This is all fabrication, nothing here is real: none of the characters are flesh and blood, none of the things described here did ever occur.
Some laws nevertheless forbid these kinds of fantasies, and if these laws apply to you, go away from here.
Basically, this is a story of friendship and not a wall-to-wall porn thing. Time and again bodily functions will be mentioned, eventually explored, but they won't be the main focus. I hope you will enjoy it anyway.
If you feel I'm being a bit mean to certain mutants of the Christian faith, you are absolutely right. I believe they deserve it.
I also feel I should apologize for possible linguistic blunders and remind you that I am not a natural English speaker.
But I love feedback. You can reach me here:
Or here:
To keep this site going, please do your best and
http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
SWEET DREAMS, LITTLE JOHNNY.
by Magnus Winter
Part 1.
Two days in October.
It was a dark and stormy night ...
Yeah, I know, but don't interrupt! It was!
Let's start again:
It was a dark and stormy night. The wind wailed like a sick fox around the corners, carrying dead leaves and prickly twigs to places they'd never been before, watched by a thin sickle of moon the colour of bone, but this new moon's lookout post was most of the time obstructed and hampered by the duvets of clouds that sped across the black sky, getting denser by the minute.
The streetlamps suddenly went out. The village cemetery with its low hedges and gravelled paths lay dumb and abandoned, the rows of gravestones like uneven blotches in a black and sepia ink wash painting, their stories illegible and secret. However, a sudden flash of headlights from a passing car lit up a small flagstone plaque leaning at a 60-degree angle in the far corner of this necropolis.
The withered tufts of grass that grew on the small mound billowed and undulated. A bunch of dry and brittle flowers came flying from a neighbouring grave and disintegrated as it hit the slanting stone plaque, grey and brown fragments of a once so colourful bouquet flew on to the next grave, and then the next.
And a tiny, worn teddy bear had stopped its involuntary flight and sat wedged in the cracks of the stone fence that ran around the graveyard.
* *
I tell you, it really was a dark and stormy night. It was like the howling Boreas, the god of the northern winds, greatly dissatisfied with the waste and the debris that littered the streets, and equally unhappy with the stench of rot and neglect, had set forth to take all of it somewhere else as soon as possible. And like the arrogant god he was, he didn't stop for one minute to consider the wellbeing of the forlorn creature that crouched and trudged his way away from the cemetery and now moved between the deserted buildings of the old industrial plant. Well, and why should he? The creature looked more dispensable than important, a nondistinctive and fuzzy bundle of indeterminate pink.
Now, had for instance Apollo been on duty that night, he might have stopped to inspect this apparition, and perhaps been captivated by the contents of the way too big woollen coat of a sickly salmon colour that the little person inside it had ... let's just say borrowed. But this night was the lesser wind-god's watch, and he rode roughshod over land and sea, stopping only if there was a dancing half-naked nymph to rape or a fertile cow to mount, caring not for a puny boy of a mere twelve years, no matter how beguiling a god higher up in the hierarchy would have found that boy.
And the puny boy of a mere twelve years, no matter how enchanting a god from the upper shelf would have found him, was quite used to the fact that no one gave a shit about him. That was his heritage, and that was his destiny. He did give a shit about himself, though, his self-preservation was still intact, and tired and disheartened he crept in through a doorway where the door hung slanting from just one hinge. In the damp darkness inside he sat down, leaning against the wall, and his twelve-year-old brain did its best to come up with a logical solution to the big question: What now?
* *
In case you missed it, it was a dark and stormy night. It sure was. The lights flickered threateningly for a moment in the huge, grey concrete block of flats that sat among several other huge, grey concrete blocks of flats in the outskirts of this unprepossessing, some would even call it ugly, small town.
Neither Apollo nor Boreas, but quite another, although by no means less demanding god reigned in the small fourth-floor apartment where a woman just turned thirty stood in the middle of a shabby living room, breathing heavily through her nose, looking vexed and angry and years older than her actual age. Her lips were pressed hard together as if to stop bad words from getting out, but a small, almost inaudible shit managed to escape as she steered her feet towards the kitchen sink.
She leaned over the sink, hand slightly trembling as she opened for the cold water and bent down to drink from the tap. Lifting her head, rivulets of water running down her chin, the eyes in her malcontent face darted back and forth to the unopened bottle of Vodka that now sat on the counter next to the bread jar, a bottle that three minutes ago had come out of its hiding place at the bottom of the broom closet.
A disgusted moan rose in her throat, like a belch from hell, as she left the open kitchen and scurried restlessly around the living room floor, fingers alternatively snapping in the air and tugging at her sleeves. Picking up a bible with a pink patchwork book cover, she flopped down on the worn sofa, but leapt right up again as if she was burnt, furious eyes fixed on the stains she had almost sat down on.
Suddenly she threw the pink bible hard across the room. It hit the potted hibiscus on the windowsill, which of course tipped over and crashed to the floor, earth and shards and pink petals in a heap. A torrent of whispered angry words followed a rasping growl of disgust. The woman strode whimpering to the Vodka, unscrewed the cap and took two deep swigs from the bottle.
* *
Yes, yes, it was a dark and stormy night. The wind whined and rattled the broken door, whistled around the numerous pale pillars in the empty, vast hall, pillars like a regiment of ghosts now that his eyes were getting used to the lack of light in there.
His thoughts roamed wild. He wondered why the weather-gods seemed to be so unmusical. The cacophony they made was according to his understanding not celestial at all, and his twelve-year-old logic told him this was again proof that no gods really existed, no matter how hard his stupid, recently born-again mother insisted that at least one did. So, was this god of his nasty mother also the god of nasty weather, omnipotent and singular as he was supposed to be? Come on, what god, be he Roman or Greek or Christian, would sound worse than he himself did when they let him try the violin in music class? Or maybe there was a god of katzenjammer somewhere, and that was the god his stupid mother had submitted herself to and demonstratively kneeled to ... She sure as hell sounded like the spirit of this god filled her most of the time.
All this god-stuff was quite new to his brain, and as such pretty interesting to explore, albeit unfathomable, and also a bit sickening. Why was it that people he knew who said they had found God with a capital G never seemed to turn out to be happier or nicer than they were before? Rather the opposite, actually. And his disgusting mother who was now in love with Jesus instead of with every Tom, Dick and Harry that had come sniffing along her trail of pheromones, all of them hoping for drunk lips and hastily wet-wiped fanny, and all of them getting it ... you'd think with only Jesus to love now, there would be some love spilling over to him?
But no.
Smack!
"Get out of my sight!"
Which he always did when this chorus sounded. Sometimes for more than just a few hours. This time she would miss her coat, though. Well, she could have gotten him a new jacket, so fuck her.
* *
It was a dark and stormy night, and dark and stormy nights quite often turn on the waterworks as well. And the downpour came, splashing against asphalt and concrete, whipping up spray from dirty puddles, gushing along the gutters,
To the woman sprawled on the bed, the rain's noisy assault on her windowpane made no difference. She loosely clutched her as good as empty bottle, and occasional strained snorts sounded above the din from the rain.
Before this, her mind had run in rather futile circles. What was the greater sin, drunkenness or masturbation? Her knowledge of the Holy Writ was yet limited, but as far as she knew they all drank a bit, Noah even a whole lot, but Onan got killed for squirting cum all over the place, so there! Thus, she had thought it safe to take another swig, and one more, vaguely wondering if fingering your pussy was also mentioned in the catalogue of sins, seeing no sperm would go astray if one did that a little bit. Better not take any chances. The alcohol had soon dulled her senses, leaving her with the repeated conviction that drinking was fine and self-stimulation was not.
But way at the back of her consciousness a disturbing little itch would not go away, an itch to again have a hard, fat pole of flesh plough into her, an unwelcome but burning memory of days gone. Surprising her son jacking off his young cock on the sofa had brought all this to the foreground, and her resentment of the reminder spurred the old and underlying resentment of her son per se, her son who was nothing but an odious mistake, an accident to hamper her life, a curse and a hindrance.
Never did it occur to her to consider his feelings. Two deep snores, and now her hand no longer gripped the bottle.
* *
It was a dark and stormy night, as we've already established. There was a leak in the roof just where the skinny twelve-year-old boy in the purloined coat had parked his scrawny ass, and as the dark and stormy night had turned into a deluge, he crept further into this derelict hall of forgotten enterprise as carefully and as noiselessly as he could for all the rubble strewn about.
A few large wooden crates were stacked in the darkest corner, the concrete floor was dry here. There was a small gap between the boxes and the wall, it seemed the perfect place to make himself a small nest and continue his philosophizing. The bundled-up coat made a nice cushion to sit on, and finally, he thought, something that comes from my mean mother serves me well...
"Get out of my sight!"
Well, but for how long this time? It was fucking October, and fucking cold, and he hadn't even had time to grab a packet of biscuits on his way out. Besides, it was Saturday, and never mind that tomorrow was supposed to be a special day, because those days never turned out the way one might wish anyway, but if he was still alive and had not frozen to death on Monday morning, he would need his school bag, no matter what the bitch had told him. For this much he knew: Skip school too often, and a whole horde of officials would step in and rearrange his life, and he was absolutely convinced his life would be even more shitty and hopeless if that happened. At least now, if he stayed mostly in his room and didn't bother her too much or made himself scarce whenever she had one of her fits, she fed him and even sometimes got him new clothes from the thrift shop. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.
And she never asked where he went or what he did. Like he was a cat, or something. A cat whose food bowl she filled at regular intervals and for the rest of the time never bothered much with beyond shooing it off the sofa.
How stupid of him to toss himself off in the living room. He had quite recently begun to squirt cum, and as any youngster who has discovered the brilliant pleasure of an orgasm, he wanted one as often as possible. He had been so sure she was at the prayer meeting she had announced she was going to, and just for the hell of it thought it would be fun to defy her newfound and loudly voiced ideas of decency and virtue by giving his cock a good polish right there on her sofa. Just to spite her.
The drumming rain had stopped, but a new sound disturbed his reveries. Footsteps. He peeped out from his hiding place.
* *
A dark and stormy night is no excuse to skip a sanctified dedication, and the dutiful members were all there, all except the relative newcomer with that very noticeable salmon winter coat.
The exquisitely groomed and fashionably besuited preacher let his theatrical voice boom from the rostrum.
"Their influence is evil! They corrupt your sons and daughters! They should be rounded up and locked in behind electric fences!"
Lots of amens and praise-the-lords.
"I know some think we are justified to kill them, that the word of the Lord says that when a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, they must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads!"
More amens. And one misguided shout of "The blood of the Lamb!" Obviously not everyone was able to keep track of the appropriate magic words.
"But the good book also says thou shalt not kill. And the beauty of it is we don't need to. There is no need to kill them! If we remove them from society, stop their evil recruiting, they will disappear! Go extinct! You know why? Because they can't reproduce!"
This elegant logic caused an obese fellow on the front row to get up and pour out a stream of gibberish. He was known to have the gift of tongues, but he was also known for his tendency to interrupt whatever was going on to put himself in the limelight.
The slick preacher tried not to show his annoyance. Lucky for him, he was amplified, and his charismatic voice on the loudspeaker drowned out the fat man's exalted and heavenward noise.
"You go out there, now! Go out there and tell them! Tell the people who have strayed from the Lord's path! Tell this ungodly government that supports these perverts, tell them the wrath of the Lord is upon them!
More shouts from the congregation. One loud "Smite them, Lord!" penetrated the din.
"The Lord sent sulphur and fire to Sodom! And now the Lord has sent this plague to our cities! And their face masks and their vaccines will not help! You know, and I know, the only remedy is to forsake the Devil and his evil ways, and repent and return to the Lord, and in his mercy, he shall free us! And once more we will be washed clean in the blood of Jesus! Washed clean and freed from the sins of Sodom!"
A few weak hallelujahs and one timid thank-you-Jesus, but the crowd seemed to get a bit uninspired. The preacher felt he needed to turn up the heat again.
"Ask yourselves. Do we want these deviants to corrupt and contaminate our children? Do you want your daughters to dress as men and do unspeakable things with each other? Do you want your sons mincing about like girls and go whoring in the bushes? I tell you what you want. You want to grab that limp wrist and break it off! So let our voices be heard! We will not allow these beasts, these misfits, these spawns of Satan, to lead our children astray! We will not tolerate their sins; we will drive them and their perverted sins from our cities!"
The congregation was getting warmer again, but one man at the back of the room suddenly rose. His open and serene face picked up the flickering beam of light that seeped in through the tall window.
"Stop it!" he shouted. His voice carried both authority and conviction. "Stop it! You preach nothing but hatred and ignorance! These people you slander are people, not animals! They are the children of God as much as anyone, and God loves them as much as he loves you and me! God is supposed to be love, so why don't you preach a little love instead of spewing out all this bile?"
Silence fell like a stone in the room. Then the murmur started. And the voice from the rostrum boomed its repeated message as if the interruption had never happened.
"Their influence is evil! They corrupt your sons and daughters! They should be rounded up and locked in behind electric fences!"
* *
Still a dark and stormy night. Totally so in the vast and derelict industrial hall, and not much to see unless you were a puny boy of a mere twelve years sitting in the darkest place with your eyes adapted to the conditions.
Two dark figures moved from the broken door deeper into the room, one towering over the other, pushing the smallest figure backwards towards a pillar, then closing in until both figures merged into one big, dark, shadowy mass. The larger half of the mass slid downwards, and slowly the middle part of the figure still leaning against the pillar was not dark anymore, but as pale and as ghostlike as the column behind it.
The boy held his breath. Mesmerized. Trembling with excitement. He couldn't see much, no details, just movement, but the knowledge of what was happening instantly had him hard as a rock and shaky as a leaf.
And then he heard soft moans. Moans of pleasure. Goosebumps raced all over his skin, he mashed his hand against his crotch and his young cock throbbed and jerked and exploded in the confinement of his worn and one size too small underpants.
He must have made a noise. There was a quick rustle of clothes, the ghostly glimpses of skin disappeared, and the dark figures groped their way to the door.
He suddenly felt he had to run after them, to see who they were, to get to know them. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed the coat, hurried towards the spot of faint light where the door was, tripped on something and fell flat on his face. Cursing like a fishwife, he got back on his feet and stumbled outside, the icy wind hit his face like a wall. Something warm trickled down his cheek, his hand came up to wipe it away, and he saw dark stains on his fingers. But whoever had been in there with him were nowhere to be seen. He felt a sudden anger that turned into distress, like he was bereaved of something, like those unknown persons were his chance, or his hope to find something he knew he wanted but couldn't quite figure out. Something beyond the horny fever he had just experienced.
As so often after an orgasm, he felt the urge to pee. He fished out his gooey cock and let loose against the concrete wall. Wiped his sticky prick off on the sleeve of his mother's coat.
"In your face!" he whispered.
Wrapping the stupid coat tighter around him, he just stood there for a while. Wondering why nothing ever turned out right for him. Trying to find the words for what he felt. Feeling the sticky wetness in his pants.
Eventually he sighed deeply and trudged his way back to the cemetery.
* *
It was a dark and ... oh, shut up already!
No, I won't shut up. I want you to close your eyes, imagine you're out in this foul weather, want you to picture the skinny and underfed looking, and definitely not very happy twelve-year-old boy, see him where he struggles against the wind, see him crouching and stooping against the attacks of the persistent and heartless Boreas. See him laboriously find his way back to the place he so often has sat, so often has let his thoughts be put into words, and even sometimes has allowed his tears to flow. The only place, in fact, where he has shed tears. Tears for himself, and tears for the unknown boy who has become his confidant, his friend.
I want you to see him like the tall man with the unguarded and somewhat childlike face saw him as he came away from the meeting that had so got his goat; a man who was in great need to find a meaning or maybe an explanation, a man who had been looking for just this in several places, and on this dark and stormy night he had attended his first séance with this newly established independent congregation called The Word of Life.
His inside was in uproar and his brain was seething with rebellion against the manifestation of fanaticism and hateful intolerance he had just experienced, so he had almost without reflection come to the place that was the reason for his constant search, the place where his heart had once withered and died, the place he only visited at night when no one else was around and could see how fragile and utterly lost he was. And now he saw an appalling pink heap crawling around the small, raised slab of stone that bore the legend
SWEET
DREAMS
LITTLE
JOHNNY
No last name, no dates. Just twenty-three black letters carved into the slate.
"What in heaven's name are you doing?"
The pink bundle stopped moving, and up came a pale, thin boy's face with a pair of enormous and distressed dark eyes and a dried river of dark blood that had run down from the right side of his forehead.
"I can't find his teddy!"
The voice with its vaguely adolescent timbre seemed not to belong to the small creature. The man crouched down.
"His teddy?"
The boy just gazed at the man squatting in front of him. It turned into a staring match, both man and boy felt like their privacy was invaded, both felt equally forlorn and lost. The man fought back tears that threatened to break free.
"Was it you?" he asked softly, cautiously. "You who placed the teddy here? And the little dinosaur before that?"
The small mouth opened and closed. Those big eyes just kept staring.
"Why?"
The boy shivered and wrapped the absurd coat tighter around him. Shook his head. Sighed loudly and shuddered.
The man, still on his haunches, wriggled closer.
"Tell me, please," he implored sotto voce, "why you are out here so late at night and in this ghastly weather."
The boy now averted his eyes.
"I come here when I need someone to talk to," he mumbled. "He doesn't shout at me. He doesn't walk away."
"Okay?" the man said slowly, a touch of a question in his tone. "But shouldn't you be home soon? It's almost midnight."
The boy bit his lip. Then obviously decided he had nothing to lose.
"She tells me to get out of her sight, right? So that's what I do. And what are you doing here?" There was something almost confrontational in his voice.
The man thought for a while. A frown changed his face.
"Same as you. I came to talk to Johnny."
"Have you been thrown out as well? I mean ... like you said, it's like midnight and all?"
A sudden, small smile came and went. Another smile was born from the first, this one a rather bitter one.
"There's no one who throws me anywhere. I come here at night to make sure I'm alone with him."
Something dawned on the boy. He rose, suddenly feeling he was trespassing.
"He was your boy, huh?" His voice cracked a bit between tenor and soprano. "I'm sorry I got in your way. I'll go somewhere else."
The boy turned, trotted over and started to follow the fence towards the gate. The man watched the incongruous bundle slowly get swallowed by the darkness. Somewhere else? he thought. That doesn't sound good.
He ran after the boy, caught up with him just outside the heavy wrought iron gates. Fell in with him and walked silently beside him. For quite a while.
The boy suddenly stopped.
"You creep me out!"
The man stopped as well. Held his hands up in defence.
"That wasn't my intention. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Little boys shouldn't be out wandering alone on a night like this."
"I can take care of myself. You can go back to ... you know."
"Take care of yourself, huh? There's blood on your face. How old are you anyway?"
The boy hesitated. Started walking again.
"What time is it?"
The man held his watch almost up to his eye.
"It's twenty past eleven."
"Then I'm twelve."
* *
You know, dark and stormy nights can cover up, and for some fickle characters even justify many a furtive deed.
And for the girl, let's be nice and call her a young lady, who half an hour ago had been kneeling in front of her first-row seat, seeking solace and remission of sins as the rest of the congregation was leaving, breathing was suddenly getting harder. The hand of the dapper preacher that up to now had rested on top of her head crept slowly down her neck and inside her blouse collar. Instinctively she bent backwards to give the hand access, caught in the moment, and whatever objections she ought to have had gone with the wind. Her rather plain face showed streaks of tears, tears because the handsome preacher who, when his tirade against the sodomites was getting a bit old, had insistently reminded them that they all carried the burden of sin, had subtly and suggestively manipulated their deepest guilt, their remorse and their fears of hell, and made it clear anyone who felt the call of Jesus in their hearts and needed redemption or renewed salvation could stay on after the meeting.
And she did just that, emotions shaking her clumsy body, anguish tearing at her naïve heart, tears sprouting from her bovine eyes. And that persuasive voice and now that warm hand on her collarbone and oh! another hand on her thigh made her feel that for sure Jesus was here now to wash her sins away.
* *
The streetlamps flashed a couple of times and finally started functioning again. The boy unabashedly studied the man, noticing his short-short hair, almost just a shadow above his oval face, a pair of honest blue eyes, smooth skin still with the remnants of a summer's tan and cheeks rosy from the wind. And hey, a snub nose that looked all wrong in a grown man's face!
The man also quite candidly scrutinized the boy. Saw thin fingers clutching that hopelessly inappropriate and, in this light, gaudy, orange women's coat around his throat, saw unkempt dark locks of hair dancing in the wind, saw a small mouth with tightly closed lips, saw brown eyes that stared at him and looked impossibly big in that scrawny face.
"Twelve?" the man said, sounding surprised.
The boy blushed.
"Yeah. I know I'm small. What's it to you anyway?"
"Well, nothing. But what's the time got to do with how old you are? Is your birthday coming up or something?"
"Oh, you're a genius!" the boy said mockingly. "Yeah. In less than an hour I'll be thirteen." He puffed out his little chest and strutted. Sniggered a bit, then almost sank into himself again.
The man stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. The boy squirmed away from the touch.
"But ... I say, this is no way to celebrate a birthday! You just can't roam the streets at night like this! I mean, it's dangerous!"
The boy looked exasperated up at him.
"You think I do this for kicks? Think I would be here if had somewhere else to go? I got chucked out, remember?"
"But ... but ... Couldn't you stay with friends or something?"
The boy blew him a raspberry. Sighed.
"Don't have any," he mumbled. "So I'll probably go and see if the Catholic Church is still open, cuz I was freezing my balls off in the old factory."
"Yes, that sounds like a better idea. That coat," he pointed his finger, "attracts a lot of attention, probably also trouble. Mind if I go with you? Just to make sure?"
* *
"We are made righteous and free of sin with the blood of Jesus." The sweetly coaxing voice of the preacher bathed her ears as the hand stroked her thigh. "For once you have repented and accepted Jesus into your heart, there is no sin anymore."
This frumpy and a bit fat girl wasn't his first choice, he had really hoped her fit friend, or whoever it was that had sat beside her, had been the one to seek forgiveness and absolution, but well, he thought, it is what it is. His hand lightly passed over the crotch of her jeans, inwardly cursing her for making this so complicated by not wearing a skirt.
His other hand left the opening of her blouse, instead he took her hand in his and, it seemed randomly, directed it to the front of his trousers.
"No sin anymore," he cajoled. "With Jesus in our hearts nothing we do is sinful, for he has taken all our sins upon himself."
She was almost there. He felt her body sink against him, and although her hand remained passive outside his fly, his now firm and purposeful touch of her crotch made her tremble.
"God wants us to rejoice in his love," he whispered as he unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans. Her chubby hand now lay heavy on top of his hidden and small, stiff prick, and her blank mind suddenly started to spin.
* *
Anyone downtown braving the dark and stormy night could observe the odd combination of properly dressed man and weirdly dressed boy moving slowly through the streets. Like a dissonant medley of two unrelated songs, they passed the now closed Movie Palace, though palace would not be anyone's first choice of word. The Catholic Church, that time and again had served as shelter for a puny boy of a mere twelve years chucked out of his home, was closed, according to the note on the door due to a recent bout of thievery. The bus station's waiting room had battened down the hatches, and so had the Arcade.
"Not that I care," the skinny boy admitted. "They've booted me before."
He stood thinking, tight-lipped and frowning. Then his shoulders sagged, and a small sigh could be heard. He looked dismally up at the black sky.
"I guess it's the factory, then. In case it rains again. Thanks for going with me. You're strange!" he aimed at the man. "But nice," he hastily added. Then turned to walk back the way they had come.
The man's thoughts ran like a TGV-train through his brain, and God knows why he needed time to think, for his spontaneous action wasn't at all characterized by reason. He ran after the boy, grabbed the woolly bundle and hoisted it over his shoulder. The bundle squealed and kicked, but the man was a strong man despite his mild countenance.
"My first ever kidnapping," he confessed to the almost unmanageable mass of wool and limbs. "Or call it abduction, if you like. There's no fucking way are you staying outside in this shitty weather."
The boy suddenly gave himself over to a fit of giggles. His waving arms and kicking feet wound down like when you turn off a machine.
"You fucking swore!" he chuckled.
"I fucking did, didn't I? Now, is it safe to put you down or should I carry you all the way?"
"All the way to where?"
"To the only place that seems to be open besides the bars and the disco, and they won't let you in. Even if you've now reached the mature age of thirteen. Not in that coat. Never."
The boy couldn't stop giggling. Partly from the crazy predicament he was suddenly in, partly because panic was lurking in the aisles, and giggling seemed to soften his fear a bit. The man put him carefully down. Took the boy's hand and shook it.
"Happy birthday," he smiled. "If you don't mind too much, I'll take you to my place. At least it's warm. And then you can please, please tell me more about why I found you where I found you."
"Stranger danger," the boy almost sneered, like a last effort of proper reaction. Then, looking up at the man's guileless and amiable face, "And right now, I don't know if I even care."
The man kept the boy's hand in his and started to walk backwards, pulling the boy after him.
"Ten minutes," he said. "Fifteen at most."
* *
It was a dark and stormy night, was is now the operative word, for the wind had slackened, and the dense, black clouds had split up to let the spooky moon sickle peep through.
In the fourth-floor apartment in the huge, grey concrete block of flats that sat among several other huge, grey concrete blocks of flats, the woman supine on the bed abruptly woke up with her unruly middle finger lodged deep in her snatch. Scrambling out of bed she almost, but not quite made it to the toilet before her stomach turned inside out, and puke decorated the tiled floor, the edge of the porcelain bowl and the front of her dress.
In the hall where the rostrum was decorated with a huge cross the chubby girl leaning on the debonair preacher, now with his stiffy out, abruptly came to her senses, also with a finger lodged deep in her snatch, but it was not her own finger. Leaping up in the air, screaming and waving, stumbling because her jeans were pulled down to her knees, she limped and hopped to the door. The door was locked. She sank crying down on her knees, hopelessly banging her fists on the wood.
Not ten minutes, more like twenty, and the boy and the man stood outside a small corner shop, metal shutters pulled down covering the two tall windows. The man unlocked the side door, and still holding the boy's hand, led him up the narrow stairs to the first floor, opened another door and turned the lights on.
A small room. Small, and tightly furnished. Bookshelves covering one whole wall, small flatscreen in the middle of the colourful display of book backs. Two recliner chairs and a two-seater, old wooden beer-crates for tables. Small desk pushed into a corner, laptop open in the middle, desk and laptop littered with invoices and envelopes and stuff.
Instead of a dining table, a small kitchen island sat in front of the kitchen, which was basically just the narrow wall covered with wall-hung cupboards, and a counter with a sink half full of unwashed crockery and a gas cooker. A single barstool stood by the island where a peppermill in the shape of a chess king reigned in solitude.
The man hung his coat on a peg by the door, removed a jacket that hung next to it and slung it across one of the chairs, reached out his hand, obviously to take the boy's coat, or whoever it was who owned it.
The boy without the oversized coat on was a bit of a surprise. The figure that had looked so scrawny and pitiful proved to be not so hopeless after all. Oh, skinny as a reed, and small, yes. But so beautifully put together, so harmoniously proportioned, even if his just a little too small cotton sweater and unfashionable, shapeless jeans did their best to disturb the perfection of his form. And then that elfin face with the double stripe of dried reddish-brown blood that ran down the side of it, and those incredible eyes under thin, dark brows that now arched up questioningly as the boy turned his head round to inspect the environment!
The man felt suddenly dizzy and sat heavily down in the free recliner. Watched how the boy shifted from one foot to the other, watched him shake his head to get some stray locks of dark hair off his forehead, hair so dark brown it looked almost black.
"Bathroom is back there." The man tipped his head in the direction. "You want to wash that blood off your face."
The boy hesitated. Looked insecure and uncomfortable.
"I'm not sure," he eventually mumbled, "that I should be here at all."
"Well, you are free to go. Still, it's warmer here than outside, and no one is going to assault you or stab you with a hidden knife in here. Your choice."
Assault. Knife. Those words! The feeling of unease that had only been vague and fuzzy in the boy's head suddenly took shape. He took three steps back and his hand fumbled behind his back until it clutched the sleeve of the pink coat, his eyes never leaving the man's face. Imagined himself pale and dead, knife stuck in his back, blood running from his torn asshole. Saw himself buried alongside little Johnny, but there was no room for an extra name on the stone slab.
"What are you going to do with me?" he whispered, panic tightening his throat.
The man watched the alarm and the fear grow in the boy's delicate features.
"You are afraid now," he stated. "And that's sensible of you. The world is full of crazy people. I don't expect you to take my word for it, but I'm not one of them."
He unbuttoned four buttons down the front of his thick plaid shirt. Opened the shirt and showed the boy the top of a thick scar running from his sternum and disappearing down into the darkness behind the still fastened buttons.
"I'm part of that other group," he said, averting his eyes from the boy's staring ones. "The unlucky ones who got in the way of the crazy people."
He buttoned up his shirt again, staring at the dark bit of window below the half-closed roller shades.
"To answer your question, I'm not going to do anything with you. Since you obviously weren't going home, wherever that may be, I offered you a possibility to spend the night in from the cold. And to be honest, I hoped you would accept the offer, so we could go look for the lost teddy in the morning. But it's your decision."
The boy swallowed, still gripping the coat sleeve.
"Are you going to fuck me?"
The man turned his head, studied the boy with a faintly baffled expression.
"No," he said quietly, but decisively.
* *
It was a bright and sunny morning.
It seemed almost out of order that it should be so, but it was. A bright and sunny Sunday morning. The air was clean and purified from yesterday's catharsis, and colder than a well-diggers ass. Broken branches lay flung across streets and sidewalks, and overturned bins popped up in places where they didn't belong, their contents spread like they were laid out for the Devil's breakfast on Hell's vast kitchen table.
The man tiptoed across his living room floor, careful not to disturb the boy curled up on his small two-seater sofa, asleep under that bizarre coat. He slipped through the door, hurried down the stairs and out on the street to rescue the plastic-wrapped, meagre bundle of Sunday papers on the steps of his shop before anyone else got the idea of helping themselves to them. Although that never happened anymore, paper papers were obviously going out of style. And production. In the ten years since he took over this store from his father, four of the medium-large newspapers had folded and disappeared, the same with quite a few of the weekly and monthly magazines.
Unlocking the back door to the shop, he dumped the papers on the counter, stuffed a couple of Mars bars in his pocket, opened the display fridge at the back and grabbed two cans of apple juice. On the way out, he suddenly turned and went over and picked up a bag of potato chips with his teeth and loaded like that made his way upstairs again.
The bells calling the pious to early mass woke the boy up. Confused and disoriented he sat up, his eyes desperately roamed the place, and finally he flopped down again, remembering where and why. But his bladder was killing him, he had to find the loo, and fast!
A couple of minutes later he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, absentmindedly rubbing the blood off his face. I'm thirteen. He slowly tasted the word. Thir-teen ... Not a little boy anymore, a teenager. He wanted to feel it, searched inside himself for something different. Well, he was here, wasn't he? In the house of a strange man ... how different, how grown-up, was that?
He tried to change the way his hair fell. Wet his fingers again and ran them through his thick mop, but his unruly locks wouldn't stay slicked back. He looked for a comb, but of course there was no such thing in sight.
He heard the man pass outside the bathroom door, talking on the phone. Caught a few sentences.
"Thank you, you're the salt of the earth .... See you in a tick, then ..."
Shortly after that he heard a door slam. Secure in the knowledge that he was now alone, he opened his jeans and stepped out of them. His once white, now more grey briefs followed for inspection. The front was stiff and crusty as well as tinted with yellow. No skid-marks, though. He put them in the washbasin, ran the water as hot as he could stand and rubbed a squirt of liquid hand soap into the stains. Rinsed, and repeated the process.
The problem, of course, was how to get them dry without the man discovering them. He had no idea how long the man would be gone, so he had to come up with a solution pretty fast. A thought hit him.
He hurriedly washed his dick, spilling water on the tiled floor, because he was too short to get his dick and balls properly over the edge of the basin, even when standing on his toes. Thinking the floor heat would soon dry up his mess, he grabbed the soaked underpants and ran out and into the kitchen.
He was sure he remembered he had seen a microwave there, and he was right. He put the briefs in, struggled a bit to get the hang of the control panel, but finally got it started. Five minutes on full blast, wouldn't that do the trick?
He stood impatiently skipping and stepping, staring at his briefs turning and turning behind the glass door, when the man suddenly burst in carrying a small puffer jacket. The boy spun around in panic, then lightning struck him as he realized he had no trousers on. Covering his crotch, he sank to his knees, his huge eyes wild with fear and alarm.
The man blinked twice, like he was trying to get rid of the image on his retinas of those small, but perfectly rounded buttocks, and then the glimpse of a penis that looked too big for such a small body. Then laughter got the best of him.
"What on earth are you doing?" he guffawed.
The boy fought his panic, tried desperately to act cool and thirteen, but lost. He squeezed his eyes shut, but a couple of tears of anguish and frustration trickled out anyway. He rolled up into a ball, helpless and defeated because there was no way out of this.
The man came over, inspected the microwave, stopped the cycle and lifted the small garment out with a fork. Studied the heap of boy on the floor. His mirth died as an unexpected wave of compassion, paired with an inexplicable sadness, took over. He sat down next to the pretzel of half-naked boy.
"Were you trying to boil your knickers for breakfast?" he asked softly. "I don't think they're all that nourishing."
The boy couldn't help it. Pinched and timorous giggles escaped him before he could stop them.
"I was drying them," he muttered. "I had to wash them."
"I see."
The boy peeped up from his contortion. The man's voice was still friendly, not mad at all. Maybe he didn't have to die to get of this.
"Where are your jeans?" the man asked.
"Bathroom."
The man quickly rose and left him lying there. Came back and put the boy's jeans down in front of the curled up little person.
"You'll have to go commando for the time being. I'm afraid I don't have any underwear in your size. I'll leave you to get dressed." He turned and went into his bedroom.
"You've fucking seen my ass anyway," the boy mumbled when the man was out of earshot. He quickly pulled his jeans on and went to sit on the couch, the pinkish coat balled up in his lap.
The man came back shortly after.
"No time for a proper breakfast," he said and handed the boy a can of juice and a Mars bar. "I have to get back to open the shop at ten."
He then picked up the dark blue jacket he had brought.
"You can put this on. There's no way I'm going out with you in broad daylight wearing that coat."
The boy looked non-plussed.
"We have a teddy to find, remember?"
* *
Indeed, it was a bright and sunny morning, but the grass was still wet on the cemetery lawns. The sun hung low in the sky, too low to give much heat, the row upon row of gravestones of various sizes and shapes cast long shadows in the flat sunrays.
The unfortunate little teddy had not got very far. The man spotted it and called out to the boy. And his call were the only words uttered for as long as they were there.
The boy's cold, thin fingers pried the toy loose from where it was stuck in a deep crack between the stones of the west facing fence. He brushed it off, inspected it, turned away from the man and furtively gave it a quick kiss. Then held it by one of its little arms, pointing it towards the man, silently inviting him to take the other arm. And anyone looking would have seen a tall man and a short boy slowly walk towards the small grave with the flagstone plaque in the far corner of the cemetery holding a tiny, faded, stuffed animal between them.
They put the teddy where it should be, sitting to the right of the y in Johnny. The boy immediately scampered off and climbed up to sit on the low stone fence, facing away from the graves, watching the street, watching the further away abandoned factory, wondering why everything suddenly felt so difficult, so unsatisfactory, so hopeless.
Being here in the churchyard had him musing about all this god-stuff again. What was the thing with graves and cemeteries? Weren't the dead supposed to be with God? In this heaven thing where he lived, but no one really knew where was? So why build all these places, these kind of toy cities, to keep them here on earth? Wasn't that proof that they didn't really believe God owned such a place where all the dead people went?
And if this God person was so mean that he took nice, little boys away and left the nasty people to go on forever, how could anyone say he was such a great guy and full of love and all that? He didn't think anyone really believed that. Was that why this God fellow didn't have a proper name? All the other gods he knew about had names, only this one hadn't. Was that because everyone deep down knew it was all bullshit, like Santa? But even Santa had a name! He couldn't find any logic here.
But he had to admit the principle of churchyards had some good things going for it, because how else would he have found little Johnny's small ... well, garden, sort of, or hiding place ... and he would have had nowhere to unburden his heart, no place to feel a sadness and a sorrow that wasn't all his own and in a weird way made his own misery smaller ...
He sat there until his ass was so cold, he couldn't feel it any longer. He leapt off the fence and stood waiting on the sidewalk.
He saw the man come out of the gate. There was a grim frown on his face, he looked like he was fighting to stifle his anger. The boy felt his heart jump up in his throat. The man passed him without looking at him, just walked on down the street as if he was locked up inside himself.
The boy just stood there watching the man's back diminish, bewildered because he felt suddenly defeated and abandoned. But that was just stupid feelings, the man had no responsibility for him, no obligations, so why should he feel bad if the man left him?
But fuck, he had to get his mother's coat back. Shit. Fuck.
He started to walk after the man, then broke into a run.
* *
The bright and sunny morning discretely entered the bedroom of the fourth-floor apartment in the huge, grey concrete block of flats that sat among several other huge, grey concrete blocks of flats. The woman flat on the bed, still in her soiled dress, stirred uncomfortably, her skull full of little men with sledgehammers banging away. With difficulty she got out of bed and staggered to the bathroom to get a packet of Paracetamol from the medicine cabinet. Eyes half shut against the piercing light, she had forgotten the state of the bathroom and slipped in the vomit, and a blinding flash tore through her head as the corner of the square wash basin met her temple with a cracking sound. With a gasp and a thud, she hit the floor.
The bright and sunny morning had also found its way into the recently renovated kitchen in a far bigger and far more opulent flat in a far better part of town where an annoyed and dissatisfied pastor watched the closed expression on his wife's pasty mug over the rim of his cup. For a brief moment he toyed with the idea of splashing his morning coffee right in the middle of those bland and anaemic features. As so often before, he couldn't for the life of him fathom why he had shacked up with such an uninspiring woman, but alas, he had. And leaving her wouldn't at all be the done thing for a preacher of his calibre. Also, his annoyance with that stupid girl yesterday didn't do much to better his mood. What a cow. She should have praised herself lucky that he had even noticed her, should have been happy to get what she could get, and not kick up such a fuss. None of the others had. Stupid, fat bitch. Anyway, she wouldn't get anywhere if she decided to make noises about what happened, or didn't happen as far as he was concerned, for who would take the words of a disturbed female against the words of a respected and admired man of God?
* *
The boy caught up with the man, anxious and slightly out of breath.
"There you are," the man simply said and continued walking. "I was wondering what you hung back for."
The boy looked confused up at the man, then something exploded in his head. His lips opened, then closed in a strained pout as uncontrollable tears poured from his tightly shut eyes.
The man stopped short.
"Oh, dear!" he burst out. "What's wrong?" And then he abruptly pulled the boy in, hugged him and rocked him. The boy in his arms felt so small, so vulnerable, he almost started to cry himself.
"Please, tell me what's wrong."
The boy buried his nose in the man's coat, willing himself to stop this inexplicable and childish outburst, embarrassed to the depth of his soul for being such an idiot. But it felt so wonderful to be held, so incredibly good, and he didn't want it to stop.
"I don't know," the boy whispered. "But I knew had to get the coat back to my ... back to her, and you walked away, and I was afraid you were mad at me or something, but then you weren't, and I don't know why, but ... something snapped. Stupid." He sniffled and swallowed. "I don't wanna be like this. I don't!"
The man said nothing, just went on holding him.
"Only place I ever cry is ... you know, over there," the boy tried to explain, nodding his head in the direction of the churchyard. "But only sometimes."
The man rocked him.
"I understand," the man said softly, then gave the boy a reassuring little shake. "I'm going to let go of you now. There are people out, and they're staring."
The boy reluctantly withdrew from the man. Dried his eyes and drew a shivering breath.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Listen, I got to get back to the shop. And you need to get that coat."
* *
The big and burly paramedics in their orange attire had brought down the covered stretcher. Now one of them stood talking on the phone behind the small boy sitting seemingly immobilized on the third step outside the fourth-floor apartment with a silvery sheet loosely around him. The boy hadn't moved a finger since they found him there when they arrived, hadn't even looked up as far as the ambulance attendant behind him could tell.
"Yes."
...
"No, no chance."
...
"We're bringing her in now as soon as the Blues are here. We're taking the boy in for examination."
...
"Hard to tell. Hasn't said a word. Seems stunned. Traumatized, I'd say, so we'll take him to the unit."
...
"Right. Ok."
The paramedic put his phone in his breast pocket, and just like that picked the boy up like he weighed no more than a feather and carried him down. At the bottom of the stairs the boy abruptly lifted his head and stared into the paramedic's eyes.
The man shivered. Jesus, those eyes! That poor little squirt! Jesus Christ! The big man, the man who had seen just about every kind of emergency and accident there was to see, the man who was trained and hardened to handle the worst possible sights and outcomes, bit his lip and frowned as his eyes inexplicably threatened to flood.
Part 2.
Three days in November.
It was a grey and depressing Saturday morning. The sky hung low. Heavy clouds had just stopped shedding their unwanted gift of slushy snow and sleet, but instead of leaving, they had decided to stay in place, shielding the sun, underlining everyone's melancholia. The air was still, the callous and hard-hearted Boreas had gone to bed, and the sounds from the waking town that had been muffled by the snowfall were now on in full orchestration, like an attestation of how nature always lost to the relentless attacks of human interference.
The man stood outside the small corner shop, raising the shutters, cursing the weather, letting his mind wander.
A field lay before him, pristine and pure, covered with white and diamond-strewn duvets that camouflaged the death and debris left by the autumn season and drowned the litter left by thoughtless and uncaring people. Light snowflakes were happily dancing in the air. A track of small footprints crossed the virginal surface and disappeared between the white-bearded trees.
And there he stood, the small boy. Just inside the edge of the forest, face turned up to the sky, tongue out to catch the falling crystals. Small woolly cap thrown down at his feet, small mittened hands spread way out, almost as if he was crucified. His jubilant laughter tingled like a string of tiny silver bells.
A procession of four enormous trucks thundered past. The man shook himself, forced the image out of his head. Went back into his shop and switched on the small sign in the window that said OPEN in red neon letters.
* *
It was a grey and depressing morning, and grey, depressing mornings seemed to harmonize with the boy's state of mind. His new snow boots still felt stiff and uncomfortable, same as his new parka. Fur-trimmed hood halfway concealed his face as he bent down to clear away the heavy and watery snow that hid the bottom half of the small gravestone, needing the name to emerge, needing to rescue the buried teddy.
The man had been here again. The teddy was sitting to the left of the name now, weighted down by all that heavy slush. He shook it, cursing God again for not caring enough for this sacred place to spare this little stuffed icon the humiliation of looking like a drowned rat. Then swore at himself for still thinking about god-stuff. I mean, hadn't he had enough proofs by now?
From his pocket he drew out a piece of thick, red string. Tied it in a bow around the soaked neck of the small teddy and sat him to the right of little Johnny's name.
He wondered if he would ever see the man again. Or maybe this was how it was going to be, the two of them switching the teddy from one side to the other, telling each other without words they'd been there, like a recognition of each other without having to deal with anything.
A sudden, but by now familiar sting in his heart: The memory of that strange and wondrous occurrence, that out-of-the-blue meeting with the man. And that crazy feeling he often got, the feeling that of all the things he'd lost now, this man was what he missed the most. How could that be? The new people, that's what he called them in his head, the new people, they were kind to him, smiled and smiled, never scolded, but they weren't his in a way ... and besides, they were sort of wary of him and careful around him, like he was breakable or about to disintegrate, and that was kind of irritating. They should be more like the man, just step in and do stuff, like fix everything without asking or apologizing.
He felt destitute. Fuck it, why must there be such a big hole inside him? Stupid mother! Stupid new people! Stupid man, why couldn't he come back and pick him up again, throw him over that shoulder and just carry him ... somewhere ... anywhere ...
But then the grey and depressing morning seemed to lift its heavy clouds from his brain, and suddenly he knew. He had to do something. He really had to do something, because waiting and doing nothing would get him nowhere.
* *
The grey and depressing morning wasn't inducive to a blooming trade. Apart from his handful of regulars, no one seemed to be out and about, hence the man sat behind the counter reading.
So absorbing was his book that he didn't notice the boy in the dark green and just a tad too big parka who came quietly through the door and across the floor, up to the counter where he stopped and looked at his feet. Then tentatively cleared his throat.
The man looked up, almost startled. Got to his feet.
"Yes? What can I do for you?"
The boy also looked up. And there were those surreal big eyes. A surprised sharp chuckle left the man.
"Oh! It's you!" He let out a long breath of air. "Shit, I didn't recognize you without that pink coat!" he laughed.
The boy shuffled his feet, looking a bit embarrassed. The man nodded in the direction of the parka and continued to chuckle.
"Suits you better, that one. Now, what can I do for you?"
Those big brown eyes hit the man again, killing his laughter.
"I just ... I thought maybe I could ..." the boy began haltingly. "Maybe I could do some work for you?"
The man stared. Not angrily, or threatening or anything, but like he was stunned. Like he was in awe.
"I could ... I mean, I know how to clean up and stuff. You know, floors and stuff." The insecurity in the boy's voice was almost physical, almost tangible. Like there was a lot at stake here. "Stuff," he repeated in a whisper.
The man shook his head in wonder. His voice seemed to have gone AWOL. He sighed deeply.
"You don't have to pay me much," the boy said hurriedly, those bottomless peepers anxious, beseeching.
The man's shoulders came up to his ears.
"You're right about that," he said apologetically, "mainly because I can't afford to employ even a part time cleaner. So, how come you need a job?"
The boy averted his eyes. Frowned at the coffee machine on the shelf behind the counter. Trying to act nonchalant, he let his eyes roam around, seemingly indifferent.
"I don't need one. I just thought ... I could be of help. Sort of."
But then his eyes were caught by a front page on the rack of papers close to the door.
"Oh, fucking hell!" he cried out before he could stop himself.
The man cocked his head in sudden interest.
"What?"
The boy pointed.
"That man! He's from that place my mother used to go to. For God stuff, you know. That's the man!"
"Oh, yes," the man said evenly, but there was a sting of something in his voice. "Not at all a pleasant man. I once went to one of their meetings. Come to think of it, that was the same night I found you in the cemetery."
The boy just stood gaping.
"Well, he's arrested now, so that should shut him up for a while," the man pondered. "Is your mother still with that congregation?"
The boy spun around, arms gesturing helplessly in the air, small face contorted and strained. Then, like a punctured car tyre, the air went out of him.
"No, she's not," he sighed.
* *
It had been a grey and depressing morning. By mid-day the sky was as sombre and as dispiriting as the morning had been. The rooms felt oppressive and gloomy, and the woman trotted around lighting all the lamps. She was a pleasant looking woman in her fifty's, well-groomed and well upholstered, and generally of a sunny disposition. People who didn't know her suspected her to be a stupid woman, mostly because of her somewhat naïve looking gooseberry eyes, but she was nothing of the sort. Motherly fussy, yes, and sometimes a bit rash and a bit silly, but by no means stupid. Now she was looking morose and concerned as she plonked down on the sofa facing her husband.
"How do you feel this is going?" she asked abruptly.
"Huh?" Her husband's narrow and somewhat haggard face appeared from behind the paper. "What are you on about?"
"The boy!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Are we going about this in the right way? I mean, I never know if we reach him or not. It's like he's always somewhere else, and I don't mean when he's out, I mean when he's here with us."
"Patience," the man advised. "It can't be easy for him, you know. Such upheaval. How do you think you would handle it if everything you knew, everything that was safe and familiar was suddenly gone? I think he has a splendid grip on himself."
She mused over this.
"But it's not natural!" she concluded. "He should cry, or be angry, or maybe act like a zombie, even! But he's just polite and quiet and ... and distant, and I've no idea what he really feels."
"Where is he? Is he out?"
"Cemetery again, I suppose."
"Well, he needs to deal with his loss in his own way. Sorrow hits people in very different ways, you know." He ducked down behind his paper again.
"But..." the woman began, then rose and walked in a circle. "It's not his mother's grave he visits, you know. I've sort of followed him a couple of times. Now, don't look at me like that! I'm not spying, I just need to know where he goes! That's called responsibility!"
The man put his paper down, continued to scrutinize her.
"Well? And where does he go?"
"Both times he went to sit at a grave in the opposite end of the cemetery. A child's grave by the look of it. Maybe he had a brother once?"
"As I said, let's leave him to deal with it his own way. When he's ready to do so, I'm sure he will open up to us. He seems like a good kid to me; I'd hate to antagonize him by unwantedly prying into his soul."
* *
All the curtains were drawn to keep the grey and depressing outdoors forgotten in the far bigger and far more opulent flat in the far better part of town. A pale, almost featureless woman stood in front of the gilded frame mirror in the spotless and gleaming white-and-gold bathroom, thoughtfully blow-drying her mousy hair.
Forty, she thought, so why do I look fifty? Would she look younger if she dyed her hair? A shade of red, maybe?
She parted her hair on the side instead of the usual severe middle parting, and let it fall loosely down instead of gathered in a tight, low ponytail. Then, as goosebumps rushed like a wave over her skin, she started to apply eye shadow from a long forgotten small kit found at the bottom of her drawer, then mascara. Lots of it.
I'm free, her mind sang. At last, I'm free!
Exhilarated, but still with a small, frightened lump in her belly, she lavishly applied bright red lipstick to her rather full lips. And smiled timidly at the mirror. I've made myself look like Sonya the Spy! she thought with a small titter. Or maybe Holly the Hooker!
It was all so mind-reeling, so too much ...
* *
The boy had sat quietly through dinner, his mind busy with figuring out how to tell them. He was not used to asserting himself, not used to explaining himself, not used to having his thoughts, or his opinions, or his needs, listened to and recognized. Should he just blurt it out, or should he ask in a meek sort of way? Would they listen? Understand? Say Yes, good idea, or forbid the whole thing? He had no clue as to what these people expected of him, no notion of how to speak to them, except yes and thank you.
The woman worried him a little. Her smiles were always a little tense, almost like she was frightened of him, but how could she be? And the man had been watching him all through the meal. Not in a bad way, though, more pensive, like. But it made him uneasy. He knew how to deal with open resentment and loud scolding, he'd had that all his life, but this unfamiliar atmosphere of kindness and sympathy with an undercurrent of restraint had him bewildered.
"Penny for your thoughts."
The man's soft and pleasant voice cut short his ponderings.
He felt his cheeks go warm. But he looked up and focused on the man's bony face. He squirmed in his seat like he was itching. And then he jumped to it.
"I got myself a job."
The man cocked his head with a small hm. The woman half rose and looked like a question mark.
"A job?" Her surprised voice jarred on him. "Where? What kind of job? But you're still in school, you can't have a job, you know!"
The man shushed her.
"Let him explain."
The boy fixed his gaze on his empty plate.
"I know this man who has a store," he mumbled. "A small one. But I want to work with him on weekends. Because ..." He broke off.
"Because?" the man gently prompted.
"Because he's nice ... and he helped me once, and now I want to help him."
The boy suddenly rose from the table, his big brown eyes were shiny and moist.
"His boy ... He had a son, but he died," he mumbled, as if that would explain anything at all.
"But honey!" the woman blurted out. "Aren't you too young? For a proper job, I mean. Even if it's just for weekends."
The boy felt something explode in his chest.
"I'm not too young!" he almost cried out, defiant and impatient. "Just because I'm small, it doesn't mean I'm a little kid! I have hairs on my dick, I can have a job!"
The woman's hand came up to cover her mouth. The man chuckled.
"That in itself is no qualification, but I get your point."
The woman started to say something, but the man cut her off with his raised hand.
"Listen, get your coat on and let's go for a short walk," he said to the boy. Not a suggestion, more a gentle command. The boy hesitated but eventually did as he was told.
Well outside and away from the windows, the man put his hand on the boy's shoulder. The boy wasn't all that comfortable with it, but he let the hand stay there.
"Don't let her wind you up," the man told him. "She means well. She's just set on doing the right thing, you know. And we've only had daughters, so she's not all that sure about how to deal with us boys."
Us boys? the boy thought. Like we're a team or something? We're not! But aloud he just said, "I understand."
The man removed his hand.
"Will you tell me a little about this man you're going to work for?"
The boy walked in silence for a while. Then:
"There's not so much to tell. He was nicer to me than most people. But I don't really know him, it's ... it's only like I want to know him. Like I should know him, because ..."
And suddenly he felt he had to tell the man about the cemetery. About his own loneliness, and about the man's loneliness, and about little Johnny's grave.
The man listened without commenting or asking questions. When the boy had come to the end of his halting and somewhat incoherent story, the man stopped in his stride and again put his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Yes," he said, "I see. Important to you. So do it."
They assumed walking again, the boy a little flustered and self-conscious, the man thoughtful.
"Just remember, if it should turn out different than you hope now, don't let it crush you," he said in a low voice. "I'll talk to her when we get back, for if I'm not mistaken, she will be itching to go with you to make sure ... whatever. That he's a trustworthy bloke or something."
The boy stopped, sharply drawing his breath.
"Why do you say stuff like that? You agree with her! You think I'm a baby!"
The man's voice got louder.
"Oh no, I don't. That's why I'm going to make sure she won't interfere. Because I believe you're smart enough to find out for yourself if this is a good thing or not."
* *
The lighting in the old brown pub was very low-key, the music almost inaudible. This pub catered to the loners more than the socializers, and even if the occasional group of loud merrymakers stuck their noses in, the partying crowd usually frequented other more upscale and trendy places, as did the bearded and pretentious clan of real ale enthusiasts. Which suited the handful of regulars who enjoyed the quiet and old-fashioned cosiness fine. This, coupled with the proximity to his home, was the reason why the man chose this place, usually in the last hour before closing time, always sitting in the deepest corner, nursing a pint of lager that would last him so long all fizz would be gone from it.
And there he was now, this gloomy Saturday night. Back from the cemetery, in his corner, halfway down his pint, his features that normally looked so open, so trustingly innocent, pinched and harsh with worry.
The boy. The boy shouldn't have come to his shop. He shouldn't have encountered him and let him under his skin in the first place. The boy ought to have stayed the distant enigma who unseen shared the corner of the cemetery with him, like an imaginary playmate or something, but now he was getting too close. Why was it so fucking difficult to erase those incredible and disturbing brown eyes from his retinas? Why did it feel like the touch of that small body was permanently tattooed to his skin from that one time he held him?
Again, he chastised himself. He was by now well acquainted with his tendency to bury himself in his need for things to make sense, not to mention the fact that his bitter loss still provided fertile soil indeed for obsessions to take root and flourish. But self-insight or not, he couldn't shake this new obsession. So many whys. Why had the boy suddenly showed up at his shop? What did he want? Wasn't it enough for him to continue their little diversion with the small teddy bear? And why the red bow? It had to be some sort of message, hadn't it?
"Oh, you!" A rather sharp female voice broke into his ruminations. "I know you!"
He looked irritated up to find a red-headed, heavily made-up but rather dowdily dressed woman of an indeterminate age standing in front of his table.
"Do I know you?"
"No-oh." Short laugh. "No one really knows me." She pulled a chair from the next table and uninvited sat down.
"I recognize you. From The Word of Life, remember? You stood up to my husband. The preacher, right?"
The man sighed. His whole demeanour reeked of antagonism.
"I can't say I remember you. I wasn't focused on the other people there."
"Of course you weren't. But everyone surely noticed you! You were quite something, you know."
She unbuttoned her shapeless, beige coat.
"I guess you've read the papers. Well, he finally got what he deserved, and now I'm ... I don't know, trying to get my life back? Or maybe simply get a life. A bit like getting out of prison, I suppose."
The man didn't say anything. His face remained as cold and forbidding as it was possible for such an affable face to be.
"Strange seeing you again," she went on. "Like things hang together. Or follow a pattern, I don't know. You dared to oppose my husband ... soon to be ex, I guess ... and the first person I meet after he's out of my life is you. Oh, I can see you are full of resistance against me as well, I'm not stupid. Your whole being tells me so. Well, don't fret, I won't bother you for long. I was somehow ... just floating around tonight. To see if I still had it, know what I mean?"
She laughed again.
"But no go with you, I see. You're gay, right?"
He jerked his head up. Squinted. Dismissed her utterings, her whole presence in fact, with an annoyed headshake.
"I don't care," she continued. "Let me just thank you for your little speech back then. I was a bit shocked at the time, but in hindsight I actually loved that someone had the guts to piss all over him like that."
Then she rose, and before he could evade her, planted a kiss on his cheek, leaving a scarlet smudge.
* *
The Sunday morning's weather couldn't quite decide which direction to take. The clouds sailed by like they were late for somewhere, but the vague promise of blue skies behind them couldn't be taken seriously. The bleary daylight did nothing to enhance the drab cityscape or the green parka that moved along the streets. No shadows, just a flat density of light that made everything look two-dimensional.
Nevertheless, the boy felt exhilarated and very awake. Excitement tickled in his stomach, but every other second gave way to anxiety. Strange that the world seemed so out of tune with his own intense emotions, he wanted everything to be exceptional and full of life, throbbing with promise and possibilities. As it was, the world seemed to lie there like a slumbering, overfed dog too lazy to bark.
The man hadn't really said yes, but he hadn't said no either. The boy did his best to tell his agitated innards to calm the fuck down, it was stupid and childish to be so keyed up. After all, what was the worst that could happen? That the man sent him home again ... well, home? ... not wanting him around. So what! It wasn't that important. It wasn't!
But it was. And he didn't at all understand why. He just knew he wanted to be with the man. Wanted to see the man's comfortable face. Wanted to hear the man's pleasant and reassuring voice. Wanted the man to hold him. Wanted the man to like him. Wanted the man to love him ...
Love him? Jesus, how pathetic was that?
And then there was that other nagging feeling that had started to appear ever so often in his brain: What the fuck was wrong with his dick, why did it have to be so stiff so often, and then make him think about boys? And men ... men with big ones? Shouldn't it be ... like, girls that got it so extra stiff? Did it mean that he was ...?
He remembered the first time he saw a man's cock. On one of the guys his mother had dragged home. He had woken up and had to pee, and there this fellow came out of his mother's room with his cock sticking out in front of him, and that image would for ever be imprinted on his brain. He hadn't understood then how that guy's thing could be so large and why it stood out like that, but it had somehow made his skin prickle and tickle with goosebumps, and now that he knew the reason why the guy's dick looked like it did, the image had taken on a whole different meaning. And a whole different level of importance.
And then he thought about the man in the shop again. And suddenly he thought of him as a man. And being a man, he was bound to have a cock. Did it get stiff, too? Would it be a big one?
His own prick throbbed in his pants. He forced himself to stop thinking about it, he couldn't meet the man like this, with a stiffy in his pants. He was convinced the man would think him a dirty boy, and hate him for it, and send him away and never want to see him again ...
* *
The small corner shop was bathed in light much warmer than the dull and pale daylight outside. The boy felt his heart pump harder as he entered, and he cursed it for being such a silly heart.
He stopped just inside the door and looked around. The shop looked just the same as yesterday: Racks of papers, freestanding shelves of magazines, greeting cards, little gift items. Lots of candy on display. Cigarettes hidden in low grey metal cupboards. Behind the newspapers and the magazines, shelves with paperbacks and hardcover books occupied the corner, he hadn't really noticed them yesterday, and big coolers with softdrinks stood at the back behind the candy shelves. Glass bakery display case sat on the counter, big coffee machine behind it, but where was the man?
He took a small step forward. His small hello? came out more like a whisper. He tried again, louder this time.
A door opened at the back and the man came through it with an armload of brown paper bags. He stopped and looked at the boy. Looked, but didn't say a word.
The boy got nervous. It felt like a large stone fell through his chest and landed in his stomach. Oh, no! He so wanted the man to be happy to see him, wished the man's amiable face would not look so serious. He attempted a small, insecure smile himself, but it died soon after he had tried it on.
And then suddenly it was like the man's face relaxed. A crooked smile grew on his lips as he came up and dumped his load on the counter.
"I wasn't sure you were serious." The man's warm voice almost chased the boy's discomfort away. "But here you are!"
The boy stood where he was, tongue-tied despite the relief he felt.
"You can hang your coat in the storeroom. Come with me."
Parka disposed of, and boy revealed in new nice-fitting sweater and jeans, the man noticed familiar but difficult feelings stirring in his heart, feelings he recognized and knew the reasons for, although he wasn't quite sure why this boy should be the one who set these feelings off. Joy of seeing beauty mixed with ugly pain from loss. Longing mixed with aching anger. He had better be careful not to project his jumble of emotions, his yearning for the past, his hunger for answers, his need for closure, onto the boy. That wouldn't do at all.
"Would be nice to know your name, now that we're workmates," he said with slight grin.
The boy appeared to stiffen, and to the man he seemed to take unreasonably long to answer.
"Shrimp," he eventually said. "That's what they all call me. That, and whoreson, but I'd rather you didn't call me that," he added in a valiant attempt at flippancy.
But the deep wells of brown eyes that finally looked up at the man weren't humorous, the hurt in them stood out a mile.
* *
The wild tangle of excitement coupled with nervousness and distress eventually left the boy and was replaced by a new and unfamiliar feeling of tranquil contentment, almost bordering on happiness.
The man had taught him how to operate the small baking oven, had him get a few frozen pizza slices and a couple of small pies from the freezer in the storeroom, and he had baked them and put them in the heated glass display on the counter. Then a few Danish pastries that were put under a bell jar.
"This used to be a book shop when my father ran it," the man had told him. "We didn't do all this candy and coffee nonsense when I was a kid. But people don't buy that many books anymore, at least not from this shop. It's mostly online now, you know. So we had to think of new ways of drawing customers."
These new ways didn't seem very successful to the boy. Not many people came in during the morning, just some young guys wanting cigarettes and a couple of older blokes who came in for newspapers. By lunchtime it picked up a bit, the baked goods all but disappeared, and as the man was busy entertaining what seemed to be a couple of regulars, he had got a new batch going without asking the man if he should. And it had earned him approval.
He stayed close to the man most of time. They didn't talk much, but he felt no need for that. It was enough just to be there, to know the man was there with him. To know, even though he would never do so, he only had to reach out a hand to touch the man ... A mellow feeling of comfort and contentment flowed through him, only broken once by a jolt of sudden annoyance when he thought he saw the new people pass outside the windows. He had been on the way to the door to see if he was right when he changed his mind and went back to stand beside the man.
The man had asked what that was about. But he didn't think he could explain himself without going into everything that had happened the last month, and he hadn't wanted to talk about that and had just shrugged.
* *
"Satisfied?" the lanky, rawboned man asked his rotund wife as they got into the car parked two streets away from the corner shop.
She stuck her tongue out at him.
"I know you think I'm silly. I just had to see."
The man started the engine.
"So, you've seen the place. Not that it told us anything."
She sighed and grumbled something inarticulate. Then she straightened her back and fastened the seatbelt.
"Oh, let's go. Let's take the long way. I want to see water."
* *
The man's eyes followed the boy as he put the lid on a paper cup of cappuccino, turned from the coffee machine and placed the cup on the counter in front of the customer, and the man's heart fluttered in his chest. He had tried and tried not to let the boy get to him, but he couldn't escape it. That seemingly fragile, and yet so perfectly constructed body, those beautifully coordinated movements, that pixie face with those unbelievable eyes! And not only that, but the puzzling mystery of him. Who was he? What was his story? The small glimpses he'd had behind the façade were both fascinating and disturbing.
The boy seemed quietly content while he moved sort of stealthily around him, as if he tried as unobtrusively as possible to make himself useful, yet he sensed an undertow of need in the boy, but a need for what he could not really pin-point, and it slightly alarmed him. Did he have whatever it was the boy needed? Wasn't he too lost in his own grief, his own misery, to be able to be a friend to this boy, if a friend was what the boy was yearning for? Could he at all connect with another person, especially this boy, could he relate to him in other than a purely superficial way? Would it not be best to dismiss him before he got in too deep, and the boy's expectations got too high?
And ... the most alarming thing, the most nagging suspicion: The boy obviously had no father. Was that ...? But there was no way he could be the father figure he feared the boy was looking for.
That would be like betrayal.
He made an effort to shake off these futile worries. Told himself to stop this fruitless thinking and just let things take its own course. Only it didn't quite work. His thoughts still lay grumbling and growling at the back of his mind.
* *
Watching the boy mop the floors while he himself rinsed out the coffee machine and cleaned the oven, the man's heart softened despite his intention to keep a distance between them. Maybe it was because the mop-handle was so long it reached up far above the boy's head. The man didn't know whether to laugh or cry, there was something so bittersweetly compelling about the sight of the boy.
"You've been a great help," he said. "Aren't you hungry? You've only had one tiny slice of pizza for lunch, and it's past four!"
The boy stopped and leaned on the handle.
"A bit. But it's okay, I guess I can eat when I ... when I get back there."
Strange way of saying it, the man thought. From the few glimpses he had learned about the boy's home conditions, he doubted the boy had a strict curfew. Curiosity rose in him and killed off the last of his resistance.
"What do you say we take the leftovers upstairs, and have a little chat before you go? I can make some soup also. Tomato all right with you?"
"You don't have to," the boy mumbled, then thought the better of it. "But it would be cool," he added with a small, shy smile.
Those eyes again. A tiny shiver ran down the man's spine.
* *
Darkness was slowly creeping into the room where man and boy still sat quietly at the small kitchen island, having eaten left-overs and soup and surreptitiously eyed each other. Not that the silence or the thoughtful stares bothered the boy. The warmth he felt by just being near the man draped him in a calm and soothing serenity. And there was something about being in this room again that made him feel almost like he belonged here, like this was where he was meant to be.
The man got up to turn the overhead light on, and the spell was broken. The boy reluctantly realized that the cocoon he was in was bursting, it was time for him to go. He had an important question to ask, however.
"Can I come back on Saturday?"
The man stood in the middle of the room, looking suddenly huge and dangerous, and taking far too long to answer. The boy's nervousness returned with full force.
"Sure," the man eventually said, but he sounded a bit indecisive. "Is your mother okay with this idea of yours? I mean, to come here and help out?"
Time to come clean. The boy rose. He couldn't look at the man. Had to put on his toughest face and his most indestructible posture.
"I'm not with her anymore." He tried to sound indifferent. Cynical. "She copped it. I'm with other people now."
The man stood speechless, mouth half open. Then a very soft "What?"
The boy's toughness was such a thin layer, it would crack at any time. He clenched his fists and clamped his jaw tight; no way was he going to give in to the hollow uncertainty, the aching hopelessness that seethed inside him.
"She slipped in her puke and hit her head," he said roughly. "Poof! Gone!"
The man didn't move at all, stood like a tree that had grown out of the floor. The boy took a small step forward and looked helplessly up at him. And an overwhelming need to explain something rushed through him.
"She didn't like me much. My mum, you know. But now they've put me with this older couple, and they're nice and all, but I don't know them. And everything is like a big nothing, right? Like I'm in a hole."
He drew his breath, wondering if it was a stupid thing to do, telling the man all this. But his brain was on a ride now, and his eyes now focused on the man's face, and there was no stopping.
"The lady, she's kind of fussy, like she's trying hard to be my mother or something, but she's not! Even if my mum hated me, she was mine, see? I was used to her. I was used her yelling and her ... meanness, I suppose. And now I feel as though I should be grateful all the time and behave the way they want me to, especially the lady, because even if she doesn't say so, I can see it in her face. And I don't understand what she wants from me ... because it's so not real, see what I mean?"
The boy's fingers ran blindly, robot-like, through his dark locks.
"But the man is okay, I guess," he mumbled and looked away.
The man let his shoulders drop, sighed softly and felt relieved when the boy withdrew his mesmerizing eyes. But his heart kept on pounding, and his fingers trembled, and his mind ached with ambivalence, because he wanted to pull the boy into his arms and hold him and cuddle him and kiss those tears that lurked in the boy's bewitching eyes away, but every fibre in his body also told him he shouldn't.
Don't do it! his brain harped, don't get involved! What you want is a substitute for Johnny, isn't it? But he's not! He is not someone you can use to fill your loss, to lessen your guilt ... He will not bring anything back, he's no answer to anything!
But ...
There was something he was itching to know.
"Why are you coming here? Why do you want to be with me?" There. It was out.
The boy just stood there. His young face so vulnerable, so naked, his small hands spread so feebly out.
"I don't know," he whispered helplessly. And a tear rolled down his cheek. Then one more.
There was no way this could go on.
"Oh, fuck!" the man sighed, shaking his head. And stepping forward, enfolded the boy in his arms and held him tight, tight. Felt the small body stiffen and then relax, felt the boy's cheek press into his shirt-covered ribs below his left nipple while his fingers felt those small, skinny shoulder blades under the sweater. He gave the boy an extra squeeze.
"Shrimp," he said gently.
And the boy's body started to tremble, and the trembles turned into convulsive sobs.
And it felt just right. It felt right to hold a crying boy again, felt right to get rid of his disturbing doubts and his stupid reluctance, felt right to be needed ...
The boy sniffled and tried to stop being a baby. But his small body still clung to the man, and his wet cheek still stuck to the man's chest. And his voice sounded like a small, muffled wind instrument when he tried to come up with something that would take the edge off everything.
"I can hear your heart."
* *
Maybe Zeus was getting too old and tired to come up with more than half-hearted, unimpressive rain, maybe he'd ran out of dramatic bolts of lightning and rumbling rolls of thunder. Because Monday arrived with a relentless, thick drizzle that didn't seem to want to either increase or stop, just go on and on in its most boring way.
A plump woman in a pale blue raincoat stood browsing the bookshelves, matching blue umbrella closed and dripping beside her. She seemed quite absorbed; only once had she turned her head to cast a quick look at the man who stood behind the counter observing her while he scanned the items another customer had placed before him.
Eventually they were the only ones in the shop. The man came quietly over and stopped two armlengths away from the woman.
"Find anything of interest?" he asked pleasantly.
She turned, holding up a volume.
"Yes, I'm curious about this one. I've seen his TV-shows, but I didn't know he wrote books. Is it any good?"
The man's amiable and slightly juvenile face appealed to her now that he was at close range. As did his voice when he answered.
"I've only read the reviews, so I can't really tell. It's supposed to be a little different than your ordinary crime novel."
She took the book with her and moved to the counter. The man got behind it, scanned the code and put the book in a paper bag as she tapped her card.
"By the way, I'm Johnny Mortensen's foster parent," she suddenly sprung on him.
The man smiled but looked non-plussed.
"Johnny, you know? Who comes here to ... well, work for you, if what he says is right."
Immediately, the man's head started spinning. He grabbed on to the edge of the countertop, his pleasant face suddenly struck by something she couldn't interpret, but she saw his Adam's apple move up and down. His voice, when it finally emerged, sounded like it surfaced from a deep well.
"Sorry, I didn't know his name. He said I should call him Shrimp."
Her face looked like it stored this information for later use. Aloud she said,
"Well, as you can guess, I was a bit curious about you. We've only had Johnny for about a month, and he's a bit of a mystery to us. And I feel like I should learn as much as possible about him without putting him through a third-degree. I've talked to his teachers, of course, and the Child Welfare Services, and now you, as you seem to be the only one outside the officials who has anything to do with him."
The man still looked almost petrified. The woman's eyebrows rose.
"You see, I find him so hard to read. You would expect a lot of reactions, wouldn't you, after all he's been through, but there's just this impenetrable normality that's like an armour around him ... so I wondered if you had managed to get through his defences, since he's so keen to come here, you know?"
The man swallowed a couple of times. The woman's expectant face was beginning to bother him.
"I can't help you." The man's voice was guarded and small. "We share something ... something personal that it would be wrong to divulge."
The woman narrowed her eyes and looked suspicious.
"I don't quite like the sound of that."
The man felt anger rise in him.
"If you think what I think you think, I think you should leave," he snarled.
The woman raised her hands in defence. Her voice belied the gesture, there was no apology in her tone.
"Please! I don't know you, I don't know him, and he's my responsibility now, and I would be stupid if I ignored any of the possible implications. Come on, he's a vulnerable and beautiful boy, you're a grown man, I read the papers, so don't blame me if your rather ambiguous answer gave me the wrong idea! What can you expect?"
The man looked as if he was slowly deflating while he considered her statement. Eventually he sighed deeply.
"I know. It's complicated," he finally said. "I don't know what he wants from me, all I know is that our lives have touched ... and it's all because of things in the past that I will not discuss here and now. And I'm just as much at sea when it comes to this boy as you are ... but I know that, even if I was very reluctant to let him into my life in the beginning, I'm now sure that I'll try to be whatever he wants me to be ... friend, employer, playmate, confidant, I don't know. It's his call."
The woman pondered this.
"I can only hope you're honest. I'd hate it if he got hurt, I think he's had enough shit in his little life."
She grabbed the wrapped book and turned to leave.
"Please," he called after her, "will you tell him to come by after school? I just need a minute or two with him. And please, please trust me, I will never hurt the boy."
She looked back at him from the doorway. Her eyes probed his face, her mind again examined his possible motives. With a short nod, she left.
* *
The boy dropped his satchel in front of the counter, looking expectantly up at the man.
"Your foster mother was here earlier."
No greeting, just this abrupt statement. The boy suddenly felt like he'd done something wrong. But what?
"Why didn't you tell me your name?" The man's voice sounded withdrawn and slightly hostile.
The boy cringed. Swallowed a couple of times. Frowned and then looked away.
"I did. Shrimp is what I'm always called. At school and stuff."
The man didn't look satisfied.
"Try again!"
The boy tried to swallow the lump in his throat.
"You already had a Johnny," he mumbled, almost choking on the words, "so the name was taken, sort of. I didn't want you to think I was ... I don't know, trying to compete or something."
The boy tore at his hair.
"Oh, I know it sounds stupid. I don't know how to explain, I ... I shouldn't be another Johnny, because one was enough. And that sounds stupid, too!"
Frustrated, the boy snorted resignedly, ran off and hid in the storeroom at the back.
The man leaned on the counter, trying to figure out how to deal with his own confusion as well as the boy's obvious stress about this name thing. It made sense, the way the boy tried to explain it, that was not the issue. But what was his problem? There was no reason why he should feel put out about this, there were no earthly grounds for his so closely guarded and steadily polished memories to be disturbed or diminished because of a name, and no fucking excuse for letting the boy suffer from it.
Was he really this unbalanced, this emotionally crippled? This totally self-absorbed? Anyway, it wasn't the boy's fault, so ...
Two customers came noisily in, shaking their wet hair and coats, and as they placed their orders, he excused himself and hurried to the back, opened the door and stuck his head in.
"Shrimp!" he called out. "Get your ass in here!"
The boy timidly came forward. The man took hold of his shoulders and pushed the boy in front of him all the way up behind the counter.
"Mochaccino and Latte!" he told the boy and, hidden from the customers, let his finger lightly stroke the back of the boy's neck.
Part 3.
One day and half a night in December.
I suppose by now I've exhausted the weather aspects when setting the scenes in this story. Time to employ a different scenographer, wouldn't you say?
All right.
The small town was changed.
It was all Santas and reindeer, all coloured and nervously blinking lights, all carols and yule tide pop songs bleating from numerous loudspeakers. And everywhere those unavoidable, garish nativity sets, plastic or ceramic. People milling about, chaotic and fretful, in an endless dance against time. In the park little snow angels fought for room with crooked snowmen of various sizes, some of them suspiciously gender incongruent.
The corner shop was more soberly decorated, but a certain seasonal spirit was present in the form of a small lighted tree just inside the door and a big bowl of holly on the counter. Not much, and to the aficionados, who craved the full religious and commercial output, evidence of heresy. But to quite a few people it was obviously a relief to escape the blatant trimmings, for the shop had been busy this day, really seething with activity. Seemed a book was still a viable option for a Christmas present, and once you were in there, always something else to pick up as well.
By closing time both man and boy were knackered.
"Jeez!" the man whistled, "I'll do the clean-up in the morning. I feel like I'm eighty years old."
They dragged their feet upstairs, and once in, the man pulled the boy down with him on the new big couch that had replaced the old two-seater.
"Let's just rest a bit, and fix something to eat later."
The man lay on his back. The boy lay halfway on top of the man, his leg slung over the man's thigh, his knee between the man's knees. The man's arm lay lightly across his shoulders, it felt like a security belt keeping him in place, safe with his upper body resting against the left side of the man's stomach and his head against the man's chest.
The man's breath was deep and regular. The boy felt the rise and fall under him, and it felt like the warmth from the man seeped right through their clothes and glazed his skin. The boy felt his dick stiffen in the confinement of his jeans and press against the man's thigh. With a touch of panic, he hoped the man hadn't noticed and pulled his hips a bit away.
But the man's hand slid down to the boy's buttocks, and a soft, but firm grip pushed the boy's hips forward again until his stiff as a board dick was squeezed tight against the man's warm thigh. The boy lost all sense of shame, pushed his whole body as close to the man as it could get. It was all it took, he humped the man's thigh twice, shivered and came in his pants.
The man patted his butt gently.
"Little Shrimp," he whispered. "Now rest."
* *
They woke up an hour later. The boy texted the new people:
exosting day can i stay over 2 help clean in the morning pls
He had stayed over before, and the new people had seemed quite at ease with him staying with the man from Saturday to Sunday. The woman, he still couldn't make himself think of her in terms of foster mother, had clearly found the man trustworthy, he knew she had been around to talk to the man more than once.
The new couch was a lot better to sleep on than the old one, and he had cherished the two times when he hadn't had to leave the man's small flat after work, it seemed so right to just be there.
And then suddenly the reality of what had just happened hit him. Hit him hard. The hairs at the back of his neck rose, then down his spine, his heart sank to the bottom of his guts. He had made himself cum against the man's leg. Like a goddam dog! How could he have done that? But the man hadn't minded, it was almost like he had helped, wasn't it? Did that mean ... did it at least mean that the man didn't think he was gross? Maybe liked him a bit? Liked him like that?
He didn't know what to think. Didn't dare hope for anything, just please, please let the man still be his friend!
The man, on the other hand, seemed not to have any dark thoughts at all. Humming a tune with a small smile curling his lips, he rummaged through his fridge hunting for something that wasn't leftovers from downstairs. Somewhere in the back of his head there was a small warning that perhaps it wasn't all salongfähig to let a boy hump his leg, but he had to admit it felt perfectly fine, actually nice, if he was honest. He hadn't forgotten being thirteen and permanently horny, and there was a small, nostalgic fairy sitting on his shoulder, reminding him of the urgency, and also the bliss of a young orgasm.
And right then and there he felt something for the boy he couldn't properly describe. Something beyond empathy, something more than comradeship, something that had absolutely nothing to do with pity or compassion.
Oh, stop analysing, he told himself, just hop on the ride and see where it goes. If it goes anywhere at all, that is.
"There's not much to eat here," he said to the boy. "The Thai place is still open. If you're staying, that is. I saw you texting, I suppose it was to your fosters."
The boy looked both relieved and questioning.
"Sure you want me around? I mean, after I ...?" He couldn't say it. He blushed a deep red.
The man came over. Crouched in front of the sofa and took the boy's hands in his, drowned himself in those overwhelming brown eyes. Those eyes ...
A strange, tickly feeling ran down the man's back.
"I'm sure. Because I think I would like us to visit the cemetery tonight. Together. Deliberately, right? Not by accident like that first time."
* *
There wasn't even a trace of holiday ambience in the far bigger and far more opulent flat in the far better part of town. The flat's sole inhabitant again stood among the fake gold and the fake marble trying on yet another fake personality, all in honour of that lecherous charlatan who was still technically her husband.
The trial was coming up next week, and she was going to be present. She sure was. With bells on!
She squinted and cocked her head. Yes, she thought, this will do. Her face was almost free of make-up, just a dark, unhealthy-looking shadow smudged around the eyes. With her red locks now black and buzz cut, and the small, black clip-on nose ring her new acquaintance had provided, she happily thought she looked perfect for the coming occasion.
She stepped out of the bathroom, tucked her black T shirt with the rainbow logo into her stretchy, tight jeans and entered the living room.
"Does my ass look fat in these?" she asked the extremely butch woman sitting spread out on the couch. She spun around and bent her back left and right, trying to look behind her at the body part in question.
"Nah. Strong hips, good ass. Thazz how wimin should look," her companion drawled.
The preacher's wife sat down beside the other woman and laced up her Dr Marten's combat boots. Footwear in place, she rose, grabbed the leather biker's jacket, put it on, and again performed a spin and a twirl in front of her conspirator.
She hugged herself and shook her shoulders excitedly.
"Oooh!" she cooed. "I can't wait to see his face!"
* *
I am so tempted to repeat the atmosphere and the setting of the dark and stormy night in October. If for nothing else, just to give you a pointer to what went on inside the heads of man and boy.
As they came through the gate and their feet found the direction towards the far corner, both were transported back to that first meeting, each with his own privately flavoured memories, each with his own unspoken reasons for wanting this recap, if indeed a recap was what it was going to be.
It was not.
The small grave was there, as it had been. The teddy was sitting to the right, as he should be. But the red dye from the string had bled out and discoloured the teddy's neck and run down the little bear's chest.
A hoarse groan sounded from the man's throat as he sank heavily down on the next gravestone, upper body swaying from side to side. Threw back his head, and his voice came out breathless and agonized.
"Oh, no. No, no, no ... Oh, no, no, no ..."
With a sudden and aggressive movement, he jumped up, grabbed the teddy and hurled it over the fence. It landed in the middle of the street. The boy ran flabbergasted and disbelieving over to the fence, only in time to see one of the bigger SUVs roll by and crush the little stuffed fellow to pieces.
* *
"I can't seem to get it into my brain," the woman confessed coming out of the bathroom in her nightie, "but he's actually almost a man. Well, not exactly. I mean ... you know what I mean. But he's so small!"
Her husband had just removed his shirt, his spare and sinewy upper body revealed.
"What now?" he chuckled. "Been through his laundry, have we?"
She grimaced at him.
"Laugh as much as you like. But don't you find it weird that such a small boy should already be that far into puberty? How old were you when you started to ... you know."
"When I what?" The man wasn't going to give her this one for free.
She blew him a raspberry.
"What?" he repeated, smirking.
"Oh, all right! When you started to produce semen! If you can remember that far back!"
Her husband laughed out loud. Opened his pants, hauled out his rather substantial cock and shook it at her. Well, he was undressing for bed anyway.
"Of course, I remember. It's not something you forget, you know. Well, I don't remember the exact day," he mused, "but it was the summer after my thirteenth birthday. But then, I was a bit behind compared with my friends. I think Johnny is just right on time."
She sighed as she got under the covers.
"But he's so small!" she complained again.
* *
The man seemed so weary, so worn out. Just sat there in his recliner, looking at nothing, or maybe looking into himself if that was possible. His breathing sounded strained, every now and then strange little sounds came from deep down in his throat.
The boy felt extremely powerless and extremely alone. He had no idea how to cope with this, he just wished the man would stop, wished he would look at him and talk to him, or scream and shout at him, anything but this.
He walked in a circle around the man, sat down on the sofa wringing his hands, got up again and went over to the bookshelf.
"Why did you do it?" he asked the books. Then turned and stared at the man. "Why did you have to throw the teddy away?" he said, more challenging than he had meant.
The man slowly lifted his head, looked like he was struggling to focus on the boy.
Then, with a short tilt of his head, "Come here!"
The boy came uncertainly forward. When he was within reach, the man suddenly grabbed him hard, pulled him roughly into his arms, held him like he was scared he'd run away. Held him for a long, long time.
The boy felt awkward, didn't know what was expected of him now. He did the only thing he could think of, he just slowly lifted his hand and stroked the top of the man's head, it felt like caressing plush.
The man released the boy from his vice-like hug, but still held him fast at arm's length. Sighed. And sighed again.
"I was with my Johnny at the mall. Millions of people Christmas shopping. Stressful and noisy and I wanted to leave."
The man's face was empty, remote, as if he were somewhere else. Even his voice seemed to come from another place.
"I was carrying him on my arm. And then ... It was all so quick, so ... so without warning, you know ... Like a flash I saw this long knife, a machete or some such thing, and that utterly crazy, grinning face ... I didn't feel a thing when he struck, but he had hit Johnny's throat before the knife slipped down and hit my sternum and then opened my belly ... And then he moved on and managed to kill two more before two security guards got him from behind and put him down."
The boy listened with his mouth open and his eyes threatening to pop out of their sockets.
"And my blood and his blood mingled and just ran down my shirt and my pants, and I screamed, and I clutched him ... my boy ... And Johnny didn't cry, didn't say a thing, but a small rattling sound ... or gurgling ... came from his throat."
The man shook his head as if in disbelief.
"And it was the most awful sound I've ever heard in my life. And then he was gone. Dead. There, in my arms. Then everything disappeared."
The man's face was blank, lifeless, distant. The boy was unaware of his own weeping, all he could think of was that horror scene the man had so calmly sketched.
"He could have been fourteen by now," the man whispered like to himself. Then he abruptly straightened his shoulders, stared wildly at the wet face of the boy, let go of his grip and his hands shot up in the air, palms up, empty.
"They forced him out of my arms! They took him away from me!"
And now tears of hate, tears of rage, tears of hopelessness sprayed from the man's pinched eyes. Tears because even after ten years he could not comprehend, could not find any meaning at all. Tears because he still felt as guilty as if he himself had wielded that knife. Tears because there was nowhere, no place on earth, where he could find peace.
Tears because this shrimp of a boy had wormed his way past his defences, and the walls around his hardened heart had cracked like eggshells and his soul lay wide open for stabs at his old wounds and without protection against new ones.
He reached for the boy again, got hold of the small hand, looked beseechingly into those extraordinary eyes.
"Get me to bed," he whispered and closed his eyes.
* *
Lights were out in the row of solitary cells. A faint sound of snoring could be heard if you happened to find yourself in the dimly lit corridor outside these cells, six of them in all, for the police station in this neighbouring town was larger and better equipped and had a much bigger custody suite than the one in the small town where our story takes place. And here our once so natty and impressive preacher was now stewing, awaiting his trial.
Not so elegant anymore, it must be said. Unkempt and unshaven, green overall in a heap on the floor, white singlet and striped boxers spoke of three days of wear as he lay on his back on the cot.
He had been through a roller coaster of reactions and emotions. Disbelief, panic, rebellion, hatred, anguish, blame, even a touch of contrition. He had shouted, he had sneered. He had spewed out bile and venom, had riled and affronted his captors, for there was no way he was guilty of anything! All he had done was to try and give pleasure to lonely women who turned out to be ungrateful bitches! How could they do this to him? To him?
But alone at night he had become so small, so helpless, so frightened. He had even prayed, seriously prayed, not just for show. But it hadn't done much good. Nothing could help him, it seemed.
Now all he wanted was to sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep until it was all over.
* *
Get me to bed?
That had to be just a figure of speech. The man was perfectly capable of putting himself to bed, as far as the boy was concerned. Nonetheless, he timidly followed the man, greatly disturbed by what the man had revealed, troubled and anxious because he had no idea how to deal with either such a miserable man or his own perturbed self.
The man's bedroom was a mess. Books and clothes strewn all over the floor, wardrobe doors open, showing untidy bunches of underwear, socks, shirts. Big bed with crumpled sheets, one pillow in the middle, one on the floor next to the bed.
The man sat heavily down on the bed and tore his thin woolly sweater off inside out, then unbuttoned his shirt. The boy felt lost and redundant.
"I don't know why I'm here," he whispered. "What do you want me to do?"
The man looked up, astounded, like he had suddenly discovered the boy. Sighed. Took his shirt off.
"Nothing. Just stay here. Just for a while. Please?"
The boy stood with his feet glued to the floor, his wide-open eyes fixed on the long scar slanting from the man's sternum almost down to his hip. But the glue wasn't all that effective. Before he knew what was happening, his feet had all by themselves transported him to the open space between the man's spread knees, and his fingertips, without him telling them to do so, found and traced the warm and hard, but smooth, curving ridge.
Careful! a small part of his brain whispered, you may be playing with fire, and fire burns! But the larger part of his brain, and his nerves, his organs, his whole being, answered Thanks for the warning. Now shut up!
Two strong hands suddenly held his head and pulled it closer until foreheads met. His small, trembling fingers were unsteadily exploring the difference between soft skin and hardened scar. The hands that covered his ears and his cheeks disappeared, for only to reappear tugging at the ribbed hem of his sweater.
A voice, ocean deep and soft as velvet, slithered into the boy's ears where blood was pounding its agitated rhythm.
"Take your clothes off. I need to see ... need to see it's you, just you. Please."
As if please was necessary. No questions, no doubts, no warnings. The boy took two steps backwards, filled with the immense and encompassing certainty that this was his destined purpose, this was where all the loose threads came together, this was the place where the holy grail was hidden, waiting to be found.
He stood naked and defenceless, eyes closed and skin tingling. Shyness all gone and an unknown feeling of pride surging through his veins.
"Yes," the man whispered. "That's you. That is so purely you. And so beautiful, so ... perfect."
Beautiful he was, no arguing about that. Even if your thing was burly and herculean gentlemen, or slim-wasted, big-titted ladies, you would recognize the faultless construction of this boy. The lean, strong legs without a single disturbing hair growing on the silky skin, the lovely shape of the shoulders, even if they were bony and undeveloped, the flat chest and stomach with the vague promise of muscles to come. Not an ounce of fat, just expanses of smooth, tight skin broken by a pair of pink little nipples ... and a small shadow of newly arrived little dark hairs above a cock that had risen to its maximum upwards curve, pink and shiny head peeping out of taut skin, a boy cock big enough to almost totally dominate the picture of the small, but so exquisitely formed body.
The boy opened his eyes. His huge, spellbinding, dark eyes.
"You too," he demanded, oddly sure of himself.
The man rose, his eyes locked to the boy's eyes.
"Yes," he answered almost inaudibly. "It has to be."
He turned away from the boy, and the boy shivered and trembled at the sight of the broad, sleek back with its ridged spine, the ripple of muscles in shoulders and arms as the man unfastened his belt and opened his jeans, and then pulled the garments down past a shadowy crack between two pale, smooth hemispheres, down past strong, downy thighs, down past curved calves and pronounced Achilles' tendons, and then the man was as naked as the boy. And the boy's heart fluttered and jumped in his chest, and his brain felt as if bolts of lightning shot through it as the man turned around and lay down on his back on the bed.
"Come!"
Knees shaking and legs like jelly, the boy, dazed with excitement and burning with anticipation, made it to the bed. Made it to the waiting man. Made it to the crux, the core, the essence.
Man skin meeting boy skin. Big body warmth merging with small body heat. Arms and hands slowly, tentatively exploring. And lips finding lips.
I never knew I needed this, ran through the man's head, I never even thought I could want this. But his heart had found its home, his mind had ceased its restless run, his soul had landed from its endless flight. He held the boy, just held him, felt the shivering breath against his throat, felt the small movements of the light body on top of him, felt the hard boy cock slide gently and unobtrusively up and down against his lower abdomen. He let his hands glide down the bony back and softly grip the small butt, felt the muscles tense and relax with every little move.
His cock had grown painfully hard, squashed as it was between them. He slipped his hand in and gripped it, brought it free to slide against the boy's subtly moving buttocks, then pushed it to nest in the crack between those smooth little cheeks. He couldn't hold still, his resolve to let the boy set the pace and design the scenography here was shot to pieces. His hips started a game of their own, his cock slid and glided more forcefully up and down the valley of flesh, the slippery tip of the now bared head every now and then grazing the crinkled little hole.
The boy shuddered and humped harder, and with a gasp and a quivering little moan emptied his young balls between them. Then collapsed and lay as a corpse on top of the man. Well, not a corpse, his breathing still tickled the man's neck. And then a tiny giggle, and boy hips moved again, and still hard boy cock slid back and forth in the small amount of slippery moisture it had left there seconds ago.
"My amazing Shrimp," the man whispered. "My incredible little friend. I never knew how beautiful this could be. How staggering."
The boy squirmed and snuggled tighter. "Your cock is almost in my butt," the boy giggled. "He feels so big. And so hard!"
"I know. It hurts, really."
"You need to cum," the boy said practically. "Can I see him squirt?"
The man held the boy harder. Moved his hips again.
"You may do whatever you like," he mumbled. I'm falling in love here, flashed through his brain. I had no idea I could. I thought my heart had died. And now I'll want this forever!
But then the enormity of it all speared his mind. How can I? He's only thirteen! This is forbidden, even if it feels so ... so right ... so wonderful. What the fuck do I do now?
He couldn't think this through. His brain had stopped functioning, because a small hand had wrapped itself around his aching cock, exploring it, measuring it, caressing it. Whimpering, he clutched the boy tighter, his hips rose from the mattress, his muscles tensed like steel springs.
The boy lifted his head off the man's chest. Moved his body so he could watch his hand pull the foreskin up and down the man's powerful cock, amazed at how the soft skin on this cock could move so easily over that rock hard core, thrilled by the fantastic experience of feeling a man's cock, this man's cock. His own cock that refused to go down was still pushing against the man's hip.
The boy gripped harder, he knew how to jerk off a cock, even if this was a million miles away from jerking his own. He wanted the tell the man how much he loved feeling his cock, he wanted the man to tell him this was the best wank he'd ever had, wanted the man to know he loved him. Loved him. He did!
He scooted round, and, with his hand tightly gripping the rigid shaft, bent down. His little tongue darted out and swirled around the exposed tip, his pointed little tongue tried to enter the slit, his soft little tongue licked broadly over as much pink spongy surface as it could.
The man's hips rose and fell, his moans grew louder, his straining muscles shook his body. The boy trembled with him, and as the white fluid shot from the man's cock in six hard ropes and a few later trickles, the boy's hips humped harder, and the boy's dick spewed its meagre rest-load of juice onto his beloved man's hip.
The man hoisted the boy up until they were face to face, he kissed the boy slowly and gently on the lips, and wrapped his arms around the small, but so lovely body, and breathed deeply.
The boy's fingers traced the scar down the man's torso. And breathed deeply.
And then they lay quiet and still, listening to the storm that was brewing in the night outside the small flat over the small corner shop in this this unprepossessing, some would even call it ugly, small town.