Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 06:18:53 +0800
From: dirge  <dirge@operamail.com>
Subject: the hiders part 2

Disclaimer: This story contains scenes of graphic sex between men and
boys. This story is copyright protected. If you have any questions or
comments regarding it, please email me. Thank you.


ED: IT'S A DOG SEAT DOG WORLD

Ed Savage closed his eyes and tried to feel the headrest of the airline seat
against the back of his neck. It was utterly uncomfortable. Ed was a big
man, and the economy of the airline industry seemed to be out to destroy
him. It was a vague conspiracy that included the blonde stewardess who
said, "Hello. How are you? Welcome to Trans Airlines."

The conspiracy was the cramped seat that had become a minor antagonist by
the third hour into the flight. The armrest stood as a barrier to the two other
empty places in his row. He had tried earlier to stretch by lifting the arm to
its max angle of 45 degrees, and just as he had discovered that one single
position that would allow an acceptable amount of circulation to return to
his limbs, the stewardess with high cheek bones leaned over and whispered
humidly into his ear that he could not occupy those seats because--and she
stopped to flip through her roster--he had not paid for any extra "real-
estate". She said in a voice that was pure honey, purely contrived, that he
could recline in the "default" sitting position, that there was a movie coming
on (Woody Allen's "Curse of the Jade Scorpion") and soon that dinner
would be served. She flipped the roster again, and again in the voice she
said his pre-ordered vegetarian meal was confirmed [she smiled showing
big white, mammalian, female, professionally cleaned to sparkling teeth].

Ed, a proud carnivore, cringed but said nothing because eerily, like a curse,
the woman looked and smelled like his ex-wife who was a vegetarian, or so
his wife had said in a letter shortly after the settlement. She was taking the
boys (twins) and Rex (dog) and the $250,000 (her 72% equitable share) of
the stock options and his $950.00 per month child support, and she was
moving back to Southern California where her lesbian, existential sister
lived on some beach somewhere Ed--thank God--had forgotten.

The stewardess blinked and added that he could have a drink in the mean
time. Again she smiled, resolved that she had saved the precious posterior
real estate from potential exploitation.

Ed sipped his double-tall Bialy's (he had ordered another one and combined
the contents of the two) and tried to get his head just in the right spot so his
neck would not cramp. On the little screen in front of him Woody Allen
mutely shouted and gestured madly at Helen Hunt. Out the window two
seats to his right the deepening blue sky was clear as ozone all the way to
the where it seemed the earth curved. He closed his eyes and pictured the
turbulent Atlantic far below. He could almost feel the thin shell of the plane.
A small screen blinked over Helen Hunt stating that the outside cabin
temperature was
-72 F. He remembered the Titanic movie and the frozen corpse bobbing like
apples among grand pianos and Queen Elizabeth chairs. If the plane crashed
he figured he could survive maybe an hour in the artic waters. The ice cubes
in his drink suddenly became more meaningful.

His foot touched the brief case sending a slight chill up his spine. Inside
were the photographs. He didn't want to think about them. He sipped the
sweet drink. The back few rows that was his neighborhood was relatively
unsettled. Three seats up from him an old man snored, his headset falling off
to one side. A man and his wife were behind him somewhere. He had not
heard them speak since they boarded, she pouting. From inside his coat Ed
pulled is wallet. He had five credit cards. One was old and his name and
address had rubbed flat. They were all maxed out except for an American
Flag MasterCard commemorating in bad taste the World Trade center. The
old leather bi-fold contained $50,000 in bad credit and his remains of a
failed marriage. Under the solitary glow of the reading light he pulled an old
black and white photo of his wife. It was one he himself had taken years ago
when they were first married and the world was unjaded, soft and round
with possibilities.

Maybe the marriage had failed because of his inability to interest her. He
was a simple, soft-spoken man. Maybe it had failed because he could not
play the role of an ideal father to the boys. He often missed their soccer
matches and science fairs. Over time he felt that he was growing unfamiliar
to them, and them to him. Maybe it all fell apart because he did not take an
interest and active role in his wife's budding talent with ceramics. Before he
knew it she was making twice his yearly salary at one auction. They called
her the Picasso of Pots. She took the ceramic world by storm. Boston was
mad about her. Yes, he had failed. He accepted it. He knew his wife was
having an affair with her agent, Vince, whom he had thought was
phlegmatically gay, but obviously... Ed chose not to see, or to see it and not
care. He told himself that there was his work. There was, The Case. It was
his duty.

Under the photo of his wife was one of his two sons taken that summer at
Cooney Island. It was the last happy time he could remember, a forced
holiday from the case, Janet was distance, but beautiful. She spent most of
the time on the cell with buyers on the West Cost. The boys were joyous
and rambunctious. For one day at least they had fallen in love again with
their father. In the photo Chad and Brad (his wife had picked the names)
wore their long baggy swim trunks. They flexed their boyish muscles at the
camera, imitating their best Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. They
were beautiful, healthy, all American boys. Chad was the oldest by five
minutes, yet he was the smallest. He was timid and inverted, like his father.
His eyes were the deep brown almost black of his mother's. Brad was the
showman. He was outgoing and could talk about and perceive almost any
subject he encountered. He was his mother's son. He was not taller than his
identical twin, but seemed to have a sturdier build. Though different, the
twins were inseparable. Janet had suggested that Chad live with Ed during
the summers while she took Brad under her wing to teach him the art of
bowl throwing. Ed refused because he knew the boys needed each other.
Shortly after that, Janet dropped the bomb that she was heading west.

A bump of turbulence caused the briefcase to fall on Ed's foot. It was a
reminder of why he was on the plane and where he was going. Reluctantly
he kissed the photo of his boys and returned the wallet to his pocket next to
his badge. This envelope was a lot heavier than the others. His team was
getting better at collecting evidence. This was their case. Ed had been
assigned leader when he had asked for a formal investigation three years
ago. Nobody had thought there was a connection in the deaths: 14 young
transients murdered at a train yard in Philadelphia. Some of the bodies had
been decapitated, some were disemboweled while they were still alive,
others just seemed to have dropped dead the coroner's report stated that they
suffered a major myocardial trauma. Then there were the reports from
Huston. Two men, known pedophiles, had been found dead in the bathroom
of a Barns & Noble. A few blocks away a Scandinavian girl had been found
in the freezer at a nightclub. The owner claimed, and the investigation
proved, that he had nothing to do with it.

Ed was a mid-level information agent in the NSA branch of the Department
of Homeland Security at the pentagon. He was not outgoing and his slow
rate of advancement proved it. But he was content. As a math major in
college puzzles were his passion. In a mere two years after graduating with
a BS he received his doctorate in cryptology. But academia nauseated him.
The idea of semester after semester of semi-intelligent freshman swamping
into the same calculus class was petrifying. The NSA was glad to obtain
someone with his ability to sample the trilobites of daily information they
were flooded with. So that's what Ed did. He sat in a bug-proof room and
sorted raw information from around the globe. Normally it was the same:
drug movements in South America, weapons movements in South East
Asia, militia activity in Michigan. Each boxable item had a department with
experts to analyze it. But three years ago the math in his head started
working. That part of his mind that was his genius started picking up on
something. At first he let it incubate as he continued his work. The sensation
was not unlike deja-vu. It first popped with a murder case in a small
Alaskan town.

A young man was charged with molesting his neighbor's fourteen-year-old
son. He was being held at the county jail until he could go to trial. The
report stated that the victim refused to testify against his molester, stating
that in fact, he himself had seduced the man and was in love with him. The
man was adamant about his own love for the boy, but as they continued to
hold him in hopes of getting the boy to sign an affidavit, the man became
increasingly psychotic. He was put on suicide watch and lightly medicated
to help him sleep.

Two days later the boy was found dead in a bathroom at the school.
Apparently he had hung himself from a ceiling fixture with his father's belt.
However, there was no suicide note or letter and no indication of
progression towards self-destructive behavior. Even his counselor said the
boy, though thrilled about his new sexuality and love for the molester, had
shown no signs of despair or anything out of the normal. He had recently
repaired his relationship with is father and the DA thought he soon might be
willing to at least talk.

On learning of the death of his lover the man suddenly calmed, as if he
totally withdrew from the real world. Later questioned, jail guards
remember him whispering late into the night. "Gotta run, gotta run, gotta
run." Exactly a week from the boy's suicide the man was found in the
corner of his cell, his heart lying on the floor beside him. His own hand
seemingly had reached in his chest and ripped it out. Two days later a
transient was found decapitate near Anchorage. Yes, to Ed there was a
pattern. It seemed plain, yet senseless.

"Folks, this is your captain speaking--" Ed closed his eyes in an attempt to
rest the thought processes that were screaming through his head. He could
feel the tired sensation that seemed to burn right at the tips of his pupils.
When was the last eight hours? It wasn't last week. No. It was the week
before. He had just gotten off the phone with his boys. Brad had been
thrilled to speak quickly and excitedly about the sculpture camp that his
mother had enrolled him in. He bubbled with facts and dates and what he
would send his father and that he hoped his dad could come visit very soon.
Ed thought he could feel his ex, who no doubt patrolled the call, cringe at
the innocent suggestion. "Folks," The captain's voice was a little tinny, a
little shaky. "Folks. It looks like there's some turbulence up ahead, so, if
you notice, the fasten seatbelt sign has been switched on in the cabins..."
Ed's eyes were watering when the breathless Brad had reluctantly agreed to
put his brother on. Chad was quiet until Ed said hello, but his presence was
warm. In a cold, post-divorce memo, Janet (the bitch) had informed him that
thanks to him Chad was a withdrawn shell of his former self and that she
would be glad to send Ed the counseling bill. Chad said hello and that he
was having some fun in California. He refused to talk much with is aunt or
his mother, but after a few long minutes of prodding he opened up to his
father. Ed closed his eyes to replay the conversation, his photographic mind
rushing like a computer through a list of files until he found that special one.

Ed: Hey Chad man. Aren't you gonna talk a little more to me?
Chad (faraway): mmmhu...
Ed: Doing anything fun?
Chad: Some
Ed: I heard you're learning to surf.
Chad: Yeah.
Ed: You know I grew up by the beach when I was a boy. I got to surf too.
Chad: Did you like it, dad?
Ed: Oh yeah...well, to tell you the truth, it scared me at first. I remember the
ocean seamed so big. And I was afraid that sharks--
Chad (timid): There's no sharks.
Ed: Oh yeah, I know that now. But after I learned how to stand up, I surfed
forever. You couldn't get me out of the water.
Chad: ummm, I almost stood yesterday, but Hope said I need to practice
more.
Ed: Hope, that's your surfing teacher, right? I bet she's cute.
Chad (giggling): Hope is a boy!
Ed: A boy! How's Hope a boy's name?
Chad: It just is, and he's my coach, not my teacher. He has long hair and
he's fifteen and he's been surfing since he was five and he lives down the
beach in a big, big mansion with his grandma, and she lets him do anything
and Mom said if I wanted I could grow my hair real long like Hope's, and
tomorrow Just me'n Hope er gonna build a bonfire and camp out `cause
brad is going to be starting his camp and It would be real cool if you could
come and visit, I miss you dad...

Ed:

Chad: Dad?
Ed: Yeah son?
Chad: Can you come camp with us, please? I mean I know you can't come
tomorrow night, but maybe soon.
Ed: God I'd love to champ. Hopefully soon.

Ed:

Chad:

Ed:

Ed: Son. I have to go. Give me a mental hug, ok.
Chad (sniffing): Ok.

Ed had cried after the call. From his small apartment above the movie
theatre he could hear people laughing. But Ed was empty and could have
been in Siberia.

He always had wanted the best for his family. He had grown up very much
alone. His father was a good man, but simple, and his mother was a drifter
who one day drifted away forever. Ed had an older sister, Alana, who he
remembered singing old Broadway show tunes when she cooked him and
his older brother a meal, or got them ready for bed; she did her best to fill a
mother's shoes. But a girl can only do so much in a small Midwest town
before the world starts to pull her down. She had always wanted to be an
actress, so one day a man in a long Cadillac stopped at the diner where she
worked three evenings out of the week. She had rushed home to pack and
tell Ed's older brother, Roger, that they must be very good to each other
because she was going to go and become a famous actress like Lizzie Taylor
and then send a million dollars to each of them. So like a movie, Alana got
in the big car and drove away with Ed and Roger standing on the rundown
porch, watching the highway and the car that seemed to disappear forever.
He did see Alana again, though not in person. When He was fifteen she was
leading lady in the action movie, "Cat's Kill". The poster hung in the diner
where she used to work and the owner would brag to every customer that he
had helped "Anna Doll Kennedy" make her mark. Her next big movie was
"Follow me to Heaven" with the handsome Ashton Clark. There were
others, but Ed never bothered to see them. The million dollars never came
and life continued.

Ed's father found work in a coalmine and he also found that hard liquor
alleviated his sorrows. So one day after he received his paycheck he filled
the cupboards with groceries and himself with booze. He drank and drank,
and he never stopped until his heart did.

His brother who was a few years older than Ed and was always distant,
always watching out the window, always listening. At first Ed thought it
was for their sister or their mother, or their father. But now, looking back,
he was not quite sure. Roger was a very beautiful boy. He was gay, the kind
of gay that you can tell by looking and listening to his goyish lisp, the kind
of gay-from-the-womb that makes the male child more of a creature than a
son, and the worried farther an angry man, but that never bothered Ed like it
did their father. In fact, he had wanted to name Chad after his brother
because of the similar way to his unknown uncle, the boy held himself.

One night a few months after his father's death, Ed came home and found
Roger with two of the varsity football players. This was quite stunning for
boy of Ed's tender age to see: his lovely, slight brother bent over the sofa, a
muscle bound beast going at his soft flesh; the other stud waiting by for his
turn, his own cock almost bigger than the buggered boy's arm.

Roger saw Ed but did not seem to register his little brother coming across
such a scene. As the big youth slammed into him, Roger's eyes seemed to
close like a kitten being stroked on the nape of the neck. Ed remembered
pulling away from the window he was at just a bit, but still enough so he
could see the activity within. The big player in his brother shook his head
from side to side. His hips were slamming, the flap flap flap of flesh on
flesh. Now and then Roger would whimper and shudder and reach back to
grip his butt cheeks. Ed watched as the youth yelled and dropped to his
knees popping out of the boy but instantly trying to stand and shove his
already drooping cock into the gaping void. The look on Roger's face was
of utter amazement. His slender fingers reached back and inside and he
looked at the other jock who seemed to be a little hesitant. It was a pleading
look, a search for compassion, not to spare him but to ravage him. The jock
took his place and slipped into the used boy. He was slow and gentle, unlike
his friend who was already dressing in the corner. His large hands traced
over Roger's back, he leaned and kissed between his shoulder blades and he
kissed Roger on the lips. The first jock said some thing about queers and
stormed out the back door.

Ed snuck into his bedroom and started memorizing a calculus book he had
stolen from the library. After a few minutes he heard Roger squeal. There
were long minutes of silence and then the bedsprings bouncing in the
adjoining room that had once belonged to their sister, but now was Roger's
safe place. Curious, Ed snuck to take a look. The door was ajar and Roger
sat astride the boy who had kissed him. Ed could clearly see the giant steel
corded penis plunge away then pull out glistening, shaking, then dive and
seem to grind around.

Sometime late that night the youth left. Ed heard the shower being turned
on. Roger was mostly silent his whole life. Once an old lady had said that it
was the artist's blood that did it too him. One night he sat naked in the dark
kitchen. The stars stretched out forever waiting for the postmeridian moon
to rise. Ed tried to sleep. Roger slipped into the room and under the covers.
"I'm scared," was one of the things he said. "It's like I have to run or I'm
scared." They held each other not knowing what the world was all about or
why it was such a large and uncaring place. "I like it, getting fucked." Ed
nodded and kissed his brother on the nose and fell asleep.

The jock who cared came by for months. He was kind and helped the boys
with the house. Ed would often fall asleep to the rhythmic sound of two
bodies madly fucking. It was comforting in a way, to know his older brother
was in love, to know he was getting a pleasure that he needed almost more
than air. The two were uninhibited in their desire. The jock liked to stand
and have Roger wrap his legs around his waist. He would then enter
him--by now it was easy and painless for Roger--and move the boy up and
down with the force of his large arms. Roger would scratch and claw and
bite and weep, and eventually cum. When they had started his orgasms were
dry, now they were wet but no less boyish, no less erotic, no less fulfilling,
no less inspiring. Sometimes they would sit on the couch, the jock impaling
the boy, softly talking about moving to some romantic city where they could
love all the time. Ed thought this was funny because he thought all they did
was love. Eventually the tempo would begin and the fuck was on.

One morning Roger lay naked on his bed. He was on his stomach and his
legs were spread. Ed could see the glistening hole as if it were some port
specifically for the jock. It was still dilated, dark and bruised--on the inside,
red and inviting. Ed climbed on the bed, himself naked as that was how he
slept, and peered in, deep down to where it seemed to end, but maybe not,
who knew. Now and then it sort of twitched like it had been tickled.
Tenderly Ed reached out with two fingers and touched. Roger lay still. Ed
touched again, this time licking a finger and running the slickness around
the opening. He put his fingers together and pressed in. It was juicy inside,
the spunk of the jock coating the heated walls that were soft, more soft than
any mouth. At this Roger grunted and turned his head, shaking off sleep. Ed
jerked his hand away. Roger smiled.

"You can touch me." He said. "Please." It was that same tone he used with
the jock when he wanted it. Ed put his fingers in and began to play. He
turned, he touched, he rubbed, he pinched, he spread, he closed. And Roger
grunted, driving back. Then Roger shook and the hole closed on Ed's
fingers.

The summer after the jock left for college, Roger existed listlessly. With
hopeful eyes, begging eyes, he would watch the long highway. At night he
would sit up in the dark and stare at the walls, his body doing a continued
rocking. He had boarded up all the windows so not even the moon could
come in. Eventually their bit of money had vanished. The social workers
were planning on putting Roger in a home for mentals and they had told Ed
that there was a nice family that wanted him. On one of the few nights when
Roger had crawled into Ed's bed and they lay wrapped in each other's arms
he whispered that he was leaving in the morning and that Ed should live
with the family that was found for him.

The next day when woke, Roger was gone. He too thought about hitching a
ride away, to see where that long road that had taken almost everyone he
loved would take him. But he was an obedient boy and morphed his life to
the strict but loving protestant preacher, his wife and his three daughters.
This family eventually did take the highway to California, and a house on
the beach.

The meals were being served. "Sir, your food." The stewardess stood
holding a tinfoilded plate.

"I'm not hungry."

"Are you sure, sir? This is the only in-flight meal."

"Yes." She humphed and continued down the aisle. Ed picked up the manila
envelope. It was heavy. He did not want to know its contents. Oh he knew
what it contained, but he did not want it burned into his mind. Not that it
mattered. He knew he would just file it in the mental cellars, far away from
his thoughts. But it once he saw it, it would be there, begging to be opened.
It would never, never go away. His lifted the metal brad with his fingernail.

Hampton had given him the file at the airport before he left. Ed thought
something was amiss with the assistant director on the drive over. Before
the case had become a consuming entity in his life, He had only talked to
Hampton on a handful of occasions, usually at parties or formal gathering.
Now they were almost becoming friends. In a political arena where
"projects" were delegated to "Haves" on the merit of a sexy international
appeal, it was custom that the have-nots like Ed would have to be satisfied
with a report that would loose itself in the massive red tape. But Hampton
had shown a keen interest in the case and was largely responsible for getting
the funding to pursue it, and he was solely responsible for making Ed lead
investigator.

The AD was a large man, larger than Ed. He insisted on driving Ed to the
airport, his large, football player hands caressing the wheel. Ed could see
that his fingernails had been recently chewed to the quick. Hampton was
from the old school. He was an AD by seniority only. Ed knew him as
straight shooter who distrusted the movement inside the agency toward the
mass technologies. Where there were once file folders and sexy secretaries
to peruse them, there were now master computers and zit-faced nerds in
baggy sweatshirts. Hampton always wore the trademark black suit and tie.
He had a long coat that covered his aging mass like a layer of dust covers an
old and forgotten book at the back of a library. He drank a whiskey with his
lunch, and that said a lot. "I got something for you." Said Hampton as he
parked the car in the VIP bay.

"Yeah?" Said Ed. Hampton handed him the envelope.

"You're boys got this to me this morning." Ed took the envelope. He knew
what it contained. But he did not want to think about it. It meant there had
been another killing. That was a bad thing. But it also meant more clues.
That was a good thing. But why had Robbie sent it directly to Hampton. Ed
knew that there were some things you never asked in the intelligence field,
one of them was how a superior received his information.

"Thanks. I'll look at it on the plane." Hampton looked contemplatively at
Ed. Something was up. "Is there something wrong, Hampton?" Ed asked.
The large man was quiet for a moment.

"You're doing good work here, Ed."

"Thanks." There was another moment of silence as they both watched a
young couple cross into the terminal.
"Ed, They're shutting us down." Hampton said, not looking to see Ed's
reaction.

"What? What do you mean? I thought we had full approval to mount the
research."

"So did I. I submitted your preliminary thesis to the board. Abrams was
enthusiastic. He said Kirk was pleased as well. And that meant a lot coming
from a fuck like Abrams."

"So what happened?"

"It wasn't you, Ed. You and your boys are awesome. You've taken a bunch
of loose ends and made some sort of sense. The full brief from the board
and Kirk is in the envelope, but I can tell you basically what it says."

"Yeah, I bet I can guess as well." Said Ed dryly.

"Yeah. They said there're too many questions. But I tracked the funding,
and what we were getting is now going to go directly to Abrams department
in antiterrorism."

"How long do we have?"

"Travel expenses are paid up through this week. You're guys will still get
paid, but they're to discontinue research immediately. I emailed them a
memo this morning."

"Well, then it's not even worth going on this France trip." Said Ed.

"I still want you to go, Ed. They're expecting you."

"Right." Ed said, popping the door on the suburban.

"Think of it as a vacation."

"I will."

"Keep me in touch, we have this baby for another week before they abort
it."

Ed opened the envelope. In the recycled oxygen of the fuselage the smell of
recently developed photos tingled his nostrils. He felt his blood pressure
rise. There was sweat between his fingers. He was thankful his seat was
away from any immediate eyes. Outside the world was dark except for the
line of what was once day on the crystal clear horizon. Two crystals, the sea
and the sky, neither one holding any meaning in a world that Ed had come
to conclude was mostly mathematical and probable. His feet were sweaty
inside his shoes. The little light about his head seemed to spot the pages as
he extracted the photographs.

He caught a glimpse of something, something human. A body part? He
flipped the pictures over and pulled out the brief that would determine his
future at the agency. He skimmed over the first few pages that were a
addendum to every internal document. By policy official internal NSA
briefs contain only a few nuggets of information. This was a practice held
over from the cold war days so that an enemy could not easily skim any
document for value. If someone untrained were to acquire sensitive
information at, say, an agent's house party, it would be unlikely that that spy
could read the document on the spot. After a few seconds on page four Ed
found the nugget of gold, or, in his case, coal.

Date:
Sec. J. Abram
D.H.S

Memo of funding for Project 3Z, Case 7, The Austin Papers

Under the CIA Guidelines of Internal Charters of Investigation,
(GICI: Sec. 4 Items 2-14) [See amendment for DHS]
The Austin Papers are to be
immediately terminated. All funding of cash, credit card, and
separate account will be officially closed as of the earmarked
date. Agents are to destroy all gathered, unsolicited
information according to procedure as noted in GICE Sec. 42.
Failure to comply will result in personal termination and a
Search and possible seizure of suspect individuals' private
Property and or persons.

Current cash holdings by Agents involved in the Austin Papers
Must be turned into the Bridge department of the Office of
Homeland Security. All Solicited materials and
Research must be submitted to the Bridge department within
10 days to the date earmarked on this brief. All agents must
report to the Bridge department at the DHS within 10 days
to the date earmarked on this brief. For further information
review the GICI debriefing manual Sec. 39...

Ed turned to the last page, where written and in blue ink was the scribble of
Stuart Abram's authorization to eliminate the case and, in turn, a large
portion of Ed's life. He dropped the document onto the forbidden seat and
with a now steady hand turned over the photographs. The First one was a
picture of the outside of a gymnasium. The sign on the side of the building
read, "Greg's Schumbauger and Ana Gustavio's Youth Body Studio:
Olympians since 1988". Ed noticed that the studio was on an out of the way
street in some city. A closer look at a parked car revealed a Florida license
plate. On the back written in Rob's all-caps print was a short memo.

ED, YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHERE I AM. HINT, IT'S NOT FL.
IT'S A LITTLE TOWN IN SOUTH CENTRAL MONTANA
CALLED Helena--ACTUALLY THE CAPITAL OF MONTANA!
PODUNK! I WON'T RETIRE HERE BECAUSE OF ALL
THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS, BUT SOME OF THE GUYS ARE
REALLY
CUTE!

OK DOWN TO BUSINESS. I GOT THE CALL THRU THE WIRE
MONDAY AND WAS ABLE TO PUT A FED STOP ON ANY
PRESS, BUT ONCE THIS ONE BREAKS IT'S GOING TO BE
A MEDIA FIRESTORM. I GIVE IT FOUR DAYS MAX.

THIS STUDIO WAS OWNED BY A MAN BY THE NAME
OF GREG SCHUMBAUGER. ANA GUSTAVIO WAS HIS ASSIS-
TANT. BOTH ARE/WERE RUSSIAN NATIONALS. THE
STUDIO IS A DANCE/GYMNAST PLACE FOR TRAINING
KIDS FOR THE OLYMPS. BACKGROUND CHECK STATES
THAT IT WAS OPEN FOR ONLY 3 YEARS DESPITE WHAT
IT SAYS ON THE SIGN OUT FRONT.

THE MOTHER OF ONE OF THE VICTIMS WENT TO PICK UP
HER SON AND THAT'S WHERE THE FIT HIT THE SHAN. OK,
RUNDOWN. SEE NEXT PHOTO.

The picture was of a large room with various training equipment. On the
floor was the naked body of a girl between the age of eight and nine. In the
black and white photo she was laying in a pool of black blood.

THIS IS SAMANTHA BROWN. SHE WAS A `VISTIING
STUDENT FROM CALIFORNIA. CAUSE OF DEATH WAS
LACERATION TO THE WRISTS. APPARENTLY THE PERP/S
CUT HER AND LET HER RUN TILL SHE DROPPED. WE
THINK THIS HAPPENED IN THE GIRLS' CHANGING ROOM
AND SHE MADE IT AS FAR AS THE WEIGHT ROOM. (THE LAYOUT
OF THE JOINT CONSISTS OF A WEIGHT ROOM AT FRONT, THEN A
GYMNASIUM OF EQUAL SIZE WITH VARIOUS POLS AND PUMEL
HORSES, RINGS ETC., TWO CHANGING ROOMS EACH WITH A
SHOWER, AND A SMALL OFFICE THAT HAS BEEN BUILT INTO
THE BACK OF THE GYMNASIUM.
NEXT.

Ed looked at the next one in shock. Five boys around the age of thirteen or
fourteen were slumped on the tumble mat at the center of what must have
been the gymnasium. There was no visible sign of blood, but their necks
were crooked at odd angles. They almost looked as if they were sleeping;
the way boys sometimes do, their hands gently resting on each other. Each
had on a tight pair of Speedos. Ed could tell by the muscle definition that
they were all young athletes.

CAUSE OF DEATH FOR ALL 5 BOYS: SEVERED SPINAL CORD
BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND VERTIBRET. TIME OF DEATH
SEEMS TO BE TWO HOURS AFTER THE LITTLE GIRL'S. CORONOR
REPORTS THAT THE BOYS HAD EACH RECENTLY EJACULATED
SEMEN. TWO OF THE BOYS HAD EACH OTHER'S SEMEN IN
THEIR RECTUMS, TWO MORE HAD INGESTED ORALLY EACH
OTHER'S AND THE FITH BOY HAD EJACULATED BUT TRACES OF
HIS WAS NOT FOUND ON OR IN ANY OF THE OTHER FOUR NOR
ON OR IN THE LITTLE GIRL. NEITHER WAS IT FOUND ON OR IN
THE BODY OF THE FINAL IMMEDIATE VICTIM. (SEE LAST
PHOTO)

THIS ALL FALLS INTO THE PATTERN OF THE OTHER KILLINGS.
THY BOYS ALMOST SEEM TO HAVE BEEN GENTLY DELT WITH,
THE GIRL SAVAGELY.
EACH BOY SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN A RECEPTOR OF REPEATED
ANAL INTERCOURSE. NONE HAD ANY BLEEDING, YET ALL
SHOWED SIGNS OF LONGTERM REPETITIVE USE, I.E. BRUISING
AROUND THE ANAL RING, MINOR  INTERNAL SCARING. ONE
BOY HAS HICKIES ON HIS INNER BUTTOCKS AND INNER
THIGHS. IN SHORT, THEY WERE ALL SEEING SOME CONSTANT
ACTION.

The last photograph was the inside of the small office that looked out on the
tumble matt. A woman of middle age and in a leotard was laying head down
on her desk. Blood was spattered across the desk and the glass. Ed could not
see her face as it was covered by long, silky hair that seemed to stick to
pools of her blood. On the desk next to a cup of pins lay what appeared to
be a human heart.

ANA GUSTAVIO, 35, 110LBS. CAME OVER FROM RUSSIA LAST
YEAR. SHE'S HELD SEVERAL JOBS IN THE AREA ASWELL AS IN
CALIFORNIA. ED, IT'S DISTURBING. YOU WERE RIGHT,
SOMETHING IS GOING ON. THERE'S A PATTERN TO ALL THIS
AND IT'S INSANE. DURING MY INVESTIGATION I WAS ABLE TO
FIND A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA. SHE HAD TIME TO WRITE A
NOTE BEFORE SHE WAS KILLED. IT SAYS: "My God. God help us.
I'm dead as I write this and watch him it kill them. I should have known, it's
never safe. Should run, but I'm tired. It's time. No more running."

THE NOTE WAS HIDDEN UNDER AN EDGE OF CARPET. I'VE NOT
GIVEN IT TO THE POLICE. I'LL WAIT TILL I HEAR FROM YOU.
GREG SCHUMBAUGER HAS NOT BEEN LOCATED. THE POLICE
ARE FOCUSING THEIR EFFORTS ON HIM AS PORNOGRAPHY WAS
FOUND ON THE CUMPUTER IN AN ACCOUNT UNDER HIS NAME. I
CAN'T SCRAPE UP MUTCH INFO ON HIM OR ANA. I THINK HE'S
ALIVE AND WE HAVE TO FIND HIM BEFORE THE POLICE DO.
AND, ED, THERE WAS ONE MORE STUDENT THAT WAS ON A
ROSTER LISTED FOR THAT DAY. HIS NAME IS BENJAMIN
GRACY. HE IS 10 YEARS OLD. 2 GRACYS IN THIS AREA AND
NEITHER ARE HIS RELITIVES. NO ONE HAS COME TO THE
POLICE ASKING ABOUT HIM. THE OTHER PARENTS HAVE ALL
HELD FUNERALS AND ALL SAY THAT THEIR KIDS WANTED TO
DO GYMNASTICS SO THEY LET THEM. NEWS IN THE AREA IS
SPREADING FAST AND SOME LOCAL REPORTERS HAVE
ALREADY DONE STORIES ON THE FED LOCKDOWN OF THE
BLOCK WHERE THE BUILDING IS. I'M HEADING BACK TO
ATLANTA AFTER THE FIRESTORM HITS. THE POLICE HERE ARE
SUSPICIOUS BUT SO FAR HAVEN'T GIVEN ME PROBLEMS.
GOODLUCK IN FRANCE.

ROB.

Ed put the brief and the photos back into the envelope and turned on the call
light above his seat. Robert was seeing it to. The pattern. All five of those
boys had been sexually active. Not just sexually but homosexually. And in
Austin the pedophiles had been killed at the B&N. And in Hawaii the boy
had been killed on the front porch of his adult lover, and the lover had been
killed in his bed while he slept. In that particular case the medical examiner
had found a good portion of semen inside the boy's rectum. And like Rob
had stated the boy was not raped. His anus was good and used. It had
stretched over time to accommodate the man. They were lovers. Then
Alaska, then two reports in Europe, then one report in Japan, and all the
other little intricacies. Like why were some women killed? Why was that
little girl in the weight room in Montana killed? Why that little girl on the
train in France? The very case he was now on his way to help investigate.
but now to what end? Funding had been cut. It was over. He'd have to get to
France and tell the detectives that he could no longer work with them. He
needed to call Rob and the others and touch base. The case, the Austin
Papers, named so because the first murder in which Ed started to see a
pattern was in Austin, Texas, and the case was closed. It was doomed to
become what Ed hated the most, an unsolved puzzle, all because the
Department of Homeland Security was slowly eating the intelligence and
crime prevention of America alive from the center. If it wasn't a Muslim
terrorist, it wasn't worth investigating. In the numerous mathematical
scenarios that ran through Ed's brain the traditional security network always
failed because of the new lack of powers and funding. A Few more bills and
the CIA, NSA, FBI... would all be ghost shells of agencies. The checks and
balances that they all seamed to create for each other through bureaucracy
would be streamlined in the new DHS, an office that had few regulations to
politicians or to citizens. Things were going to change in America. And it
was going to be big.

"Sir," said the smiley-stewardess, "How may I help you?" Ed cringed, she
smelled just like his ex-wife.

"I need to shred this document." He had decided that if even in his mind,
with his own resources, the investigation would continue.




SWEET DARKNESS: JOSH AND BRENT

Brent had been crying but he stopped because he needed to think of where
the arcade was. Ok, now he was at the corner of Cove and Hrath. Hrath
turned into a dark alley and Cove went on deeper into the industrial district.
He thought it was Cove, maybe a mile or two and there was the abandoned
bus stop and then there should be a petrol station. He was sure this was the
right way, well almost sure. But now as he walked and the foggy humidity
stuck to him, he was not quite as certain, even a little scared, hungry, thirsty,
ok, a lot scared! He knew this day would come. Josh had told him
everything about the monsters or things that chased him. It made Brent's
head spin and the fine hairs on the nape of his neck stand on end to hear the
stories of his lover's travels, but then the muscular Josh would see he had
really frightened the boy and he would gently touch the child's soft cheek,
wink, and off they would go to bed.

Brent tried to think back over the last few hours. How it had all changed so
fast? The darkness, the stories, had risen from the myth that was the man
and became so utterly real. Josh had looked distracted when he came home
and found Brent sitting on his bed, naked like a marble statue, like a god
who had fallen and become real, like a boy who knew what a willing man
could do to him. Brent just wanted a quick fuck and then he had to get home
for a special meal with his mom.

The man's eyes connected with the boy's. So beautiful and strong, Brent
thought. So alert. Josh dropped his pack and looked at him with a fondness
that that the boy knew well. Brent the loved boy was suddenly horny. He
felt his hole getting moist from a want that caused the sweat glands to
excrete. His rectum loosened as his body became ready for the war. But
Josh's look of love suddenly turned to that of horror. Brent was able to pick
up on this instantly.

"What the hell are you doing here?" questioned Josh sternly. Brent's heart
jumped in his chest. Never ever had Josh been so stern and for no reason.

"I jus' thought for a visit, or a, yer know" said Brent.

"Well, don't you remember anything I've told you, damnit? Fuck, it's not
safe for you to be running up here at the drop of a hat. Shit, there are things
that want me dead, not to mention the fuckin' pigs would love to find out
my lover is nine!" Josh walked to the couch and plopped down. At the harsh
words Brent felt foolish in his nakedness. He looked for his pants and
slipped into the tight denim without bothering to put on his underwear.

"I'm sorry Josh. I'll go." Josh just looked at the boy as he walked toward the
door and paused. They were both silent for a time, each heart beating for
what each wanted but now felt tender because something was happing on
the psychic level.

"No. Come here." Josh said a little softer. Gingerly the boy went to his man
like a moth to flame. "Oh my God. Brent, I'm sorry." He said as the he
stood before him in all his clothed glory. The pants erotically accented his
sex organ that had drooped; they cupped his buttocks the way an article of
clothing can embrace a truly beautiful boy. His shirt not yet on was in his
shaking hands as he stood before the man. "Were you going to leave
without your shoes?" asked Josh, a smile forming on his beautiful face. The
boy shook his head, the many color-dyed locks flapping as if a gentle and
winged creature had risen from a hundred years sleep. "Fucking God you're
beautiful." Whispered Josh as he lifted a hand to touch the torso of the boy.
Brent felt his fear melt and his cock jerk.

"S'ok." Whispered the boy in return, a crackle in his throat.

"No it's not." Josh's strong hands had now come to rest on his hips. "I'm
sorry Brent." And he unsnapped the button and pealed the child like a
hungry man peals a desert island fruit. Brent was a rare flower blooming out
of the things that made him modest and felt as the hands cupped his small
ass and steered his now saluting dick into the mouth. Josh was not gentle
nor did the boy want him to be.

Brent, who stood at just barely four and a half feet, perhaps under, felt his
penis grow to a proud length inside Josh's mouth, a length that he
sometimes measured bashfully in mere centimeters. He was a small boy, but
he was beautiful. He didn't know that he was for the longest time. Yeah,
Josh had told him before. Once when they were at an art museum they
stopped to ponder a painting on canvas of a cabin boy. Brent couldn't
remember the artist or the name of the portrait, but he knew the dark haired
lad was extremely pretty. Pretty to Josh who had to stop to ponder the
delicate brush strokes, leaning close he turned and looked at Brent who had
just recently added a tinge of cherry red to his hair. "What do you think?"
said Josh. Brent looked at the man because he was secretly in love with
him--this was shortly after his suicide attempt--and then at the boy in the
painting who was probably just his age.

"Du'no, he looks sort'a wild s'pose." Indeed the boy did look wild in a
white seaman's blouse that blew in some still wind, it was made for a man,
revealing the soft and pale tender of the his chest.

"Yes, wild," spoke Josh, pausing, looking closer, backing up to stand again
beside Brent. "Why do you think a man would concentrate so hard on
painting a boy?" At this he looked at Brent. "I mean, considering all the
other important things an artist could put his time toward?"

"I du'no. Maybe he was paid t'dwit."

"But he's just a cabin boy, probably not rich..."

"Maybe..." Brent thought hard; all sorts of fantasies about a cabin boy of
beauty and tender age on a ship full of roughens popping in and out of his
mind in miniature erotic film strips. "Maybe--," he thought about what he
knew, and he knew cabin boys would bunk with the captain, that they were
taught to read and navigate, to take journal entries, to experience adventure
alongside a man of power. He thought of the pretty little boy on a tall ship
that knew a man's love in the doldrums of a still sea--the boy would be like
a morning star.

Perhaps it was night, the crew was sleeping or drinking after weathering an
angry storm. The stars were all out in the majesty that few save the seafarers
experience. A sliver of crescent moon was rising and reflecting a dimmer
brother in the shimmer of the ocean that was a second sky. At this time the
captain who was an introverted man, rough yet calm, fitted for the waters,
stood on deck, alone except for the his cabin boy who by a single candle
flame wrote the words of his man. He wrote with a steady hand, diligently;
he wrote a poem; he wrote of the storm, of the dwindling food supplies, of
the cowards and brave men alike who now slept and drank; he wrote a letter
to the captain's sister telling her that her brother was alive and well and
would be home in seven weeks time; he wrote of an odd fish two oars long
that could leap from the water after birds, it was the glint of Spanish
silver--the men said it was a god; he wrote (as the calm, low voice of the
captain filled him) a prose about the still night and the moon and a thing
about himself that seemed odd he was writing and that it came from the
captain; he wrote about his own beauty through the man's eyes and
blushed--thank God for the darkness--and gently the captain bent and
kissed (not for the first time) the boy's neck; and the boy knowing the needs
of a man, excepting them as part of his job but not an unwanted part,
actually, a joyful part, because the he was in love, and met hard salty lips to
his soft sweet ones, he moaned, yanking on he the captains shirt, ripping the
buttons that he would later repair with gladness because at this time--the
captain now pulling at the lad's breaches--the boy was the master of the
ship, the boy controlled the man, and when the boy was naked from the
waist down, his pale moon skin in the pale moon light, the captain fell to his
knees at the fleshling alter and prayed to the old gods a thanks as he cupped
childish  male ass--to make a woman croon, ah! to make her blush--in his
calloused hands, and with his mouth, the same mouth that spat orders, that
cursed--yes, at times, even cursed the boy--that sang, that whispered
eulogies, with that mouth he tongued and suckled the boy-child until the
boy-child was a whimpering, pulsating, purring, growling, moaning,
cursing, humping little mass of swarthy soft flesh.

And the captain--all this in Brent's mind about Josh's question--the
captain lifted the boy, and under the stars on the still sea he confessed his
love, the boy half naked, them both naked to the specters, his crew who
knew, who loved them both, hated them both, were envious, were drunk and
happy, naked to the heavenly bodies who were the stars, the he-moon
becoming the she-moon, he carried him into his cabin, applied the Persian
oil and fucked him clean, fucked him gently, fucked him truthfully until the
boy wept and pleaded no more and begged more and arched his pelvis in
such a way to accept the captain, the boy's long hair falling over them, the
captain too untied his hair and it mingled like the silk of dreams with that of
the child's. At times the boy rode but mostly he lay back with his legs parted
as boys who know men will part them, lifted his knees up to his own slender
shoulders and let the man fuck him as only a man who has kept and trained
a number of cabin boys can do. He knew which part of the boy needed
touching; he knew when to deliver the long strokes and when the short were
in order, he knew that when the boy, of his own will, leaned up to lick his
face that he wanted to still a bit and rest, so then they would kiss, drink from
each other, and when the boy pulled away he knew that he could then take it
hard, and when the tears came--in the darkness he could only know by
tasting them--he knew the boy who was loosened had come, had reached
the goal that cabin boys learn, that a very few boys know, that all of his
cabin boys had known; and he gently rocked until he had filled him and, by
the grace of God, they slept, and they woke to the morning crew, to the
smell of breakfast, to their own fluids that the boy would clean off the
sheets, that they would clean from their bodies by a swim-----

but not before the man was again roused by the child across the small room
buttoning his breaches, blushing, and he (the man) jumped up and licked
him naked and fucked him thrice, once for each good god, and the boy in
constant awe at the sore pleasure of his body, of the need for the man, the
boy exploded on the inside, bent well over the table of maps, breathing his
young, warm cries on Barbados (and maybe in Barbados it did rain a soft
and seductive warmth because of this); and the captain not satisfied but
knowing the day was nigh pulled out and kissed the kid's back and watched
him display himself naked in the morning sun, dancing in and out of
shadow, grabbing a belt, one of the captain's old shirts; he knew (the boy
did) that he (the man) could barely resist him when he left himself buckskin
from his slender waist down, hoping for one last tumble, hoping later the
man would see his pitiful need and whisk him into the sails and do him
hard...This Brent thought, but said: "maybe the captain loved him and had
the picture painted."

"Brent boy, I don't know what you were thinking, but, yeah, I think the
captain probably loved him very much." Brent blushed. "I think you are
beautiful." Brent leaned into josh and they walked down the long hall and
noticed other boys in paintings. Like hidden secrets of history they bloomed
from the canvases, these fresh-faced children, these oft' hidden muses.

Brent wasn't certain that Josh truly found him beautiful until that one time
in his mother's bedroom. It was the night that sealed their love--a sort of
proposal to marriage but the ceremony is another story. That night after the
meal and the bottles of wine, of which Brent had perhaps one sip to many
and he was light headed and madly in love with the young man who had
dressed in a tuxedo with tails and a tall hat, the same man (and this is yet
another story) who had earlier that week introduced the boy to the art of
love by plucking his cherry atop an abandoned high rise--it was one of
those rarely clear London eves--as the sun spilled red in the east, red like so
many gay boys' hearts that had broken, red, simply, like a sunset.

Brent's mother's apartment was small: one bedroom that was his mom's, a
fairly sizeable living room, a small kitchen where the woman whose magic
is yet untold produced such a feast as to rouse the stomachs of old, dead
French chefs and more important, made the boy proud to have the man
come and dine. On a small mattress in the living room is where Brent slept.
It was neatly tucked away now, and to a wondering eye of the world it
seemed, as far as material possessions were found, the boy barely existed.
Oh but he was real; one young American's sturdy cock and aching tongue
could attest to the viability of that creature. The dining room was a
table--this night adorned with candles and lace and rose petals and crystals
from gypsies--Brent's mother was a bit of a mystic, at another time a white
witch.

Josh was always a quiet person save alone with the boy when he would fill
is head with thoughts of travel, shadowy stories, whispers of love between
kisses; but he was quiet in the way men who travel lightly are: he could
simply look and communicate an entire philosophy. Brent knew his man
was yet considered a boy by the old world, but when he was with him he
knew his soul was ancient, aged, like the battered wall of a castle, like the
great ships, like the empire's road that always leads away.

Tonight, was it the wine or the soft voice of his mother, or the dancing
candle shadows that made the little place into a table on top of the sky? Or
was it the lustful look of Brent as he drank (it was the wine, partly) the wine
and used his tongue ever so catlike on his lips to suck away the honeyed
meats and his carnival blue eyes met the man's and were like the horizon
break of the storm that always raged in Josh's own eyes, the gray, the
wisdom beset on one so young who needed not just sex from the randy kid,
but a partner, a confidant, a lighthouse, a lover, a guide, one who knew and
whispered back and, yes, also, in a manner, a teacher?

And they ate and drank and swooned and the boy's mother was the boys'
mother; wise she was the cook, the serving girl, the princess, the queen, the
cupbearer, the bard, the magic maker. To her Josh told secrets he had told
her son but only with the consenting glance of the catamite. This woman
listened and reasoned, she reckoned and laughed and sat as the man spake,
the boy ate; and she knew when he glanced at her son, often, his (Josh's)
eyes stormy but love filled, love filled for her son who needed it so
much--she knew and gave leave when the man could not contain his adore
any longer and got up from the table, tipping like the wine, and went to the
child who was gold from the flame of the candelabra and knelt and kissed
him upon the forehead, upon his rosy cheeks, the button nose, and lastly
kissed in worship the red, red lips of the male child until the firelight boy,
the half ghost, kissed back, hard, for seconds that during a magic dinner are
minutes or hours or days or time on a pin head, and the man pulled away
and sat back down by the mother who knew and knew, and let her son
choose, and talked to her of her girl days, leaving Brent with kissed raw lips
to lick the last taste of the man from them, leaving him lust-mad, filled and
drunk and quite complete with this meal and the flames and that wonderful
wicked wine and the conversation of his lover and his mother that was like
two harps playing that he couldn't and didn't want to understand because
now he, boy, just wanted to bed the man.

So the meal ended and the woman insisted that Josh not walk in the
midnight rain across town, insisted that he take her room and she would use
the small bed by the far wall. And Josh said no but she insisted yes,
knowing the dark shadows that sometimes haunt the alleyways, dark
shadows that Josh knew well so he raised her hand to his lips and kissed the
fingers of the mother, then sipped the last of the very special wine and
complied. Brent, she did not have to say, was to choose because he was an
individual connected to his mother by love but not by the modern moral
code of hate and fear. The woman who once made love--she told this story
in the harp song--by the raging forest that was so still as to hear her lover
and her girlish cries and covered them in mist, this woman became nothing
and slept to dream and the boy and Josh were left at the table, the candles
dying like flicker of a star as night becomes the abyss, and they knew that to
survive they needed to touch each other forever, or, at least just for this
night.

The man steadied himself and lifted the Brent as if he were his father. Brent
laid his head on his shoulder, and as the darkness of the world became
complete they were shut in the small room where each undressed the other,
quite real; the boy lucid to the hard muscles of the man, the throbbing prick
that, as Josh made him naked, kissed with its wet eye his tummy, his back,
his rear, his own rigid cocklet and tender testicles. When they crawled into
bed they were aware of the their body-smells; they were aware that parts of
them sweated and other parts where dry like silk. Josh said something about
how he could not see Brent in the sad blackness but he could taste him and
feel him and he knew that he loved him and he whispered as he traced with
his mouth the holy line from boy-lips to boy-tummy that he thought Brent
was more beautiful than anything in the world like sunsets and stars, more
beautiful than an angel! And they heard the crazy-beautiful rain on the mad
tin roof; and Brent knew that he was beloved of one man. And like the rain
that hid their groans and grunts and the springs of the bed from the
enchantress in the other room, they made love until morning was brink, and
kicked the sex stained sheets to the forest floor and fucked once more, and
slept as one, without fear of Gods or men or shadows.

But tonight in Josh's apartment was different. There was a stirring on the
face of the earth. Where it originated neither knew. It felt like a continent
away, at the same time it was on the techno streets by London discos where
girls in shorts over tights and leather jackets smoked chocolate flavored fags
and waited for boyfriend's car. Tonight the gentle touching of the memory
was replaced by an urgent need of Josh for Brent; this translated into his
strong hands holding Brent's ass so hard as to turn the pale orbs chafe and
sucking his cock to a an angry red. He parted the little butt globes and
worked two eager fingers deep into the core of the boy and did not relent
when Brent's foal knees buckled causing the fingers to strike gold causing
the dick whose foreskin Josh nipped between sharp teeth to jerk almost in
circles and then Josh gulped it down, balls and all, and Brent, maddened by
such harsh justice to his tender body tried in vain to pull the tight, thin, rain
soaked t-shirt from the broad back and chest of Josh. This produced a
comical sight in the dim light. Skinny just-cum'd boy attempting to strip the
man whilst he was being suckled and finger fucked to another climax. The
shirt now over his tormentor's head, Brent scraped Josh's rigged back while
he rotated his hips to make the fingers that were stilled move--funny `cause
he didn't know quite what to do to make the stubborn brute get naked.
Finally Josh released his lips and the boy, knowing his window was short,
pulled the shirt from his arms and tossed it haphazardly across the room.
Brent felt proud and looked at his victory, a take-that-asshole look on his
cute face. But really, how proud can a boy be whose legs were parted at the
thighs, who was stooped just so because a young stud had two of his fingers
pushed hilt deep into his tight rectum and was--just to spite the livid
runt--working them madly in circles, in fucking motions?

"I'm gunna cum," Brent whispered and looked calmly down at his iron hard
little cock that was no longer subject to molestation and now stood antenna
like, pulsing at the same thump thump thump of his heart.

Brent rarely spoke during the artful act of sex. Seriously, what needs to be
said between a man and a boy who rut? But it was true, he was on the verge
of "cuming"; he had that feeling of the little ball of light within about to
burst like a poppy seed. His mouth was slack, his lips trembling like the ring
of his anus, in fact, trembling just as his hole quivered. Josh had caught on
to that connection early in their relationship and now played Brent like he
was an easy take at poker. It was his secret, knowing by the lips and the
flicking tongue exactly where the boy was on his sinusoidal journey to
Valhalla. He didn't dare let Brent in on the secret; he was such a bashful
boy at some things and he was afraid it would make him self-conscious
whenever they mated.

Josh saw the madness in the his eyes. Had he played too rough? He thought
not, and tried to widen his fingers as he expertly found a way to force a third
one in. Brent wrinkled his nose and bit his voluptuous bottom lip.

"How close are you?" Josh asked and the boy looked dejectedly at him and
mouthed,
"Close." Josh slowed letting the inner heat subside in Brent and leaned
forward to kiss his mouth. With a slurp he removed his fingers that were wet
from mucus and wiped them across Brent's skinny chest then sucked on the
left nipple that was always slow to erection, as if in defiance of it's tender
and oft'ly-chewed twin.

Brent, taking the break in the assault to dislodge himself from the peelings
of his jeans was suddenly, boyishly, ravishingly nude. Josh sat back in the
couch to take in the full glory of his conquest. What slender beauty! What
erotic pout of mouth and flat of stomach! He reached up and ran his hand
around the curve of a slight hip, a bird's hip, and back over a firm butt
cheek like one would, just for the feel, run a hand over a bronze bust. Josh
had kicked out of his shoes and socks when he entered the apartment but
was still stuck--this was how Brent considered it--in his jeans. The man
reclining, the boy standing, penis at attention, ass robbed of its building
orgasm. He was a boy no doubt sexed, and no doubt gay, just a little in his
mannerisms and the way his Irish accent lisped to a higher octave, but a
flaming fag when it came to butt-sex. So attuned was his body to accept the
man that when he was at school and the seventh hour neared he would
mentally try and loosen his anus, feeling it become just a little moist. But
oh! the curse of boys and their bodies! After a couple days off from
screwing the little hole clinches up, not as small as it was before first being
popped but smaller than the open mouth that it was during and after a full
out brawl, [now, at school] not quite quarter size.

Once during the hour lunch Brent spent some of his allowance on a taxi and
made a mad dash for Josh's. This was after a whole five days of chastity.
And when he entered the apartment Josh knew what the boy was after, no
words were exchanged. Josh already naked from a late rising and a hot
shower, he stripped the lad, practically threw him on the bed and
immediately began tonguing the unused boy hole. It was so tight that by the
end of a half-hour he only managed to loosen him enough to guide in two
fingers. The hour was almost up and he had no intention of letting the kid
cut important classes for just one fuck. Though brilliant, Brent was one to
slack off on his grades if something else was occupying him, and it could be
said, tongue in cheek (pun intended) that Brent was being occupied. So
cruelly Josh fingered him until he whimpered, feeling around the musty and
smushy insides, flicking the hard lil'nub of a prostate, then promptly pulled
out, slapped his ass and made him dress while he called a cab and sent the
horny half-cum'd boy back to school.

Cruel indeed, what is a boy to do who, on the verge of exploding, now looks
at every man as if he could finish the task? But thankfully for Josh the only
dick Brent desired was his. And that episode cost the man dearly as,
teaching him a lesson, all sexual favors from the boy were promptly
suspended until the man, hungry with lust, showed up at his mother's
apartment with a pocket full of money; he practically had to beg the boy to
forgive him, to come out to the arcade (Well, arcades are like flowers to
nine year old boys!) and spend the night with him. His mother, well amused,
knowing that neither hell nor heaven hath a fury to a man like a beautiful
boy's scorn, stood in the dining room and wrote her letters.

At the arcade Brent was slow to come around. Josh had no idea how he had
ached for four hours on the hard wood chairs of the desks as the tedious
lectures sapped by, his loosened and well worked butt seeming to open and
moan for the filling that he had been denied. And then there was gym class
and the locker room that was split between the upper fifth and the smaller
boys [Brent being a smaller boy of the upper fifth because he was brilliant].
One hung colt of about fourteen had a cock that Brent salivated after. It was
a true marvel, cleanly cut (a treat) and bouncing around mid thigh length
with only a few wisps of black hair at the tender base. The boy was a
wrestler and his body showed it. In practice that day he had lovingly pinned
Brent and made the boy reluctantly beg to be loosed. Brent, he rarely did
this, especially since the sex had started, got naked and entered the shower
after the dick that owned a boy. He took the spout adjacent to the demi-stud
and began soaping. He was a bit embarrassed at his comparatively miniscule
cock, but that was not the part of him to which he wanted attention
given--though it begs to be stated that he was fully erect and that the bigger
boy (who was quite into "little mates") noticed the lovely child and also
grew his schlong to it's full eight, thick inches, and had he been alone with
the little fairy he would have promptly bummed him, not caring the protest,
knowing that all boys will protest at first and then beg, and beg, and beg,
and beg to be filled. Brent saw the cock and burned inside for Josh. (Luckily
the shower was steamy; this affording them some privacy.) He soaped his
butt and felt at the still open hole. It'd be so easy to bend over and let the
boy mount him quickly and roughly. Josh would never know, or would he?
Brent dropped his soap. The boy and his dick stared as the fairy turned and
bent to retrieve it, boldly displaying the gaping hole. The youth moved in as
Brent stood, realizing his folly when the soft hands circled his little waist,
and the lad stooped, and the long cock pushed between his slightly spread
legs, the head poking, pushing up Brent's balls and protruding under them
as if he had been stuck clean through. It happened so quickly that Brent
barely had time to react, but was able to pull away just far enough as the boy
stood and the cock parted his cheeks and ever so slightly nipped the outer
and opened ring of his anus, causing him to gasp and pull away as if he'd
been electrically shocked and run out of the shower blushing madly. He
dressed and ran home, cutting the last hour class that was ironically "Health
and Sex-Ed". All the way through the various back alleys he was ashamed
of his treasonous little boy body that had come so close to betraying his
lover. He still felt the young teen's cock at his backdoor, that moment in
slow motion. He had pulled away, but God he had wanted to push back! But
he had pulled away. Was he a betrayer? When he got home he pouted and
he sulked and his mother knew but did not ask. And that is why he put Josh
in the doghouse: to teach him a lesson that, goddamnit! It's not right to
leave boys half screwed! But also to punish himself, because in whatever
way boys of Brent's type reason, there is a code of honor that must be
followed. So on the evening of the third day when the man came around,
Brent himself was quite ready for it all to end; the guilt had subsided; Josh
was sorry and bearing a pocket full of change! And the sun seamed to be
setting like that time atop the buildings. And later after a quick dinner and
(his mom insisted) a game of Monopoly (which Brent won in stern
concentration, still not talking much to Josh) they went out, he and him, as
the night was "laid out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table."
After forty-five minutes of games and secret touching while inserting tokens
the boy pulled Josh into the restroom, locked the door and demanded to be
sucked off. This Josh did gladly, saying he was sorry for being obstinate.
And when Brent threw back his head and moaned, his fists clutching Josh's
hair, he laughed and sort of cried together and kissed Josh and begged him
to take him back to his apartment, and they did, walking hand in hand
"through half-deserted streets".

But tonight: Brent naked; Josh's cock pressing at his pants, the boy now fell
in prayer, and Josh, still playing rough, forced his mouth to his fabric
covered prick. Brent nibbled and tried once to bite at it. He sucked and
sucked, finding the head and just sucking on that part. He gripped the
waistband of the man's jeans and in tried in vain to pull off the breaches to
release the dragon. Josh was giggling, but Brent didn't think it was quite so
funny, but because his lover laughed at the stupid, dark and growing night,
he to giggled his boyish praise, looked up at the man and pleaded with such
large eyes that melted Josh's heart so he decided to help him and unsnapped
his pants and the penis roared out. The angelic little kid with the multi-
colored hair swallowed the dick like a greedy, impish vampire--the room
becoming thick with Brent's puppy grunts and Josh's groans.

His hand on the back of Brent's neck, guiding his boy's head in up and
down motions, he tried not to go too deeply into the his throat. Josh was
harder than he had ever been. He gazed at the lovely face bobbing on his
cock. Brent's eyes sometimes were open, but usually closed lightly as if he
really were drinking honeyed spill from the man--no yet, that would come
later--; they were large eyes and they seemed to be the only part of Brent
when he looked at you. Josh had known him going on six months. (The boy
lifted his head off the spear and looked up, his puffy red lips licking and
smacking, and he went back down on it like it was a Popsicle.)

Josh remembered when he was walking in the park that morning a few days
after he had arrived in London; he saw from a distance, just a boy standing
on the edge of the bridge gazing down into the water. He will make himself
late for school if he lingers he had thought offhandedly when he noticed the
kid climb over the railing. Boys are always daredevils. But something was
different about the way in which he looked at the stone gray of the water's
surface. Josh turned quickly as a car behind him backfired. He was too
jumpy, but it paid to be wary, especially in a new place. When the plane
landed in London the great size of the city worked to soothe him from the
constant fear of being chased. Big cities where like that; they were places
where anyone could lose himself in the pulsating life; in big cities it was
harder for the dark men and their pets to find him. There was so much life,
so much mingling of psychic activity that a Hider, as he had come to know
himself, could almost lead, for a time, a normal day to day life--not totally,
but almost.

Noting that sometimes a backfiring car is just a backfiring car he continued
and saw the bridge where the boy had stood was now empty. Odd, he didn't
remember the lad pass him at all. Odd, the water seamed to be disturbed and
the ducks had huddled at the far end of the pond. His mind working,
connections being made, he ran! On the bridge he peered into the water, it
was murky. He jumped to the other side and stared in, a bit more clear, but
still dim, he could see nothing! He looked up and down the path for the boy.
What had he been wearing? His mind reversed in video: a backpack full of
books, a jacket, a purple scarf. The boy was nowhere to be seen. Like
lightning Josh's mind worked out the scenario. Being a Hider is a precarious
lifestyle; one must keep a low profile. Any odd mention in police reports
would instantly alert his trackers. So being brave was often not an option. If
a car hit someone and you witnessed it, you simply turned and disappeared
into the crowd. If you saw stampeding pink rabbits you simply turned and
disappeared into the crowd.

Again on the side of the bridge where he last saw him, Josh looked hard.
What was that!? A flash of purple? Removing his shirt and shoes, he ran to
the bank and entered the water carefully so not to disturb the silt. When the
water was at his chest he filled his lungs and dove. The underwater world
was silent and dark. The pond was deeper than he first realized, the bank
suddenly dropping off in a small trench. Being raised around the ocean
required swimming to be as natural as walking, but as he swam it felt like he
was going straight down. Suddenly he hit a cold patch in the water; the
murk thinned and left a clear blue expanse and in it, at the bottom, his arms
floating as if he were some lonely marine scarecrow that no more frightened
fish than a land scarecrow frightened crows was the boy. He looked up,
half-life on his face; even in the panic of the moment Josh realized his
supreme beauty; his eyes that were like two blue sapphires, jewels of the
deep.

In all the movies the hero gives what breath he has reserved in his lungs to
the drowning girl. Josh put his hands on both sides of the boy's face covered
his mouth with is own, blowing the heated air in his chest into the boy.
Then, for some reason he, when all the air was gone, rested his lips on those
of the child trying to determine if there was life. There was! The boy flicked
his tongue into the Josh's mouth. Josh wanted to shout, but now he had to
get them up to the breathing world.

The backpack was tied with cord across the boy's chest. Josh felt faint
without air; he felt his sight dimming. No! His mind shouted. Focus! He
swam around the boy and unzipped the bag and pulled out a cinder block,
then another! And with the last of his strength he gripped him under the
armpits and kicked up to the shimmering surface.

In slow mode his head broke the skin of the water and he gasped, he filled
his lungs with the lush wind of life. The next thought in his mind was him
sitting on the grass next to the boy and blowing into his mouth, kissing his
face and then blowing again. A frantic woman with a baby carriage called
emergency on her cell phone. The boy's lips had turned a light blue and his
face was pale. The ambulance came and they hauled the child away on a
stretcher and screeched off. The police arrived and started speaking to Josh.
It was as if they were a thousand miles away, their voices like tin, like they
were on the surface world and Josh had died in the pond. He remembered
sitting in the back of the police car wrapped in a blanket as it sped through
the round-abouts, London flashing by in all her gray glory. Josh was numb.

At the hospital they stripped him and put him into a hot bath. A male nurse
washed him and dried him and helped him dress in some clothes someone
had rushed out to buy. Josh woke and he was sitting in a chair next to a
body with tubes coming out of every orifice like a machine-flesh thing from
the old, gritty science fiction films.

The machine-flesh thing was the boy. They told Josh that he had insisted on
sitting by his bed. Josh did not remember that, but when he woke and he
was holding the small hand of the child. It was a perfect hand, soft and thin,
unbitten nails; the middle finger was long, quite a bit longer then that the
index finger; Josh kissed each one. With his lips he felt the warmth of life in
the comatose body. A doctor entered and took some readings. He told Josh
that they had had to shock the boy, but his heart had started right away so
they thought that if he pulled out of the coma he would likely have no brain
damage; "if" he pulled out of the coma, muttered the doctor when he left.

Josh rested his head on the side of the bed and slept with dreams of shadows
chasing him. He dreamt he was a child, all alone in an empty city. There had
been a man once whom he had loved but now he was gone, and he was
alone again. He ran from the shadows that were impossible to avoid; he
slept in alleys and on church steps. Once he tried to enter a church thinking
their god would protect him, but the large doors would not budge and the
building became a shadow that chased him, it became a priest in long robes;
it became a dog, a constable on a horse, a woman, a dark car, then when it
was upon him and he could run no more; it burst into a murder of crows that
scattered into the sky and became falling leaves from dead skeletal
trees--and he woke.

Now there was a woman on the other side of the bed. She held the boy's
other hand to her face and cried. They stared at each other for long minutes.
Was she real? thought he. Was he real or the saving angel, or the death
angel? Thought she. "You saved him?" she asked in a horse voice. Josh
nodded, felt ashamed that he was here and did not even know the boy.
"Thank you," she whispered, "that's all I can give you."

"How long?" Josh asked

"I got here six hours ago. You were sleeping." She spoke with a slight Irish
accent. Josh felt a kink in his neck, tiredness behind his eyes.

"I'm sorry." He said.

"You did more than anyone would have, sir."

"I was too slow."

"The doctor says he's in a coma." She trembled. "They don't know if he'll
pull out." Josh stared at the calm face of the child, such a pretty face. He had
fine features, very much like his mother's. His huge eyes rested shut and
long strawberry-red lashes kissed the tops of his cheeks, cheeks that were
flushed and red. In his mind's eye Josh felt the battle that the boy was
waging deep down under the outward still of the sleep. In there was a scared
child, he had found someplace warm and he was resting. He saw the stairs
that led up but wasn't yet ready to climb them.

"He'll pull out." Josh said, and the woman smiled, tears streaming down her
cheeks.

"His name is Brenton." She said. "He's my Brent boy. He's really smart, he
tested as a gifted child, and he's been trying so hard in school. I just haven't
had time by working two jobs...I--," and she smoothed back the boy's
orange blond hair that had fading streaks of blue, "I--, he did this to his hair
one night and--," she laughed to herself, "and when, when I got home he
had the bluest hair `cause he used too much dye." She laughed again, "It
was just really, really blue." Josh had to smile. The boy's hair was unique.

"I like his hair." He said. "He has character."

"Oh, he has character." She said, nodding and clutching the hand.

"I'm Josh Alexis." He said, leaning over and holding out a hand. She took it
and did not shake it, but clutched it.

"Such strong hands." She whispered, "I think that you were meant to save
my boy's life." Josh slumped back into his chair. "My name's Amy
O'Neil."

Josh gently laid the hand he held beside the boy and stood. "I'm going to get
some coffee. Want some?" Amy nodded. That night they both slept in beds
beside Brent.
They both drowsed on the surface above the movement of dreams, of deeper
solstice in slumber, awakened by any sound. In the early hours of the
morning each of them rose clutching at the flutter of their hearts and sat
their stations by the statued boy, willing their vitality into the lithe, still
body between them.

"He's gay." She whispered, not looking up. Somewhere deep in the bowels
of the sterile hospital an alarm sounded, but it was nothing to them in that
room. "That's why he did it. He thought I'd hate him if he found out." Josh
delicately touched the slight fingers and Amy went on. He knew she needed
to clear her conscience. "It's my fault. I shoulda quit one of my jobs. He
was trying to tell me for so long. He quit his rugby team and started ballet;
he joined the swim team. He made me buy him this small little Speedo.
I...guess...I thought it was darling, but he was just trying to express
himself. He was getting trouble from some of the older boys at school. They
beat him up and taunted him. He didn't really have any friends. He wanted
to be a writer, ya know? He read everything. He wrote poems and stories
and songs." She started to cry.

Josh's eyes watered and giant tears rolled down his cheeks. He understood
Brent. Years ago he was Brent. He remembered the lonely nights in his
room as the docks emptied and the only sound was the lonesome gulls. He
remembered how he felt like nothing, like he was simply matter that was
decaying...because...why? Because he could not love, because his cold
mother was a God-fearing woman who could quote by memory the damning
book of Leviticus. Somehow she sensed her son was "different" and she
would enter his room at night and pray to God to change her "pervert faggot
son". He remembered lying wrapped in the thin protection of his blankets,
listening to her mad ravings as she wept and prayed that if her son could not
be "normal" that his hell would be hot and God would forgive her for
producing faggot spawn. When she finally left, it was little Josh's turn to cry
and beg God to change him. For hours in the dark, just mouthing why, why,
why? And then, sleep, and the dreams.

Then one day Adam Brant was hired on for a winter hand with his father
and Josh was instantly in love. He snuck to the man's door and peered in as
he lounged naked in his room. Such a beautiful body for a human Josh had
thought, slipping back to his tiny room and, stripping and running his hands
all over his own boyish muscularity, stopping only to pay homage to his
cock.

In despair, he finally rejected his crazy mother; he devised a plan to seduce
Adam. Over the weeks he flirted, bothered, questioned, and laughed with
the man. As they were working he would brush against him and softly
apologize. In the mornings he would leave is room door open and lay naked
in the chill air as the man passed by to go to work or use the bathroom. This
continued and slowly the man began to come around. He would trade jokes
with Josh, question him about the harbor and its people. Adam would rest a
hand on his lower back and let it fall to cup his buttocks. He would pass by
the boy's room and stop and stare at the possum nakedness until the Josh's
cock hardened and he rolled himself into his blankets. After all, a boy has
some modesty. Then there was the night of the storm. Josh knew it was the
right time. His parents were sleeping; his mother all but forgetting she even
had a son. He slipped into Adam's room; no words needed to be said.

The sex was rough and soft. At first rougher than he'd thought it would be
as he was so much a virgin. Adam placed him on the bed and parted his
little ass. The first kiss he ever gave Josh was directly to his anus. At this
Josh bit into the pillow and groaned all the frustration he had ever felt out
into the world; and he wept. He felt Adam back there pulling him open with
his fingers, then (oh god!) his tongue. Little flicks, little stings and made
him grind his raging prick into the bed clothes then a long sucking as his
tongue entered deeply and his lips latched like a sucker fish to the nether-
mouth, so beautifully stimulating that Josh, loosing control of his hips,
thrust his little rear back in an effort make Adam return to the small kisses.
After all it was just his first time and a boy could only take so much. He
actually thought that he could explode from such attention and it would kill
him. At this he was a little afraid, and rightly so. Josh would explode that
night, many times, but it would not kill him, instead it would give him life.

Adam gently inserted a finger all the way to the hilt and the boy looked back
in shock. Josh had been naive; he had not expected to be entered so deeply.
It sort of tingled half way in, and as the finger wiggled deeper it felt more
blunt, number. And then Adam turned it and pressed down and Josh jerked
his head back and growled audibly, like a tiger, a wild thing! Josh knew, and
he knew that Adam knew that he had pushed the on-button that could never
again be turned off. Adam lay next to the boy and kissed him. This too Josh
had to learn and he did, from fumbling lips and bumping teeth to deep long
tongue battles that would last, sometimes, for hours. They stroked each
other's backs. They held each other on the vibrating plane until it shattered
and zero devided the exponential desire and the resulting asymptote raged in
the boy and he lifted his nubile leg to his chest and looked at the man, the
puppy eyes pleading for him to go down on his ass again. And Adam did,
greedily, tonguing, sucking (the boy grunting like a baboon, no, like a boy
being rimmed) blowing, nipping and finally, chewing; and Josh exploded,
his body shaking, shivering, jerking, back arching, tummy clenching, rolling
into the fetal position as he moaned, holding his penis that dared to spew
boy cum, but did not because it could not so it just flopped like a dying fish.
Adam let the boy calm, but he had no desire to let him rest, as Josh felt the
man behind him shove not one but two fingers in, then three, and then what?
He pulled them out and his chest was to the back of the boy lifting the boy's
leg over his hips a slicked cock head entered his rectum. Then shoved to the
hilt and the boy yelped for the sharp pain at the intruder and the man
groaned at his own pleasure, and he settled down as the boy grew
accustomed to the giant alive in him, and grew aware the hard ridge against
is developing prostate, and all Adam had to do was lay there and wait. All
any man has to do is lay there and wait, because the boy will come around.
The movement the kid makes by adjusting the fit will cause the friction to
build and he'll get the hint that it feels good to move, it feels good to
squeeze as he learns to operate those inner muscles he didn't know he had.
Any boy will, given the opportunity like Josh had, begin to gyrate and shove
back and forth. He'll pull his own ass cheeks apart and gasp at the new
feeling. He'll place his little fingers down under his scrotum and feel where
the stallion has skewered him. He'll tickle his distended anus and pull off
the cock--just to try it out--but settle back down. He'll start to shake, he'll
look at the man to see if this is normal, the man will kiss him (as Adam did)
and continue (if he's a tender lover) to lie motionless as the boy-kid begins
the humping, pulling all the way off then frantically try to guide the thing
back in, missing the first few times, then, bull's-eye! He slides all the way
down it, and is still, breathing, got to remember to breath. Now he looks
back with those puppy eyes and begs to the man. "I can't do this by myself!
Please, sir, will you fuck me? Please, you do the work." This is when the
man begins his dance; He lifts the boy's leg and holds it with his hand as he
fucks very, very slowly. Some boys like it deep. Some boys like it shallow.
Some boys like the man to be well hilted and just to rotate his hips in a
circular motion. It is the duty of the man to figure out what the kid wants.
Josh, he wanted it any way he could get it. Still impaling him, Adam turned
Josh on his stomach; instinctively Josh spread his legs wide and up-thrust
his pelvis. Adam knelt behind him, a bird of prey, and fucked slowly.
Coming all the way out a couple of times and then guiding himself all the
way back in. Then he went a little faster, then faster, and faster, and faster
(Josh is tossing his head from side to side at this point) and faster. Now
Adam's not even coming half way to the surface, He's all the way in the
boy, tight, tight, tight, pulling back a fraction of an inch and shoving
forward an entire inch. He's rabbit fucking; the bed is thumping the floor,
the headboard is knocking against the wall and Josh cums grunting as Adam
stops and shoots his sperm into the boy's guts. Josh is shaking, his hole
cramping and clamping. Adam doesn't pull out, boys don't like being left
immediately empty after the act; Adam won't extricate until two more bouts
with the child. There is blood on the bed. Such is the sad price paid for lust.
Josh feels Adam stretch behind him; somehow he manages to stay inside
him. This is good. Josh wants to be kissed now. Adam kisses him.

Yes, Josh knew the turmoil in young Brent. He bent and kissed the still
fingers; they were warm. "I'm sorry, Brent." He whispered, "I'm sorry for
this whole world." Then looking at the woman, who in the early light was
childlike and small, but somehow old, he said: "Amy, I understand Brent. I
was like him when I was young. I'm sorry, it's a hard life." Amy smiled and
nodded and pulled from her shirt pocket a folded piece of paper. Josh
reached across and took it. His hands trembled. He knew without asking that
it was a suicide letter. He knew because as a boy, he himself had written
dozens. But he had never been so brave as to carry out the deed. He knew
that the heart of Brent was in that letter, that it was his soul. He opened it
and in a careful young script:

Dear Mum,

     Remember how you always told me that life was full of love? I'm
     sorry but I just can't find it. I hope you understand. I love you dearly
     but I can't take the hate that is in this world. It's even in the Bible,
     Mum. The boys at school call me "boy-slut" every day that I go.
     They beat me and rob me. And it hurts deep down, not the beating
     but just the hate they have behind their eyes. I am gay, Mum. I'm
     sorry and...

Josh closed the letter and handed it back to Amy. He couldn't read on
because the words were of such a pure soul and never meant for him. He
couldn't read on because he had written similar words. Amy understood;
she cried again, and Josh, lifting Brent's hand again to his lips kissed the
holy palm like one would kiss the cross of Christ. He prayed to no gods,
especially not that dark thing of the Bible, but he prayed to all of life to save
the boy.

"Josh," Amy's voice was low and serious, "I don't know you, but I have
feelings about you. I'm going to ask you a favor." Josh nodded. "Will
you--," she shut her eyes tight and choked back tears, "will you protect
Brent?"

Josh's head spun. How could he protect an innocent and fragile boy like
Brent? He was a Hider, a runner, a coward. He had never been close to
another human being since Adam. There were dark hunters after him. They
lurked on every corner. If anything he should run and leave the hospital
now. He should leave London and go to Thailand like he had planned
months ago. He had already put Brent in extreme peril. No! his mind railed.
Amy had such tender eyes. Her long hair, the same natural color as Brent's,
fell across her face. From deep within the resolve grew and Josh said, "Yes.
I will protect him with my life."

"He needs your love," she whispered.

"He already has my love," said Josh. He's had it forever.

"I know," said Amy.

"Amy?" Josh said. "You should know," he paused. "You should know
something about me." She looked at him and nodded. "I, I am a Hider.
There are people and things that want me dead." She reached across and
grabbed Josh's hand.

"You will protect him with your life." She said. "Brent will want you when
he wakes. He is that kind of boy." Josh breathed deeply. The room smelled
of boy and medicine and Amy's perfume. "But tell me," she said, "tell me
of what haunts you. As a friend, tell me." And in the anxious days of
Brent's sleep Josh told her of his life. From when he could remember to his
man-lover at ten, to the things that chased him. During the nights they were
silent, listening to Brent's breath, the movement of city nightlife. If they
slept it was short and restless. During the days they laughed and cried and
talked of past lovers and travels. They ate bad hospital food and felt the
pagan bond that was growing between man and boy grow harder. Amy did
not feel slighted; somehow she knew it was he who was coaxing Brent up
the cold stairs of his coma. Unlike the mothers of the world, Amy knew the
extent of her abilities, she knew that her job was to raise Brent until he no
longer needed her motherly protection, and then she had to respect him as a
sentient being and let him be his own master, choose his own faiths, his own
desires, his own lovers. That was the ultimate beauty of motherhood she had
come to understand. It came from the old country, from the old ways. It was
right. It was truth, a truth, a beauty that made the new religions of the dark
world seem like superstitious relics.

But tonight: that seemed like years ago. Josh grunted and thrust his hips by
accident. Brent pulled back so not to choke and looked up at him with half
the cock still in his mouth. Josh playfully used his foot to toy with Brent's
testicles. He was about to cum and the boy who had been drinking the clear
salty fluids that seeped from the eye of the penis knew it. Brent wanted one
thing. He stood and wiped his arm across his mouth went to straddle Josh.
Josh let the coltish legs straddle him. He opened Brent's ass and guided him
down the pole until Brent was what one could call a boy-on-a-stick. Josh
knew the kid wanted to hump bad, but his game was not yet over. He thrust
two deep times that made Brent elicit two distinctly high pitched squeals.
One that meant "Yeah!" the other that meant "God, I needed that!" then
Josh pulled all the way out with a slurping pop and watched amused as the
boy tried in vain to force the stubborn tool back into his boy-slit. When he
realized he was being made sport of by his lover he paused and snapped his
teeth at he man's face. Josh pushed him back on his knees in front of him
and the boy, like he had an instinct for it, yet a little disappointed, continued
his sucking off of his man, this time tasting his own juices in the bargain.

Josh was close, the young mouth nibbling and sucking, the boy who was
slighted, used his teeth to impose his own brand of blissful punishment on
he who would not properly bum him. "Brent, I love you!" and Josh was
shooting! Brent held the pulsing rod firm at its base and let the juices
accumulate into his mouth. The man shook. Goosebumps appeared over
every inch of is body, the orgasm affecting even the back of his scalp that
seemed to contract and become hyper sensitive to the fabric of the couch.
Brent, who now sat at his feet, gazed at what he had done to Josh. It was he
who had power over the man; it was he, boy, who was able to get him so
hard as to drive him frenzy anytime and anyplace. Yes, he was a tad upset
that his hole had previously been given so much attention, speared but two
times (God, that felt nice) then left to fend for itself. He knew he would get
screwed before the night was over; Josh wanted it as much as he.

"Brent, God, your mouth is awesome!" Josh squeezed his now softening
cock. The boy just smiled and said nothing. Lifting his leg he filled his hole
with his long middle finger. Josh might deny him, but he would not deny
himself. Quickly he found the precious lump and tickled it. "Mmmm," he
groaned, his lips pursed tightly together. This is what he had done in the
days before the man came into his life. He remembered the long empty
nights when he would lie awake on his little bed in the living room, his
fingers diving into him. Brent closed his eyes and with the grace of a piano
player fitted three of his fingers deeply up his ass.

Josh stood over the boy, watching his erotic exposition of anal masturbation.
No more he thought, the taunting was over. It was cute up to a point but
now Brent needed something that to him was as important as air. Josh
stooped and had to gently tug to get the fingers out. They were moist from
their effort and he sucked each one into his mouth tasting the pure essence
of Brent. With one easy movement he picked him up like a doll and carried
him like a husband carries a wife to her wedding bed, playfully he tossed
him down and watched as the boy instinctively spread eagle. Josh lit one
candle and set it on the far dresser. He then turned off all the lights in the
apartment and barred the door. It was going to be a long, long night. He sat
down and began running his fingertips over the heaving rib cage, resting his
palm over the small heart that gave life to the body. "Brent, I can feel your
chest pounding. You're so alive." Brent got up and sat astride Josh's lap so
that they were face to face. He rested his head in the burrow where the
man's shoulder and neck joined. Behind him, like always, and it should be
this way, he felt the stiffening member.

But now Josh was not so interested in buggery as he was in the perfect
proportions of his boy. He toyed with the supple limbs, lifting an arm and
kissing from thin wrist that had six friendship bracelets, one from his
mother and the other five from josh, to his elbow to his sleek and wet
armpit. Here he gave a small hickey, one that the boy would see and get a
kick out of when he next showered. Then he made a leap, not a huge leap, to
the stiff nipple, the boy grunted, small step for a man, a huge sensation for a
boy. Then remembering his rough play, with both ands Josh pushed the boy
back and salivated over his stomach, making two trips, one to deposit saliva,
the other to lick the boy clean. Lips tightly pursed Brent squealed at the
erotic stimulation. Enough was enough!

He sat up and pushed the man down hard so that he was the one on the
bottom. Astride his steed Brent explored with sensors fingers the man, every
crevasse, every dip, every scar, every ridge of muscle. He bumped his hands
over his six-pack stomach, poked a finger in to his bellybutton, and when
the man grasped his hips and tried to enter him, Brent reached back, took
hold of his large balls and pulled the dick away from his anus that--make
no doubts about it--was extremely eager to be ravaged. Leaning forward
Brent put his lips to the man and as the man opened his mouth to receive the
boy-kiss Brent deposited into his man a mouth full of his very own diluted
cum!

"What the--!" Josh coughed, some of the creamy mixture of man juice and
boy saliva spilling over his chin. "You little--!" and he gulped down his
own fluid. Brent was jovial; his revenge on Josh now complete.

"Take that, Josh. Shuda tach ya ta trat me like dat again!" the boy squealed.
Josh licked his lips, eyeing the boy suspiciously, his own cum deep on his
breath, filling him, warming him, awesome knowing that it had been held in
the Brent's loving mouth for over fifteen minutes.

"Foul play!" shouted Josh attacking to tickle to death the squirming sixty
odd pounds of nude and horny boy. "Yer gunna gat wat cummin' ta ya, ya
lit'le shat." He mocked the boy's thick Irish accent, and this made Brent
laugh with delight.

"Oh, you are a tough man picking on a boy," chimed Brent in a very
Hollywood-Clint Eastwood accent. Josh couldn't help himself; he had to
laugh! The kid was absolutely charming. He jumped after him on the bed
and when he caught him, a bit to easily knowing that the boy wanted it bad,
he tickled and kissed and pinched and licked. The boy shouted with joy and
love and abandon; and then, he was extremely still, staring up at the
muscled brute that pinned his arms. Josh bent forward and kissed
passionately his hot lips, and Brent, better than Scarlet O'Hara could have
done, tilted his head back and accepted the tongued assault. Fucking and
tickling forgotten, Josh cupped the boy's face in his hands and kissed like
the world was seconds away from imploding. Minutes later when they
pulled apart breathless, their lips stinging, they gazed into each other's eyes
and for a few seconds knew the elusive answer to life. But like all
epiphanies, that moment passed and the boy itched for some action. Brent
turned over and pulled is legs up under him, thrusting his butt skyward.
"Whatch yer gunna do ta me?" he asked in the husky voice boys reserve for
such occasions.

"First," said Josh, "I'm going to do this." And he bent down and began to
tongue the gaping sex hole.

"Oh God!" whimpered Brent and reached back to pull his butt wider apart.
Brent could feel his hole as if it were the only sexual spot on his body.
Josh's soft lips nipped, his tongue entered and flicked, he sucked. The boy
becoming more and more erratic, he reached under and began stroking his
stiffy. Suddenly the warm mouth was removed and Josh was still.

"Now I'm going to finger fuck you." And not a lie, he roughly pressed two
fingers all the way into the boy. Brent moaned and expertly flipped on his
back so he could better see the business that was being done to him. His
mouth slack, he watched intently and felt like he was just going to pass out
as Josh began a quick fucking motion with his hand. The boy whined, he
grunted, he panted. The man continued. He removed his finger and with two
thumbs split him wide and slid them in, rubbing the inner rectal walls that
spasmed as Brent neared the peak of orgasm.

"Josh?" whispered the boy between grunts.

"Yeah?" said Josh.

"Will ya bum me?"

"Don't you like this?"

"Yes," said the boy, fighting off the climax by biting his lower lip.

"But, I ban wait'n fer yer all day."

"So you want me to fuck you?" teased the Josh, shoving a finger all the way
in and circling the agitated prostate.

"Ungh! Awwwww! Oh! Yeah, I wantcha t'd'wit."

"Do what?" Asked Josh.

"Ya know,... `it'," said the boy as he whipped his head back and forth.

"What if I just suck you?" Asked Josh. At that Brent covered his now limp
little penis with both is hands.

"Nooooo! I wantcha ta fack me now!" he almost shouted. Josh instantly
stopped what he was doing. The boy looked at him warily.

"Fack ya?" Jabbing two fingers in and feeling the tender tightness of
internal boy. "Honestly, Brent. I can barely understand you sometimes with
your sexy little accent!"

"Ungh!" The boy grunted as he shoved and jerked his whole body
downward chasing after the stimulating fingers that threatened to pull out.
Josh laughed aloud at passion of the nine year old.

"Now even an American can understand that! You just had to ask." Said
Josh as he positioned himself before Brent, spreading his knees wide, and
guided his raging cock past the boy's tight gate, stopping only briefly to rub
the little nub of a prostate that made Brent squeak, (take that my mouse)
then at last, fair boy, child of his life, his lover, his student, his grand screw,
his protégé (as the kid's mother would have, wondering if the woman knew
how many times her son's had been scored in the last few months, if she
knew how the boy wept to be stuffed, how he, at times, was nothing more
than sexual frustration on two beautiful, coltish legs; if she knew how the
kid's ass gyrated, how he would bounce himself on his man, his faith in the
penis complete, his religion nothing more than the fuck; the Christ: the fuck;
The God Head: the fuck; the Crucifixion: the fuck; the resurrection: the
fuck; eternal salvation: the fuck. If she knew this, would she want Josh to be
the boy's protector?) Oh happy dagger! Here is thy sheath! And in the
stillness of the dark night, two souls had met; the boy had become man, the
man had become boy. The boy stretched like a glove over the cock; the man
well hilted began the dance.

Brent locked his small feet behind Josh's back and hung on like a monkey
as Josh lifted him and dropped him, lifted him and dropped him. About in
half-stride Brent came so suddenly and forcefully it was a surprise to them
both. The boy growled deep within and went stiff, his legs dropping, and
fell off the long penis and bucked and Josh dove to reenter the
child...

At his third orgasm of that particular screw Brent was barley coherent. A
little bit of crap was smeared on his inner thighs and his cocklet was small
and limp, almost retracted. Josh sat with his back to the wall, his legs spread
in a V before them. Brent sat facing the same direction of his man, both
watching the flickering flame, both gold in the flame; however, Brent's
knees were under his armpits and he was deeply impaled. For movement
Josh thrust his hips using the give of the old mattress to create a smooth
force, and by holding Brent's ass he could keep a fairly good rhythm
that--and this was odd because Josh was nowhere near a climax--made
Brent groan aloud, actually shout sometimes, but the words were incoherent.

From Brent the boy-sweat leaked out every pore that had been unlocked by
so much stimulation. The smell of it hung low in the room. Josh licked his
back in religious awe at ability of a pre-teen body to open up and praise the
sexual self. Then suddenly: Brent was there, his pulverized anus quaked and
something in him jerked and the cuming was like a storm, he actually
passed out, tipped sideways before Josh could catch him. In this new
position Josh continued his screwing. The man wanted to cum along with
the boy but he and been so released by the blowjob earlier that his need was
a distant, growing light on the horizon.

The boy slept as the war raged in him. He woke up and whispered to Josh to
please stop `cause he was tired, and something else, but in the middle of the
sentence he came again. Brent was silent. "Brent?" Josh queried.

"Yeah?" came the voice from far away.

"I'm not stopping."  Josh shoved all the way in, juices almost squirting out
the tight band of anus that made a seal around the man-size cock. The boy
sighed, given up to everything that would happen to him that night.

Brent woke again. Josh was deep in him, moving in little circles.

"How long?" Asked the boy.

"A half hour." Said Josh, "You've been cuming in your sleep. You get all
crazy and start jerking. But I'm almost there.

"I feel loose," groaned Brent on the onset of a cramp.

"You are. Looser than ever."

"Yer so big." And the boy threw his leg over Josh's hips, settling against
him. Josh hugged Brent to him and nibbled an ear, running his hand from
limp genitalia to the spot he loved the most, the soft flesh over the boy's
heart.

"Do you feel that Brent?"

"What?" the boy mumbled, starting to grind his hips a little to get more
sensation out of his numbed orifice.

"Us," whispered Josh, "Do you feel the life in us?" Bren crooked his head to
look into the lovely face of his man.

"Yeah, I thank sa. I c'n feel, s'like--, oh! Ungh!" drawing to a height he
thought he'd abandoned on his last cum the boy moaned. "It's like wer
t'only ones, s'like nuttin' else matters." With the last energy he had, as he
was cuming, he kissed long and hard on Josh's lips. Josh was there too,
kissing and cuming. That light on the horizon suddenly exploding and
marrying with the grunts and thrusts of the boy, his sperm spilling into the
sacred vessel he promised to love and protect. And the boy fell back asleep
and Josh filled him, but did not withdraw and fell into his own slumber.

...

The woman in the long black jacket that was like a cloak of ice reflecting
the dim city lights sat in her sedan and smoked a cigarette. As he inhaled the
luscious secondhand nicotine smoke the cherry on the end glowed brighter
and momentarily illuminated her face in an unholy orange light. The man
next to her looked in horrified awe at her predator eyes. There was nothing
human about them, pitch black orbs obsidian, no whites, not human,
something Other. Her nose was long and fine. If she had been more female
than freak he would have thought that she was pretty. He had rarely seen it
in daylight, and in the haunting cigarette-illumination it was impossible to
see, but her flesh was pale. Once when he was a boy he had gazed on a dead
baby at a funeral. It's flesh was not blue or gray, but somewhere in between.
That was the color of the dark woman. He wondered if her skin was as cold
and clammy like dead fish; he didn't doubt it.

"And I looked and there was pale rider on pale green horse, and the name on
his head was death." Spoke she. The man whose name was Johnny cringed.
Her voice was soft but so cold, so unattached to the human condition that it
took on the quality of night itself--that was why they called her the Dark
Woman. When they saw the black car prowl up they would say that the
Dark Woman Com'th. She was a lieutenant. He knew that, his commander
called her Lieutenant. Even he was afraid of her. Everyone knew she bore
commands from the top of the movement, that she was a pet project from
somewhere in America; everyone knew that though she looked frail, she
was death.

Last night at the gathering Johnny stood unnumbered among numbers.
There must have been over a thousand who came to give allegiance. She
was there, the lieutenant, standing behind his commander, silent. After the
ceremony was over but before they were dismissed the commander shouted,
"One of you will be chosen tonight," and the dark woman walked forward
right up to the man standing next to Johnny. She ran a slender, pale finger
down his face and stopped at the pulse of his neck. "Not you." Johnny heard
her whisper and she shoved the finger through his throat, severing his
jugular; the man whose name was Mick fell and began the slow process of
dieing. She had looked at Johnny, "You." She said and walked away.

Johnny wasn't sure he had even heard her. She and the commander exited
and those gathered began to disperse. Poor Mick still kicked a bit on the
ground. The next day came and Johnny went to work at the bank. He was
proud of his job; he made decent money. Two years working the windows
and they made him a vice-president of investments. But he didn't do his job
well that day. He kept watching, wondering if she had really spoken to him.
Maybe she was meaning the man behind him, or next to him. When he got
off the sun was beginning to set. He hurried through the rush hour traffic to
his home. All was well there. His wife, Maggie, was nursing their infant
daughter. His thirteen-year-old boy, Jon, was locked in his room blasting
those stupid CDs. As he paced by the window. His wife questioned what
was wrong with him. He didn't reply. He could smell the dinner cooking,
meat and potato stew, and for dessert, vinegar pie. He had not touched a bite
all day, and now he had no appetite. The darkness grew, no stars, it was dark
like he never remembered it being dark before; even the streetlights were
absorbed by it. Maggie put the baby in her crib and put dinner on the table.
She had to go up and pound on young Jon's door to get him to come down.
They sat around the table, wife, husband, and son.

Young Jon would not even look at his father. He hadn't looked at him in
over six months. He was a pretty boy, small for his age, a brawler, a tough'n
as they called them who never back down from a fight. But he hated his
father and for this Johnny hated himself.

His son was why he joined the Flock. It was to save his son from damnation.

It was a late night getting back from a party at the bank. Maggie was a few
weeks away from giving birth, but all the gents wanted to see the Missus, to
see how g'old Johnny had knocked `er up this time. But Maggie had grown
tired and they decided to return home just an hour early. The flat was still
when they entered. Maggie put herself to bed and Johnny whispered that he
was going up to check on young Jon, to make sure all was "tight and right."
As he approached the room he could hear that the boy had decided to put in
some Mozart. Maybe the lad was changing, mellowing out a bit.

Johnny was just going to go in and turn out the night light when he heard
the other sounds. Whimpers, the creaking of the bed, little squeaks and a
deeper, low grunting. Odd, he thought, and nudged the door a bit so he
could see inside.

There on his bed was young Jon, but not alone. His friend Reilly was there.
They were both stark naked, young Jon was bent double, his little butt
protruding into the air. Reilly was kneeled behind him taking long thrusts at
his son's ass. Johnny watched horrified as Reilly, who was absolutely huge
for kid his age, his penis easily two inches longer than his own, plunged
deep into his little, precious son, pulled out and plunged again.

At first he wanted to rush into the room pummel the boy who was raping
young Jon, but something stilled him. As the act continued, unaware that the
man was spying, he noticed that his little Jon was not a victim, not at all. Jon
was the one who was whimpering, his little hands holding his butt cheeks
wide apart. He heard his own son whisper through clenched teeth for Reilly
to go faster--Reilly did. And young Jon groaned as Johnny watched what
most fathers never have the explicit pleasure (or fear) of seeing: his own son
having an orgasm, not from playful masturbation of the penis but from
having a penis lodged and thrusting deep in his bottom, stimulating unseen
places that all boys possesses, making the once timid child a little tiger. In
his throws of ecstasy young Jon turned his head on his pillow and looked
into his father's eyes. Most boys would probably leap to cover their
nakedness; young Jon just gazed. He began to cry a little bit and slowly
lifted his leg and turned over, still being screwed by Reilly who was
oblivious to the third person, and raised his legs onto Reilly's shoulders. As
he watched his father warily he pulled Reilly down to kiss him long and
passionately then laid back on the pillow, all this time never looking away.
All of a sudden Reilly was slamming into his son. The boy's little butt
clenching as his orgasm shot through him and his watery young spunk
coated the rectum of his buddy. Jon too came once more and the two boys
rolled into each other's arms, drowning in the blankets.

Johnny, shocked, tiptoed back down to the living room and sat in the dark
until he heard Reilly exit out the back door. Going back up to Jon's room he
walked in on the boy who was pulling on a pair of chaste white cotton
underwear; almost two sizes too small, they made his son's well defined ass
look like an invitation for any fag on earth to fuck. The boy turned around,
his lean torso covered in small mouth marks. Johnny asked "How long?"
and when the boy said nothing his fist, driven by some internal hate, some
fear of the unknown, a distaste for the different sexuality of his son, [his
fist] launched into the child's tender mouth, that same faggoty mouth that
had lip-locked his queer friend. The boy fell and Johnny, still wearing his
steel-toe shoes, kicked his son in the crotch, and young Jon Bagit vomited
onto his floor.

Enraged, yet thinking logically on how he would explain this, Johnny
picked up Jon and threw him on to his bed. Going down stairs to the bar he
grabbed an empty bottle of wine, this would work nicely. "No son of mine
is going to be a faggot." He whispered as he entered the room. Young Jon
was bleeding over his white sheets, curled in the fetal position as Johnny
ripped the small underwear from his boy's smooth ass.

No hope glimmered in him, no love, no recognition that his son was a
human being, that his son, even naked, was beautiful. Johnny spread the
little-boy cheeks and saw the yawning hole, and with a stone heart he
shoved the fat end of the bottle into the bowels of his son. The boy wailed in
his pillow as the cold object entered and raped what his best friend had just
recently loved.

Johnny thought with disgust that the large wine bottle had gone in too
easily. He drove his elbow into the kidney of his son and continued to
plunger the bottle in until it started coming out crimson and the hairless,
once beautiful boy hole, leaked a continuous stream of red fluid onto the
white sheets. "Look at me g'damnit!" he shouted. Young Jon turned, his
face swelling, his bottom lip cut where his tooth had pierced clean through.
Johnny slugged the boy as hard as he could two more times, feeling
cheekbone crack. "You tell no one `bout this, got me?" he demanded. The
boy, choking on his own gore and bile nodded. "You were just raped?" The
boy nodded, looked away and never looked at his father again.

Maggie called up concerned from the bottom of the stairs. "Stay down there,
Maggie dear!" Johnny shouted. "Call the Police, lit'l Jon's hurt real badly."
When he heard her rush to the phone he went down the hall to wash off the
wine bottle.

Months later he saw the poster for "The Flock" He wasn't sure what
attracted him to it. It was on plane white paper with simple type: "Do you
think the world is doomed? If you too believe we are loosing our Christian
traditions come join us in congregation. Let's take back out values." Yes,
Johnny the banker had joined the Flock to save his son from a life of
sodomy. But his son never spoke to him again, and the Flock became his
new child, and he a child of them.

And time passed and it was the night that was the darkest of the year (so far)
and Jon sat across from him looking down into his plate, listless. His face
had healed but left two scars, one from his lip to his chin, the other across
the bridge of his nose under his eye to his ear. Johnny was proud of that one.
Jon was still pretty, more girlish looking than he should be, but those
scars... every time the boy saw his reflection he would hate who he was, he
would hate faggots.

Then the knock at the door, not really a knock, maybe a scratch--Johnny
got up and went to the window. It took all the courage he possessed to lift
the shade and peer into the dark street. There, parked in front of his house,
was the sedan. [His heart pattered like a cold tin in a winter wind.] "I'll be
back in a jiff," he told Maggie, "gotta run to the market, get somethin' for
t'morrow."

And here they were, parked in a dark part of London, a dismal part, a place
where the human waste accumulated, where the rats ran in the shadows...
but that was why he loved the Flock; they were in the business of cleaning
up human waste.

"Low, I stand at the door and knock." Whispered the woman, tossing her
cigarette out onto the wet street. She looked directly at Johnny, his spine
tingled, no soul in those cold eyes. "I know your secrets, Johnny." She
whispered. It was the first time she had ever had spoken to him. His throat
chocked.

"S'cuse me, mam?" he croaked.

"I am the dark woman," she said turning her eyes on the building she'd been
watching for the past two hours. "I live in the dark. I look into dark places. I
know dark things." She paused. "And I know your dark secret, Johnny
Bagit." Johnny was silent, what had he gotten into? He wanted to cry. He
felt for his bible in his breast pocket. The little the bible the Flock had
issued him at his first meeting. "That book contains no hope, Johnny. I've
memorized every word, it is the other books you need, the books that they
left out, the books that drive the philosophies that are in the movement
today, the philosophies of our movement." Johnny tried to relax. Maybe she
was just crazy. Maybe they wouldn't do anything out here. He wanted to go
home, to see Maggie and the baby. "And the darkness moved across the
earth, and it was void and without form. I am the darkness, Johnny. The
darkness is the love of God. Only with pure darkness can any light have
glory."

"I don't understand, mam," he whispered.

"They never tell you that the darkness is God, Johnny, because mortals can't
understand that their God is a dark God. Why do you think every time there
is a war we are the first to fight?" she did not wait for an answer. "Because
your God of love is my God of war. Only he will save us. It is already
strong in America. They showed their loyalty by electing a God fearing man
as their president. Now Europe must open her eyes, Johnny. We kill and
through the blood we are redeemed. Through the blood of our enemies God
of Heaven and hell, God of the Void and of the Wall will make us more
righteous than any man who has ever walked the earth. That is why our
movement supports vanquishing the others. There can be only one following
on Earth. Such a little a troublesome piece of matter, this planet."

"But the Devil, he's the evil--,"

"The Devil, Hah!" she laughed. "You ignorant fool. There never was a
Devil. If there was it was Eve, but I tell you now there never was an Eve, at
least not an Eve to your understanding." Her voice was like crystal ball that
held so many secrets.

"B-b-but Jesus Christ." Whispered Johnny, not knowing if it was a prayer
against this unholy mistress, or a statement, or a question. Again she
chuckled.

"Yes, Jesus was a problem, the son of God. Or was he the son of man? Did
you know that the man Jesus was a Hider?" Johnny cringed at the
blasphemous thought.

The Flock had preached of the sinners who roam the earth. Sometimes they
called them bums, sometimes sodomites, pedophiles, fags, queers, liberals,
but then, in the quiet of the moment they would whisper the true name of
evil: the Hiders. Those that had lost all presence of God, even the Jews and
the Muslims had some redeemable presence of his glory, but the Hiders
were the true wicked. They were the unknown faces; the travelers who had
found solace floating on the rift of society. Johnny didn't even really
understand the concept of the Hiders, just that if he saw one he would know
it. They said that God would speak to him, tell him who the Hider was and
that then he must act. But the act was his decision. To kill a hider, a visiting
pastor from America had once said, is a holy thing. It alone will solidify
your place at the table of God in Heaven. If you killed a Hider you could
walk into an orphanage and slaughter a hundred children, but still enter the
Kingdom of Heaven as if your hands were as white as snow.

But Jesus, being a Hider, the concept was sickening; he didn't want to
entertain it. "That can't be," whispered Johnny, "It's not written--"

"Do you know how much is not written?" she asked. He shook his head. "I
have been to the Wall and studied the signs for many of your years, and still
I have not come close to seeing the connection. Your holy books, the tomes
you call Bible and Koran and the like are a simple waste of time. To me
they are like the back of cereal boxes. You really have no idea."

"But God--"

"Don't even start that with me. Yes, God. I do my work with the holy hand
of God, but I do not ask for his forgiveness. Do you ask the rocks that you
are sorry you kick them? You, Johnny, could live and die for millions of
years and still not understand the half of what I have seen and learned. And
I cannot understand half of what a Joshua Priest knows. It is that way. We
do not ask." Johnny looked out at the dark building. "They sleep now."
Whispered the dark woman.

"W- what do we do?" stammered Johnny.

"Tonight we try and kill two Hiders. And if we are successful, before the
gray world is again light, three Hiders will be dead. It will be a worshipful
slaughter. The next few minutes will change so much." She turned her
death-gaze at the dark building, "The he-lover's sleep."

...

Brent lay half on his man, his head nestled into the soft of Josh's armpit, one
leg draped across his hip. He was drowsy, all of him tired, from the tips of
his toes to his eyes that felt like heavy doors, closing to the outside world.
The candle on the dresser flickered a dying dance: it's puddle of wax
soaking away the flame. On the shelf of sleep, that place where one totters
before feathering into the abyss, Brent felt complete. As Josh was spilling
into him the man had begged his forgiveness for the harsh words earlier that
evening. He knew he was sincere because Josh's soul was pure, and he
proved it by shuddering tears of love, tears that, like a late summer's rain,
lightly baptized the boy who, to accept, to truly prove his love, did what the
one thing a boy in his situation can do; he summoned up his passion and
kissed Josh so violently (know that he orgasms while he does this) that
when the passions of both subsided and he pulled back and there was a
trickle of blood on the man's lip.

Brent wondered if he was the candle. Was Josh good for him? Was he being
consumed by feelings that his little body could barely handle--like the wax,
a lake of feeling, and now he was dimming?

He felt sore on the inside. Not a bad sore, it was definitely a good sore. How
many times had he shook? (That was the word Brent used when he
described the special feeling to himself. It was something that only he could
understand, because, well, when he came that's what happened to him; he
shook. It started in his mind's eye and moved to cover his body, opening up
millions of sweat glands on his flushed skin, all of them seaming to scream
for air. His toes curled, his legs turned to jelly, and his arms didn't quite
know what to do so they just usually flung over his head to keep out of the
way. All this while his delicate spine seamed to hum at the same resonance
of his trembling hole.) He wanted to ask other boys if they shook as well but
this was completely off limits. They would surly beat him if knew of half
the thoughts he had, things he did.

Before when he was alone it was torture. His very heart ached for love, a
love he knew his mother could never give him. The love he needed was so
strong he knew a girl would never be able to understand it--it would
consumer her like she was a spec. And then Josh had saved him and
something was different about this odd young man who nursed the boy back
to health while his mother was working. There was something strong in
Josh, wild, untamed, dangerous, and yet so tender that he knew he was the
one.

Now Josh slept, silently like he was dead. The only noise coming from him
was the beating of his heat and only Josh could hear that because his ear
listened into the man's body. It was a sound like a faraway drum; it calmed
the boy.

There, Brent thought, I can feel it. (Josh had agreed to leave two of his
fingers wedged deep in the boy's sex hole. This Brent argued would help
him sleep.) There is the sleep; there is where I will fall; there is where Josh
is dreaming. Also he had discovered over many nights of practice the
connection between him and the man went beyond mere sex. He had learned
how to spy on Josh's dreams. The trick was to be as close to him as possible
and fall asleep precisely when he entered the dream-state. The wonderful
secret was that to be really good at it he had to convince the man to keep
some part of him within his young butt as he slept. To Brent's joy Josh
usually had no problem with this. Sometimes it was his rigid penis, to night
it was two masculine fingers. Brent's dream body moaned with pleasure: the
pleasure of being dream finger fucked.

And he was out, drifting down, and down to where Josh's Other body rested
on a vast salt flat. The stars were out this dream-night, but distant. Giving no
light. Brent moved over to his man who was dressed in odd clothing: he
wore a once piece suit that seemed to be wired to his body. At his chest was
a screen that gave a digital readout in a dim blue light. Every now and then a
part of the suit would light up in green like the older computer screens, then
it would dim and go completely dark. Brent was familiar with this suit. He
lay next to the man and ran tender fingers over his sex that was encaged by
some heavy contraption, some form of armor over tender genitals. He had
not yet discovered a way to open the sex-compartment and free the cock that
could pleasure him even in his sleep, but at each dream session he tried.
However there as a problem with this world: staying lucid enough to
concentrate on one thing was tiring. Many times he would just drift out of
Josh's scape down into a deeper boy-sleep where he would stay until
waking into the real morning. But this night was odd, Brent felt totally
awake, totally alert; he was only dimly aware of his real body that rested,
well fucked, somewhere above him. It could just be millimeter into the
faux-sky, or perhaps it was light years away.

Brent tried to snuggle against the rough tubing and sharp edges of various
electrical packs, but there was little heat emanating except from around
Josh's face. He stood and gazed at the horizon. Far in the distance (was it
east or west?) the sky seamed to lighten, still faintly glowing from some
alien twilight. In the other direction was another sort of glow. It might have
been a city, but he wasn't sure; it was too far away to tell.

A light wind picked up chilling the naked skin of the boy. Brent suddenly
noticed his body. It was like waking body only he seamed a bit older, maybe
just a hair taller. The only attire he had was a pair of thin pants. He felt them
and thought they might be buckskin. No, not buckskin, they were the same
gray, earthy color as Josh's suit, but he couldn't be sure it was so dark. They
were tied on either side of his legs with string so he could untie them and
they would flop in two parts. If he untied them all the way they would come
off and his butt would be naked--his tummy growled--to the assault of his
sleeping lover. He noticed the fabric glow directly over his crotch. Little
specs of pink light traveling away to dim in other parts of the garment, but
over his crotch it was fairly bright. Experimentally Brent thought of Josh
sucking on his little rigid cock, the fabric cupping his package suddenly
started to come alive again. When the he forced the sexy idea from his mind
by remembering school work the lights faded to a green, then a blue then
nothing. Awesome! What a thing for a boy to have! Ever the scientist Brent
remembered one time at mall when Josh was helping him choose new
clothes for school. He had entered into the changing closet with Brent and,
man and boy being who they were, they began to fool around. Josh got so
excited he resolved to fully fuck Brent right there; the boy watched in part
horror part awe as the he stripped him piece by piece, bent him, tongued
him until he was groaning (trying to be quiet) split him and entered him.
When they were done the boy turned around flushed and embarrassed,
absently fingering the re-loosened butt that he had been trying to tighten up
for the past few days. Trying to say something smart but just wanting more
Brent muttered, "Are ya dun wih-me now so I c'n finish shoppin'?" Josh
laughed loud and deep and promptly slapped the naked boy on his ass. Brent
looked back and sure enough, the fabric covering his ass was aglow in the
same pink light, getting brighter towards the center.

He blushed a little wondering why of all colors it would be pink, but not
caring much because he did have some pink in his hair. He sort of liked the
color. There were some pinks that were just ugly like cotton candy pink and
hot pink, but this was a deeper shade, more alive. He noticed it begin to die
and with it the memory of that sex encounter.

Sitting next to Josh his naked torso was all gooseflesh. His little nipples
seamed tender and raw. Once a blue spec of current flashed from Josh's hip
and bounced around on the hidden circuits in the suit before it hit Brent's
hip and caused a pink spark to sizzle down his leg and vanish. He giggled at
the strange phenomenon wondering if he would ever figure it out.

...

The dark woman stepped from the car. In the cool night Johnny could smell
the ingredients for rain. He hopped it waited until their business here was
done.

"Still the sleeping babe. I am the dark angel, the sixth son sat upon the
council of the most high now come mortal and thirsty for sacrifice. I am a
descendant of she who slew the first born." Chanted the lieutenant as she
walked toward the apartment buildings.

"Pardon. What will you have me do." Stammered Johnny.

"Two Hiders sleep." She whispered, stopping to look with her empty stare
into him. "One is a little boy. You kill him quickly. The man is mine."

...

In the dreamscape Josh stirred. And jerked to his feet. There was a boy next
to him. A beautiful boy half dressed, looking up at him as if they knew each
other. Alarmed! The battle! He had fallen. He ran his hands over his body
and felt whole. He squeezed the hand that had been severed; it too was
there, flesh and working. Where was he?

"Josh?" Whispered the boy. Josh turned and looked at the child.

"Who are you?" He asked.

"S'me, Josh! It's Brent!" Squeaked the boy. Brent? Had he known a Brent
once? When was that? How far away was that? He closed his eyes and tried
to recall. No good, it was all foggy. This scape was bad business. He
quickly checked the readout on the screen on his arm. Shit! He'd fallen off
the map.

"Damnit!" he cursed. "Kid, do you know where we are?" The boy hugged
him, clutching like a little monkey. It took all Josh's energy to pry him off
and look him in the eye.

"I dunno, Josh," the boy said nervously. "I'm sorry, I dinna know you'd be
mad."  Josh whirled, gazing the entire horizon, smacking the instrument
panel on his arm. In the distance was static lightning.

Speaking into his writs: "Damon? Orion? Big Chuck?" He waited, nothing
but silence.

"Josh, It's Brent! B-R-E-N-T!" He spelled out his name pacing around the
man who before couldn't get enough of him, now just ignored him.

"Damon! Orion! Big Chuck! Come in." Silence.

The wind began to pick up. Brent tried to huddle close to Josh but the man
kept pacing, looking at the sky. "Josh, what's happening?" Shouted the boy.
Josh whipped around. Something in the distance was coming. Brent strained
his eyes in the dim to make out any shape of what the man felt, but there
was nothing. Nonetheless it came, approached.

...

At the door to the apartment complex the woman stopped. She felt around
the jam with her gloved hand. Johnny could only see her pale face; it was
like the shadows consumed her. "Behold I stand at the door and knock." Her
voice was like sleek nothing. He pressed his bible to his hands. She looked
at him, leaned close and said: "Johnny Bagit, if you survive this night your
duty is not over. Do you understand?" He looked at her, feeling like she was
going to reveal prophecy to him. Could he handle it? Was he righteous
enough? "Johnny Bagit..." and the voice was in his head, opening his
mind's eye, releasing him from a cloud that had settled there since he was
born. Yes, his mind whispered. "Do you see?" asked the voice. The dark
woman's lips did not move. It's so clear now said his mind. "Yes. Tell me,
what do you see?" He looked and he saw a man and a boy sleeping. The boy
was naked, the man's fingers buried deep in his bottom. I see a-- he paused.
I see a pedophile and a faggot boy he said. "Yes," hushed the voice, "be
calm, we are here on holy business. Look again." He stretched his mind and
this time he saw his own son sleeping in his bed. What does this mean? He
asked. "If you live, you must kill you're son." I can't do it. "Johnny, You
are Abraham." The voice was calming, the fear draining from his body, the
guilt bursting in to white joy. Is he a Hider? He asked. "Yesssssssssssss,"
she whispered. And he nodded. And they ascended the stairs, slowly,
searching for weak spots in the steps, for anything that would give them
away.

...

Brent saw the lights flashing in the distance before he heard the screeching
and the wailing. He gripped at Josh's suit. "Josh!" he shouted, "Look!" Josh
turned.

"It's a Banshee ship."

"Wat da hell s'a--,"

"Look, kid. We have to wake up. The eye--!" Suddenly the ship soared
over. Brent shoved his nose into Josh's armpit and smelled the sweat of the
man--

--The room was dark. The candle had extinguished. It was only a dream!
His heart was beating in his young chest; his mouth was dry as bone. His
lips that had been ravished in their lovemaking stung, they felt swollen. His
nipples were tender on Josh's flesh. Josh wiggled his fingers in the boy's
rectal cavity that had, likes his lips, gone dry around them. Brent spread his
legs wider, allowing Josh easier access to his hole that was slowly coming
alive. The fingers moved, the fluids began to work and soon the boy was
aching for Josh to fill him.

Josh sat up and held him on his lap, his fingers ever so deep. "Kiss me,
Brent." He whispered. And Brent did, knowing his way to the man in the
dark. When there lips touched Josh whispered: "Brent, nod so I know your
listening to me." Brent nodded. "Good." Josh kissed lightly. "Do you feel
it?" Brent's heart skipped, not out of sexuality but from some other force.
There was a stirring on the face of the Earth.

Brent whispered, "Yes, I fel it." Josh slowly removed his fingers, but in the
process rubbed against the boy's tender prostate. Brent fell his lips on Josh's
and let the moan muffle into the body cavity of the man.

"I love you so much." Josh whispered. Brent could feel the man's powerful
heart pounding. Was it possible? Could Josh be afraid? "When my body
fucks yours I am complete."

"I dunno understand." Whispered the boy.

"You feel the stillness?" Brent nodded. There was a stillness. A cold silence
of life and compassion. "They've found us." Whispered Josh, and Brent felt
the little hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. For some reason he
could not feel he legs. "Listen to me closely." Josh whispered into the
delicate little ear of his boy, he kissed it to calm him. "Listen to me.
Remember this feeling always, ok." Again Brent nodded. He wanted to cry,
but this was not the time. "This is how it feels when they move in for the
kill. You're afraid. You don't know if your legs are going to work."

"Yes." Brent tried to choke back the sob.

"That's Ok, my little man," cooed Josh. "Now we see if we can survive
this."

"How?"

"First we get dressed. Do you know where your clothes are?"

Brent nodded, "Yeah. Der by the couch cus'a ya."

"Ok, so are mine. We move silently and get dressed. Make sure you put on
shoes and socks. Because the goal is to run." And the word `run' hung in the
air like Brent had known it his entire life.

"I dunno think I c'n find my underwear."

"Don't worry about them," said Josh. "With a butt like yours who needs
underwear." Brent nipped his man's ear. This was not a time for jokes!

"Then what?" Asked Brent. "Where d'we go? Mom's?"

"No, if they know we're here, they know where your mom's is. Do you
remember the arcade?"

"Yes."

"Good. Wait for me there for one hour. If I don't show I'm dead or not
coming. Remember this, Brent." Brent nodded. "Arcade. Three days later,
Paris base of the Eiffle tower, red scarf. Three days, Lyon, the hostel
beneath the Basilica and the roman ruins. Three days, Nice, the porn store
by the train station. Three days, Rome. If I don't find you, you're on your
own you're a Hider, like me. Watch the internet. Never loose hope." Josh
hugged him. His man sized tears rolling onto the back of the boy. The boy's
little tears soaking the chest of the man.

"I luv ya, Josh, more than life." And they kissed and began to dress.

...

Johnny stopped at the door. He felt it. They were inside cowering like
animals before the slaughter. The feeling of power roared through his blood.
This was truly going to be a holy battle! How could they loose? With great
confidence the reached for the doorknob, but the woman grabbed his hand.
It was just a man and boy. And they were sound asleep. How would he kill
them? He had no weapon. As the dark woman eased the door open he felt
his hands become powerful, like they could crush rock! They felt sharp;
surely he would be able to slice through human flesh like warm butter. They
felt like fire, he would ignite their hearts in their chests!

What happened next was a blur of shadow on shadow. With a BAHM! the
dark woman ripped the door from its hinges and threw it inward. He heard a
man scream and the lieutenant hissssssssssssss! In his mind's eye he saw the
boy and dashed for him. The kid launched back tripping over a pillow and
Johnny dove for him knowing his hands would do the killing if he could
only connect. Suddenly there was a knife, a sliver of stainless silver through
the air and the boy had slashed the powerful hands. Johnny cursed in rage.
How dare the little faggot bastard!

"Brent! The window!" And a chair was flying through the air and glass was
falling. Before the man could grab him the boy drove the knife into his eye
and twisted. Pain shot through him. It was funny, thought Johnny, that
loosing an eye would make his feet hurt. The last he saw of the boy was his
small body jumping through the window.

"Get him!" the lieutenant screeched. "Kill him!" With his one eye Johnny
thought he saw the form of the boy running across the rooftops. The boy has
to come down sometime. The buildings only connected for a block. He ran
for the sedan. The dark woman was leaning over the fallen form of a man.


RUN BRENT, RUN!

From behind the chimney Brent watched the window of Josh's apartment.
The man did not follow. The other thing (Was it a woman?) did not follow.
Josh did not follow. He had to run. His small body trembled with the feeling
of stillness around him as if he was the only animate thing, but he had to
make it to the arcade and wait there for one hour. He thought of running
home and warning his mother. Would she believe him? He was sure of it.
But Josh had said Paris, Lyon, Nice, Rome. And as he sat waiting for
decision to overtake him he felt in his gut that his mother's meant sure
death. He would send her an email in a few days. But now it was time to
run.

The street was moist. The parked cars all looked like dead carcasses. Down
from the rooftop like an alley cat the boy flew, onto a closed garbage bin,
onto the ground. His feet made no noise. He used the shadows as best he
could, trying to calm his ragged breath so he could hear the non-existent
sounds of the night. Nothing. He reasoned that it must be going on 4A.M.
Soon the street should start to pick up with life, he could loose himself in
the crowds. That was a good plan for any other night. Tonight, the arcade.

He crossed the street and turned down what he hoped was a shadowy
passage through the neighborhood. This was an old area that had been built
and rebuilt upon old structures. It afforded many opportunities to disappear.
He was beginning to realize why Josh had insisted on living here.

When the headlights flicked on he swore he could hear the click of the
switch inside the car. He did not turn. Something told him that he did not
need to loose his night vision to know he had been spotted. The boy ran.
Exploded forward to save his life is a better way of describing the mad dash
enforced by the sweet burst of adrenalin. The sedan's tires spun and
squealed on the damp pavement and it too shot forward.

He thought that he would come on an open side passage that he could
escape into but on both sides the walls seamed like dikes, not holding back
water on this cruel night, no, holding the boy in. In front of him, illuminated
by the glow of high beams he could see his breath. And he was running in
slow motion, his fog that burst from his lips a sure sign that what he
contained was life and he wanted to live it! No more sound of the sedan, no
more fear, just the art of running, the act of avoiding: this was his salvation.
And the as the sedan neared so did the walls of the alley, getting narrower
and narrower. The car's mirrors scraped and then ripped off, Brent sprinted
and just as the car would have crushed him the walls closed in and grabbed
it, sending it's driver through the windshield, a crashing of glass, sparks,
grinding metal on ancient stone. Only then did Brent dare to look back to
see the black heap silhouetted against two glaring eyes. But the man rose
and began to follow.

The street now an alley angled up and up and turned into stairs. Brent
climbed. His legs that he once thought were useless carried his light frame
with little effort. Ahead was darkness, he needed speed. Faster! And, at the
top, jump! A street below, the other side, grass. In the air all was still, he
closed his eyes and when his feet hit dirt he knew he had made it. Beyond
him a large empty field, beyond that a busy auto rout, and beyond that the
deeper part of the city.

...

Johnny stopped at the fall. He knew he could not make that jump. His bad
eye hung useless from its socket. He would need to get that looked at. The
boy ran like a gazelle, safely out of reach. Johnny knew the boy was
marked; he would not live an easy life. He turned and began the long walk
home. There was one other thing he had to take care of tonight.

To be continued...