven.  It stuck to the muscle it was pulled through.  The pain should
have been unbearable, and even if Abe bore it in silence, his knuckles
gripped white at the towel ring. The pierced flesh stung with the force of
a needle pushed through, it bled into cotton soaked with brandy.  If I can
break my promise, Abe lamented to himself, I can take my punishment.  Lily
did not know the tears from the man she loved so much were not only tears
of agony, but also tears of guilt.

It had been more than two years since Lily had last sown him up.  He told
her that he had a collision with a man on bicycle; he had been walking home
under promise of a summer storm when a man on a bike came down the pavement
and hit his shoulder hard enough for Abe to have lost his balance and hit
his face on a traffic sign.  It took her a deft five minutes to have him
good as new and into dry clothes.  He was not only wounded, but also soaked
to the skin.  That day he had intended to walk his regular route home, but
an approaching storm had caught up with him by the time he passed a city
park.  Water fell from the sky as if fissures had opened in heaven above.
It rained, small bits of ice warned of hale.  Abe scouted for shelter.
There was no bus stop or other cover; the only dry place he could see was
the rest rooms in the park, and he had been avoiding those for years.  He
had no choice; he dashed for the men's room holding his lunch bag over his
head in a vain attempt to stay dry.  The bicycle propped against the wall
by the entrance warned him that another unfortunate traveller had been
caught by the rain; he was relieved at the licit intention of the other
refugee.  The smell of urinal disinfectant, and stale pee slammed into his
nostrils.  It was the smell of male ablutions; dirty and clean at the same
time.  Inside he found the cyclist, a younger man, wringing out his soaked
shirt over the basin, when he noticed Abe and smiled shyly, conscious of
his vulnerable appearance.  They were stuck together for a while.  When the
rain had cleared Abe picked up a broken bottle left by some vagrant and
looked into the mirror as he took the shard to his own face.

Lily tightened the little green knot and the stabbing pain brought Abe back
to the room where his wife tended him.  The bleeding had stopped, but the
dull ache returned, as Lily told Abe to brace himself for the insertion of
the next stitch.  She had threaded a new piece of cotton and already
submerged it in the brandy.  She took another swig herself and grasped his
upper triceps with a sure hand; she placed the needle and pressed.  Her
confidence in her labour had returned and a quick jab and upward thrust
exposed the sharp point once again.

The pain tore at Abe, he sat motionless and silent as Lily repaired him.
His face was still cradled in his arm, and his mind reeled behind closed
eyes.  Even if the scent was faint, and imperceptible to her, he recognised
the musk from another man's body that clang to his clothes, and to his
skin.  He had left the office after lunch to deliver a report to another
building and was confronted by a construction worker and his moistly
gleaming muscles in the afternoon sun.  Abe only glanced at the man who
then held his gaze unconsciously.  He did not intend to stare at the man,
but when he saw the man smile back at him he realised that an encounter had
begun.  He felt the familiar loss of control and an expansion of his own
body's sentience.  A flush of blood touched is chest and his cheeks, and a
slow breath of air thumped through his ears in a melody mixed with the
sounds of a busy street, and a construction site.  He did not mean to, but
he smiled back.  The man strolled over.

"Hot today, mate.  Feel like a beer?"  The man indicated the site office, a
converted container that towered over the dusty labour performed by an army
of men.  The room was air conditioned, and the sudden chill sent waves of
goose bumps across both their skins.  The man never gave him a drink.  As
soon as the door closed behind them he tore first at his own shirt before
he reached for Abe's.  When they touched at first Abe's being groaned with
the collapse of inhibitions. He smelt of concrete and sweat and musk.  The
smell lingered with Abe after their encounter had ended, but so did a guilt
that tore at his sense of propriety.  The construction worker demolished a
wall of self control, and his physical delight stabbed at his love for his
wife.  On the walk home he saw the bladed wire defending an old man's
garden from a cruel world.  He walked up to it and bit his lip as he
scraped his arm across the barbs.  It bled more than he expected.

By now Lily had tied the third little knot that aided Abe's body to repair
itself.  His skin was coming together nicely.  In a week or so his tissues
would be strong enough to keep together by itself, but until then Lily
needed to apply more stitches.  She had opted to use a longer piece of
cotton.  The sowing up process took less time, but the cotton that fought
its way into the raw flesh was longer.  It took more effort to pull it
through, especially now that the thread itself had absorbed as much of his
blood as it could.  Her latest thrust bled hard, she had perforated a
shallow vein.  She dabbed at it with the antiseptic cloth stemming the flow
of scarlet, at the same time jabbing the needle through in to the torn
wound and out the inflamed skin on the other side.  Abe sat motionless.

A usual paradox battled in his mind; although the stinging brandy afforded
some numbness for the ache his loving wife was inflicting upon him, his
mind furtively escaped to places and times his body felt joy instead.  As
an escape his mind took him to the bodies that lured him to sin, and this
eventual punishment, but it was the memory of these sins that made the
penalty bearable.  It was the towel ring he so desperately clung to that
invoked the recollection with which his soul subconsciously escaped the
burdens of his wife's labour.  He was younger then, and his wife a caring
sister and excited new aunt.  He had known of her intent to travel to tend
to the new arrival in the family.  He had planned the new bathroom since
then.

At the sanitary ware shop he browsed the showroom.  Gleaming toilets,
basins and tubs all beckoned his desire for them, but the prices were not
suited to the pocket of a civil servant.  Sensing his hesitation a lanky,
blonde attendant approached, his sales pitch startled Abe for a second:

"The lilac dream set is one of our more popular options!"  Abe turned his
gaze from the ghastly purple bathroom display, the tub alone of which would
surely fill his entire bathroom. Inadvertently his eyes dropped to the
young man's shoes, trailing their way up the tall handsome frame.  For a
moment his eyes delayed at the low riding jeans and the visible scraps of
muscular thigh.  The obnoxious shirt emblazoned with the shop logo hugged
the torso tightly, and the upturned collar framed a friendly smile of
salesmen's teeth and sapphire eyes.  Abe was speechless.

"If you are looking for something more masculine I can show you our more
conservative selection."  Abe was still transfixed by the blonde hair and
the minute piercings that decorated his handsome ears.  He followed the man
to another aisle, using the opportunity to stare at his butt and the faint
suggestion of crack penetrating well defined mounds, all lain bare by the
jeans that seemed to have drifted even lower.  Abe's body responded.  He
could feel blood rushing to his chest and face, a twitch in his groin
warned him of crumbling inhibitions.  Only then did he notice the man had
brought them to the `conservative' selection and snapped around to face
him, it was too late.  The blonde grabbed for Abe to minimise the collision
as he stumbled straight into him.  He did not raise his arms in defence,
nor reach for Abe's arms to hold him away.  Instead he grabbed a hold of
Abe's sides, placing his palms and fingers flat against his obliques, and
giving them a slight squeeze, taking his sweet time to let go.  Abe knew
the man saw him look at his ass.  The warm hands on his abdomen and the
glint of a smile in the bluest of eyes suggested that the admiration was
not unwelcome.

"I think there might be a huge discount on these," he said with a closed
smile, Abe not even looking at the white glazed ceramics that he came for,
"and if you want I can deliver them myself, today, after work."  His `Hello
my name is' labelled him Sean, and a bulge pressed from inside his denim.

"Damn'it!" shrieked Lily.  Pain grabbed Abe back into a bathroom which was
now stained with watermarks and years of use.  She had misplaced the needle
and pierced through perfectly good skin that was not in need of mending;

"I'm sorry my love," she said stroking at the unintentional damage.  Abe
remained quiet and again cradled his face in his elbow.

Sean had added a selection of freebies when he drove up to the house in the
shop's delivery van that evening, the towel ring was in the mix.  He had
come alone, but between the two of them they made short, hot work of
carrying in the bulky goods and stowing them in the corridor until the
bathroom was ready for installation.  The carrying was enough excuse for
both of them to remove their shirts, and an even better excuse to open a
couple of beers that chilled in the fridge since Abe anticipated the pale
beauty's delivery. His carefully thought out plan to first come on to, and
then seduce the man was pre-empted when Sean, after a long draught from his
bottle came up to him, encircled his middle with one arm pulling their
slick torsos together and leaned his face in for a long, sweet kiss.  This
was the only time ever Abe shared his bed with another man for an entire
night.  He made sure to let Sean have his side of the bed for letting him
sleep on Lily's spot would feel too much like a traitor's act. But being
with a man in the comfort of a bed with no risk of discovery gave Abe his
most intimate experience with a man's body.  Sean was about as tall as he
was, he was milky white and wiry muscled.  They kissed a long time
languishing in the contact between their naked bodies, rubbing their
penises together, and humping at each other until their mutual licks and
cuddles made way for musky sex and a series of powerful but diminishing
climaxes.  When they had to get up for work they were both tired, but
satiated and glowing with good sex.  It was only that evening that Abe
realised he had bought the same bathroom set as the one they already had.

A soft kiss on the top of his head signalled the end of the ordeal.  Abe's
arm was cleaned and dressed. It still ached, but his wife popped two
tablets at him and said,

"Take these and call me anytime you want," she winked at him and turned to
walk away.  Abe grabbed her without warning.  He clutched his wife to his
chest in a great big hug, she hugged him back and giggled about his
spontaneous show of affection, and the brandy. The blood had washed away
the trespasses of his body, and the pain his wife inflicted ended the
chapter and restored to her the right to be his wife, and the affection he
had for her.

"Never again," he whispered to himself, vindicated, as always.

"I made your favourite for dinner, fish and chips!"  He smiled at her
appreciatively and nodded, he had no appetite, but his husbandly duties
demanded that he took from his wife that which she so lovingly bestowed.
He checked the bandage before fastening another shirt around his collar.
He felt fine.

The End

Copyright 2008 Sebastian Thomas Oakland

If you'd like to comment I'd like to read `em: Sebastian.oak@gmail.com