Justice

A story by Bard Boy [bard_boy(at)protonmail(dot)com]

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanciful fiction set in the future. None of this is real, nor an endorsement, nor a meaningful prediction. This isn’t futurism. This isn’t a manifesto. If it’s illegal for you to read material that involves descriptions of sex between adult men, sex between young boys, sexual exploration amongst children, and sex between adult men and teenagers, this is not the place for you. Don’t read on if that is the case.

Explainer: This is a (sort of) continuation – or rather, expansion – of the story left behind in Solstice. I wasn’t sure exactly how to categorise it on this site, so here it is. Readers of the Adult Friends, Adult-Youth, Incest, and Young Friends categories may find themes of interest here, though categorising it purely as any of the above would only disappoint or offend some readers of those categories. This isn’t a quick jerk-off story. If that’s what you’re looking for, I wrote one of those here. In fact, this story isn’t even that sexy. But it does contain sex – implied, mentioned in passing, reminisced about, and sometimes described in graphic detail.

A note on language use for non-UK readers: This story is largely set in the northeast of England, and many characters use vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation which reflect patterns of speech in that part of the world. The most obvious example is in characters’ use of ‘mam’ to mean mother. Think Billy Elliot. James grew up almost entirely around Jake and Manny, speakers of West Midland English, whose patterns of speech, pronunciation, word choice, and idioms are markedly different from North East English. This is why James and Manny go for ‘mom’ over ‘mum’, use words like ‘scrage’ to mean a graze or cut to the skin, and drop phrases like ‘fart in a colander’, all while expecting other characters to understand what they mean.

Setting: The locations used in this story are all – with the exception of James & Manny’s old houses – absolutely real. I’d encourage readers to explore Google’s Street View if they want a better impression of how to see the world through James & Manny’s eyes.

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Records of Events of the City of Durham

Friday 9th July 2055

Weather: sunny, breezy, 28°C (the woman is out of the weather house)

Preparations are being made for an address to the city and council meeting in the cathedral tomorrow to decide further steps in the killing of Angelika Wojnowski by Archie Stephens.

EKA.

 

**

 

James, where the hell are you? I wrote an update on today for you. If you get back in and see this, please come and find me. I just want to know you’re safe. We’re all really worried about you. Please come back, Jamey. I don’t know what we’d do without you. Tracey and Theo give their best.

All my love,

Manny xxx

 

**

 

Waking with childhood photographs stuck to you by dried spunk is not the most conventional reveille, but James was greeted with it all the same as the morning sun crept onto his face past the undrawn curtains. The CD player was beside him on the bed, battery gone, while the headphones boa constrictor-ed around his arm and tucked uncomfortably under his body leaving indented grooves in his skin, the jack having popped loose from its socket. James grunted and shook his arm free. His mouth tasted of duck, and he realised how much his body stank of sweat and stale sex. He needed a wash before he could begin to countenance anything else. He pushed himself upright and hoisted his pants and shorts back up. There was a start.

His only company was the crackling of the fire as he stripped and heated the water. His home was empty and silent; no children to cleave the air with their squealing, nor songs and games between companions around the fire. It was like the place was in stasis, waiting for someone to return home and awaken it from its long slumber. James alone was not that man.

He washed and he ate the remains of his duck. He had no choice but to put on yesterday’s clothes, but something made him stray to his parents’ old bedroom. The light in there was strange; the sun shining straight at thin, closed, white curtains, making the room simultaneously bright and shaded. Hints of his mother’s smell still toyed with James’ senses, even all these years later. He wasn’t sure if they truly were there, or just imagined. He touched her old pillow gently with the tips of his fingers; felt the texture of a hair on the undisturbed indent. He raised his fingers and thumb to his face and picked up the scent, but within a second it had gone.

James opened the wardrobe. The side he’d revealed was a musty mess of his father’s old clothes. Only one set was left hanging up; the suit Jake had borrowed the day they said goodbye to James’ mother for the last time. James pulled the jacket out on its hanger. He looked at it closely; tested the texture with his hands. He held it up to himself. It would fit him perfectly. He returned to his bedroom, looking for his old rucksack, but it wasn’t there. He tried Manny’s room instead, but it was just a mess of Manny’s things. Nothing of his in there. Nothing of use, at any rate. Feeling anxious, and feeling guilty about feeling anxious, he headed back to Jake’s room. He’d have to return the photos, anyway.

It was easier to see the mess of Jake’s desk in the daylight. James set out marching across the room to explore it, then spotted his old bag down beside Jake’s bedside table. He stooped to gather it up by an arm strap and got a whiff of Jake’s unmade bed as his body disturbed the air. It seemed wrong, really, to think of it just as Jake’s bed. He’d shared it every night for nearly two years of his life and had been a frequent visitor forever after. An abandoned pair of Jake’s boxers sat looking dishevelled atop the wrinkled sheets. James resisted the urge to press them to his face and inhale them for dear life. He made his way back to the desk.

There seemed to be much more there in the light of day. More photos. Scribbled scraps of paper. A couple more CD cases. James pulled out a torn page he’d ignored last night, having picked the album he listened to up from on top of it. It was a printed page, clipped from a book. A poem, ‘When I Have Fears’.

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,

Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.-

James recognised it from somewhere. Jake had used it to teach him something once, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He couldn’t quite place the poet, either. He rotated the page back and forth, hoping it would give something away. The name Keats rang a bell in the back of his head. Or was it Shelley? Then he thought of Archie, spending another night alone in the castle, only – if he was lucky – the capricious tortoiseshell cat for company. And only he, James, knew the truth and would believe him.

James sighed and closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. He went to replace the poem on the desk, tired of reflections on death. He saw there was something else underneath it; a page torn from a child’s exercise book. It was his own handwriting. James picked it up. He couldn’t tell exactly how old he would’ve been; the handwriting could’ve been anywhere between perhaps nine and twelve or thirteen. But upon reading it, he suddenly remembered writing it. It was before Manny. He was perhaps ten, maybe eleven. He read the short verse aloud to himself.

When I am big, and my body is strong,

I’ll build a great castle with towers of stone.

Though summers be hot, and winters be long,

I’ll be safe and happy because I have grown.

That was his response to whatever Jake had tried to make him do with the poem. James was shocked by its candid simplicity. Despite everything, it was optimistic. It was fearless. This was who he was. It was what Jake had tried to bring out in him. His stomach rumbled and burned with a new fire. He was James Martin. He had no reason to be afraid.

James slid the poem into the front pocket of his bag. He realised he hadn’t brought the photos back in with him to put back on the desk. No matter; he’d take them too. Jake would hardly miss them. As he turned to leave the room, one last curio on the desk caught his eye. There was a large piece of paper upon which everything else had been resting. James turned back and slid it out, carefully as he could. It was covered in a large diagram of something.

When James had the whole thing stretched out on the table before him, and began to make sense of it, he realised it was a family tree. Jake’s family tree. He found him there, near the bottom. Jacob Daniel Baker, b. 1990. Up above were Jake’s parents. His dad had evidently died before James was born, his mother shortly after. There, alongside Jake, was what must’ve been his brother Jon. Jonathan Laurence Baker, b. 1996. He had a little equals sign next to him. He was connected to somebody else. Francesca Giorgia d’Elia, b. 1993. Beneath them a little line extended. Jake had written in ‘baby?’, but there was nothing more. The family tree extended upwards, through all four grandparents’ lines. Ancient ancestors with names like Constance, and Everard, and – James noted, with a smile – Archibald. The line stretched back some generations, but Jake had ensured it remained connected to the present. A wiggly line forked in two below his name. James Peter Martin, the first entry read, b. 2023. Beside that was another familiar name. Emmanuel Kwame Addo, b. 2023.

James picked up Jake’s abandoned pen and decided to do some editing of his own. He added another little equals sign next to Manny’s name. Tracey Grace Shawcross, b. 2027. He stretched another line below them. Theodore Kwabena Arthur Addo, b. 2050. He raised his shoulders and smiled to himself with satisfaction. He was about to move to leave, then Jake’s entry caught his eye again. He reprised the pen and completed the entry for Jacob Daniel Baker. 1990-2050.

 

**

 

James had an idea as he wandered unhindered through the ever-silent Hamsterley, tracking along the main street and back out of the village, towards the isolated and well-hidden church of St James. There was a turn ahead he knew well, where a lane led to a track that followed the steep banks of the Wear along until it flattened out to a shallow, stony shore. That’s where Jake hid their boat. It ought still to be there. James pulled the rucksack tighter on his back and determined that the punt would be his transport back to the city. Sure, it would take all day, and he’d have to negotiate rapids and weirs along the way – not to forget that the river got quite deep in the middle towards Durham, and the pole would probably only reach the bottom near the banks – but it was his boat, and James felt insistent that he should take it.

Once he had the punt dragged out from under the trees and turned the right way up, he was certain he’d made the right decision. The flat-bottomed wooden boat seemed as sturdy as ever, and its long metal pole and short wooden paddles remained intact and in place. He had no regrets once he was out on the water. The weather was sunnier and cooler than the days that had come before during the week, and all was perfect for James to have a nice, relaxed day, gently floating downstream to return to the chaos that awaited him in the city.

 

**

 

The rowing boat was prepared downriver from the city, beyond the great weirs that had controlled the flow of the river through what had once been the centre of the modern town. Jake had hated them being in Durham, regardless of how well he knew the city, but in the end, he had little choice but to join them permanently. The strength to keep the farm up by himself had failed him.

It began by accident. A search for supplies took them farther afield one autumn day, with the afterthought that they could always spend a couple of days by the sea if they couldn’t get back the same day. On arrival in Durham they found a city in the midst of regaining a community; people coming together to pool their resources in the hot summers and support each other through the harsh winters. Jake – ever the socialist – was smitten. A cashless, co-operative society, right there on his doorstep. James and Manny were in their late teens. It became their go-to winter home, to save their long trek south. The boys quickly became integrated; awed by the opportunities of living in a community of dozens of people. Jake never quite adjusted. He was too tired of community and too jaded to bother with the petty politics, as he called it. He had the farm. The boys could come back and visit at weekends. Just like when he went off to university at their age, he said.

Jake never intended not to return to the farm after his last winter; it just never quite happened. With Cybi the only goat left, he’d been donated to the Durham herd anyway. No good having an old billy goat bumming around on his own. The last of the chickens made their way to the city that winter too, ostensibly for safekeeping over the winter, but never to return. Just like their owner. Jake had a cold he just couldn’t shift, clinging to his chest. He kept saying he’d head home when he was up to it, but I’m just too tired right now – a few good nights of rest and I’ll be back on my way. The only way he had left to go was downriver, just as he’d wanted. The moors upstream were lost to him now.

James and Manny loaded him into the boat, shrouded in a blue sheet. They dragged it downriver, all the way, past every turn and over every bump, though it took all day. Eventually, the task became too difficult as the river yawned wider and cut deeper through the ruins of the big city by the sea, where much, much bigger boats lay rusting and unfinished in the dockyards. The banks were too high and restricted here; Manny and James too tired. The boat did its own work from there. It floated along, pushed by the current and the receding tide, and they followed it along from the vantage point of the banks. As the sun set over ghostly, hollowed buildings behind them, James and Manny watched from the end of a long, arcing, battered pier as the boat disappeared out amidst the black waves of the North Sea. A final journey and a final adventure.

Jake had always wanted to go to Scandinavia, but never quite made it. As a final wave overwhelmed the little plastic tub that had so bravely bobbed its way right out to sea, James felt bitter that, even now, Jake never would.

 

**

 

The sun was low as James guided the boat into port at Hatfield’s landing platform. Shadows from the brutalist university buildings on the far bank reached far enough across river to shade James as he tied the frayed rope at the punt’s end to the wooden stage.

“James!” Manny cried, his feet pelting and reverberating on the steep concrete path from the college down to the bank. James finished his knot and looked up, stepping off the boat. He gave Manny a sheepish wave; his brother must have spotted him from his bedroom window. “Oh my god, man! Don’t ever do that again!” Manny charged across the landing stage and threw his arms around James. “I was so worried about you. Please don’t ever, ever do anything like that ever again!”

“It’s okay, Manny,” said James, hugging him back. “I just had to go home for the night. Clear my head. Get some perspective on everything.”

“I’m so sorry it’s been so bad,” said Manny. “I love you, Jay. I promise you can talk to me about things. I promise I’ll be more supportive. Really, I do. Just tell me you won’t run off like that again, please!”

“I won’t,” said James. “I promise. It’s been a long day; I just want to go home and sleep.”

“You’re staying with us tonight,” insisted Manny, gripping James by the biceps and looking sternly into his eyes. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“You know what,” sighed James, looking back into Manny’s coffee-brown eyes. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

“You can go in Theo’s bed,” said Manny, releasing James from his grip. “He’ll have to come in with us. He’ll be pleased with that anyway.” Manny turned and looked at the punt tied to the wooden platform. “How come you brought our old boat here?” he smiled.

“Why walk when you can float?” smiled James in return. “It’s like a metaphor for where my head’s at right now.”

“You can come and rest it,” replied Manny. “Let us look after you.”

Manny led the way back up the slope to the college. James followed him. It was strangely dark beneath the trees, despite the bright orange summer twilight all around. The sound of midges and mosquitoes assailed their ears as the insects flitted by their heads.

“There’s something you should know,” said Manny, sounding glumly serious.

“What is it?” said James, immediately feeling rotten once more, just as he’d begun to feel ripe again.

“Kenzie has arranged an address and meeting tomorrow, to decide Archie’s case,” said Manny. “I told her after the funeral that I thought we pretty much had the details worked out. She insisted on going ahead tomorrow. I tried to delay her, but she says she wants it all finished quickly. Something about people getting closure and moving on.”

“She’s insane,” sighed James, drily. “But she doesn’t surprise me. I’ll just have to get my proposals written up tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t bother,” said Manny. “She wants you to address the whole town meeting with them.”

“Fucker…” said James, leaning his head against Manny’s back as they climbed a few steep, twisty steps to emerge in the lower back yard of the college.

“You alright?” said Manny. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

James shuddered. “If I don’t do this, god knows what they’ll do to Archie.”

“I hope you’ve brought some magic back with you in that backpack, then,” said Manny, shooting James a wan smile.

“Nah,” said James. “Just my dad’s suit, two pictures of me and you naked, and a poem I wrote when I was ten.”

“It’s a bold strategy,” grinned Manny, “but I think it might just work.”

“Shit or bust,” shrugged James with an equally wide smile. He glanced up at the stone townhouse and spotted Tracey watching from an upstairs window. She waved. He waved back. She blew a kiss. They made their way through the back door of Manny’s building and up two flights of stairs to his family home. Theo greeted them at the top of the stairs, wearing just a pair of black pyjama shorts.

“Uncle James!” he yawned. “Mammy and Daddy said they was worried you’d got lost, but now we found you again.” He trotted forward and hugged James around his waist. James ran a hand through the boy’s soft, wavy, dark brown hair. “I’d be really sad if you was lost. Please don’t get lost again.”

“I won’t, Theo,” said James. “No need to worry about that. Love you, big boy.”

“Love you too!” Theo yawned another wide, throat tightening yawn.

“Go find your mom, sleepy head,” said Manny. “Tell her you’re sleeping with us tonight; Uncle James is having your bed.”

“Okie-doke,” said Theo, stifling another yawn. “Night, Uncle James. Look after the teddies for me.”

“Night-night, Theo,” James said softly. The little boy trotted off into his parents’ bedroom. Manny pushed open the door to his son’s room.

The curtains were closed. The bedroom was pleasantly dim, shadow filling the comfortably large space. The floor was a minefield of dirty socks and briefs, abandoned bottoms, balled up tops, and forgotten toys. The air had the pleasantly sweet aroma of a small child’s space. James made his way over to the lumpy bed and let out a yawn of his own.

“You’d think there was a boy in there already,” smiled James, pulling back Theo’s sheets to reveal a higgledy-piggledy mass of teddy bears stuffed beneath the covers.

“Look at this one,” said Manny, holding up the worse-for-wear badger toy. “Theo’s favourite.”

“Jake’s badger!” cried James. “Wow! To think that would have just been left stuffed at the back of the wardrobe to rot if you hadn’t taken it, all those years ago!”

“I like badgers,” smiled Manny. “They’re black and white at the same time!”

“I’ve always loved your sense of humour, from the very beginning,” gushed James, blushing as he looked into Manny’s eyes.

“All those years little baby Jake was cuddling this thing, I think he was just waiting for me,” chuckled Manny. “He didn’t know it, but I was his badger-in-waiting.”

“Well, you do live in a hole in the ground,” laughed James.

“Badgers are very tidy animals,” nodded Manny. “Did you know foxes often lodge with them, because badgers keep the set clean while foxes scare away all the little pests?”

“I wish I knew as much about badgers as you,” replied James, the two men grinning at each other.

“I love you, James,” said Manny. “Please don’t ever do that again.”

“I’m sorry,” said James. “And I’m so lucky to have you. And Theo. And Tracey. I love you all more than I can express. I mean that.”

“Us back at you,” said Manny. “We’re here for you. Whenever and whatever you need. However big or small.”

“I know that,” said James. “I think I’ve always known that. And, anyway, I’ve sorted my head now. I know what I’ve got to do. I promise.”

“I love that head of yours,” said Manny. “But I think Jake always understood it better than anyone else. You have to remember to make the rest of us understand, James.”

“Yeah, well…” said James. “There’s nobody left who knows me and understands me like you do.”

Manny drew James into a long, close hug. They felt each other breathe; they felt each other’s heartbeats; they could smell each other’s hair, skin, and breath.

“Let’s sleep now,” said Manny. “Tomorrow’s another horrible day. Not to mention Theo getting antsy if Mommy and Daddy aren’t both in bed together before he falls asleep.”

“Get back to him,” said James. “You’re his knight. You have to be there to save the day for him, always.”

“Goodnight, James,” said Manny, reaching back to catch James’ fingertips in his, in a hand’s-end squeeze and shake, just as they retreated in opposite directions.

“Night, Manny. Love you.”

“Love you too!” Manny replied, just as Theo’s bedroom door closed on itself, and James was left alone with his thoughts.