FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A Deep, Dark Storm

"I'm sorry, Jack. It's not going to happen tonight."

I withdrew my lips from his stomach and looked up at him. His eyes, green like misty hills or dew-flecked fields, were settled up to the window, watching the storm outside punch and spit against the glass. It was night, though you could hardly tell whether it was this or that for the thickness of the clouds. There was just the reflection of the drops hitting the glass like thousands of little fingers, and everything beyond was a void of purest, undiluted darkness.

I looked back at him, patting his hip as I shifted on our bed to lie on my back, head on pillow, eyes to ceiling. I don't dare lie to myself and say that the sigh I expelled wasn't one of frustration and a bit of anger. The light of the half dozen or so red votives I had lit and set on the nightstand flickered in a dreamy dance up there, playing with the age-warped boards and slight recesses, somehow reacting to the storm outside of our cabin.

He moved beside me, pushing up against my side. The tired coils squealed underneath him like broken trumpets. "I'm sorry," he said, the most pitiful whimper a boy, a man, could invoke.

"You don't have anything to be sorry about," I told him. Maybe it was just me, but it really sounded a bit too huffy in my ears, too bitter at being thwarted, my dick telling my brain what to say. I kissed him on the cheek, but his eyes were still stuck on the window and the storm outside.

"I know it's not fair to you, Jack. It's just, you know..."

"Yeah, I know." But the truth was I didn't know. I didn't know anything, not a goddamn thing. He was terrified of storms, or of some element that storms possessed or formed. That was all I knew, and Eric had never shown any inclination of telling me what I wanted to know, which was why. Why was he afraid of storms, why does he stare at the sky when clouds begin rolling in through the trees around us, why does he fidget when he hears thunder, why does he sometimes cry himself to sleep, thinking he was being quiet and I wouldn't hear him? These questions were just a few in a list that I wanted to ask him, sometimes had asked him, knowing he would never give me a definite answer.

While he stared at the window, barely even blinking, I stared at him, at the face of the young man I had given myself to but, really, didn't even know all that much. He was beautiful, in that peculiar way that a man can be beautiful. I'm bound to say that, of course, being almost a decade older than him, seeing youth and beauty in almost everything else these days.

There was a flash outside, reflex in the sky, and perhaps three seconds later--not even that--we heard the resulting rumble of thunder, footsteps of Godzilla. Eric flinched into me, cringing but still suspiciously eyeing the glass as though expecting something to break through.

I sighed again and told him good night. "You know I can't sleep," he said, a slight edge in his voice.

"Take a Benadryl."

"Aren't they all gone?"

I turned to the nightstand, pulled at a cabinet and looked for the tiny pink pills locked in plastic casings. I ripped one out and handed it to him, pressing my lips to his shoulder as he took it and dry-swallowed it. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"Go to sleep, Eric."

"We can talk about it tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah," I murmured, knowing we won't.

We never do.

He sighed and settled into the bed, trying to relax while his mortal enemy lashed the woods outside. It would take probably thirty minutes for the Benadryl to kick in, and he would fight it for ten minutes after; I grabbed at his chest, holding him and quietly letting him know I was right here. I wondered, though, what his nightmares would tell him. I was still horny as hell, but I ignored my baser instincts and let the percussion symphony of the storm soften me.

Eric's breathing eventually slowed into a steady, medicated rhythm, and while he lay there I couldn't help but press my nose into the back of his neck and breathe in his aroma, the fused smell of sweat and the flowery conditioner he'd put in his hair this morning. The green light of the digital clock on the nightstand told me that it was already four minutes past midnight, into the witching hour, and what I meant was yesterday morning.

I thought about lies. I wondered how much he had lied to me, and I know that I've, on more than one occasion, lied to him about something or another. We lie to our friends, when we're living in our Wisconsin apartment. I tell them that we met at the Volcano, one of the older gay clubs in northern Minnesota, and that I had saved him from a guy who was coming on to him a bit too roughly. Concerning his age I give them a number that I know they'll believe. I don't tell them the truth, because the truth would get me and Eric in trouble with a lot of people, would pull us apart and we would never see each other again.

The truth? I had broken up with my boyfriend, the purpled bruise around my eye a badge and an ultimate synopsis of our relationship. I was sick and tired of him slapping me around, tired of him dragging me around drug dens and low-key bars, dragging me down into the mud. We yelled at each other, like any other day, and I knew our neighbors would already have their fingers poised over the phone, ready to get the cops again. In a fit of rage, the rage he had beat down low, I grabbed all his shit and tossed it out the window. He gave me the shiner and a couple other bumps and stormed out. I locked the door, and kept it locked in case he would ever try to open it. He never did, but I wasn't going to take a chance on going through that shit again.

I met Eric while driving through White Hill, and not at the Volcano. He was walking around the streets, loitering around the bus stop, the June humidity making his olive green tank top stick to him like latex, his jeans tight. I knew what he was the moment our eyes met, saw the fake security in himself. He walked up to the car, leaning his arms on the door, and we bantered, boring chit-chat that seemed rehearsed. I didn't take to the idea of picking up rent boys, having always preferred clubs or bars, but I was smitten. I took him to my apartment, terrified that he would be standing by the door, ready to beat the hell out of both of us, but he wasn't. Eric charged fifty dollars for any activity, a little bit more for anal, but I didn't care. I had never been with anyone else who was more caring and considerate, regardless of whether or not it might all have been an act. We cuddled afterward, which was free. He was seventeen then.

I gave him my number, becoming one of his regulars. I felt like a sugar daddy, supplying him with cash and essentials, and by definition I guess I was. I certainly was older than him, and I loved him to death, but I wasn't sure if the love was a two-way street.

A few years went by in this manner. We had both gone through hard times; the police caught us more than enough times to be a burden, the risk of going skint, the bills run overdue, and I feared for him during the autumn and winter months. Sometimes there were bruises on his body, bite marks, and cheap Band-Aids covering what looked like tiny knife wounds. I'd get mad when I saw them, and he'd get mad at me for not minding my own business.

Prostitution is a precarious endeavor for young men; some make it out alright, a fair portion in fact, but many often become prey. Prey to vicious people as much as a vicious world. Age is also a cruel problem--people want the freshest, hottest, young face. Street walkers will find that they won't be pulling in as many clients in their mid-twenties as they did a decade previous. When he turned twenty four, Eric told me he was trying to get out of the scene. With the cash he had gotten from me and a few other regulars, he had purchased an apartment in the east side by the lake, but a fire had gutted the whole building, leaving him with nothing. As could be expected by anyone else with piss for luck, this was in the middle of October, winter whispering a deadly cold love song.

He was twenty four when he came to live with me, at the edge of when clients' interest in whores would wane. He was still beautiful, but the income was strangled. He had a drinking problem, too. I helped him through that, and other things. It was hard for him to disconnect from his job, and many times he'd come back with a fresh roll of cash in his pocket. He'd get picked up by the cops, and I'd always make his bail, no matter what. We'd yell, many times we'd yell. Things were hard for us in that two-year period before my job promotion.

"I love you, Eric," I whispered to him, thinking maybe that my words would kill any bad dreams of his. The antihistamines made for dreamless sleep, but somehow, the nightmares would cut through the drug and reach him. I don't know how, but it happens.

We moved to Wisconsin to be closer to my job, pretty close to Madison. We'd go to the bar and made some friends, and when they asked how long Eric and I had been together, I remember the two of us just looking at each other, not sure of what to say. The lies started then, and we tried to make them work out as perfectly as possible. The love became sincere.

Eric had never shown any remorse or guilt for what he was--for what he had been. "There're worse things," he'd said, and that was true.

The furthest he had ever come to explaining his past to me, the time before he took to the streets, was when he told me he had been born and raised in Louisiana. With some extra cash saved up I bought a cabin in a heavily wooded area there, around Atchafalaya River, just someplace to go for vacation, thinking it would make him happy. That was when the anxiety hit him. I tried to help, not sure how or what to do, feeling like I was just punching at an ocean.

I was on the edge of sleep, in that fuzzy period where consciousness and unconsciousness are blurred together, dreamless and seamless, when I heard Eric mutter beside me. I opened my eyes, wondering if my lover had said something or if it was just something my stupid head concocted out of worry and memory. I waited, listening. The storm was already far away, lurching down toward the neon glow of New Orleans. Occasionally there would be a dull rumble in the distance like mortar fire.

"No, dad," Eric murmured beside me. I blushed then, uncertain if I had heard him right. He said it again.

I couldn't stop my imagination. The dark ceiling became a projector on which flashed fantasies stemmed from those two words. Eric's father shouting at him, beating him, maybe something else; I saw Eric bent over a creaky bed, his father slamming into him, hips-on-thighs percussion, Eric crying and maybe begging, his father a titan of monstrosity. I never even knew Eric's father, didn't know what he looked like or what his name was, but I wanted so badly to put him in the ground.

Eric mumbled something unintelligible in the dark. I held onto him, pressing into him and trying in some way to put myself into his dreams so I could stifle his whimpering. He stopped sometime after two.

I made a plan then, to try and get him to tell me. I weighed the options and mulled it over, and I knew it was the right thing to do, for me and for him. It was going to be difficult, and he would probably hate me for a while, but I was certain I could do it.

For the next few days, I paid very close attention to the weather stations on the radio. Being July in Louisiana, I didn't have to wait too long. Eric was outside, picking St. John's wart and thyme by the river; he loved being outside as much as I liked being stuck inside four walls. It was a hard ninety degrees, a westerly "breeze" of twenty miles, the humidity making the world slow and hazed, a molasses dimension. No clouds to scar the sapphire face of the sky. I made a pot of coffee, even though it was noon and I didn't really need it.

The sound came first, a dinosaur's roar twenty miles away. Eric had been crouching by the river, but when he heard it he shot up, back straight as a tent peg, his heard turning left and right. The radio said it would be coming from the east this time; Eric turned and saw the clouds, giant's black and grey manufactory of water and electricity. By the time he started sprinting back to the house, his hands full of flora, I had already locked the doors.

The knob turned, jerked. I stood there in the hallway, sipping from my brownish Carlsbad Caverns mug.

"Jack? Jack the door's locked."

I didn't say anything.

"Jack, open up. There's a storm coming."

The knob kept twisting aimlessly. He pounded on the door. Somewhere, the sky growled.

"Jack, are you there?"

I stepped closer to the door and put the palm of my hand on the varnished cedar surface. "I'm right here, hon."

"Why is the door locked? Let me in, right now."

"I can't, Eric."

The sky growled again. The pounding at the door stopped, paused, a very brief respite when it sprang back again with a violent fervor. "Jack, come on. Stop dicking around and open the door."

"No."

It was getting dark now, the sun smothered by clouds. The door shook as Eric really tugged on it, trying to force it open. I could hear him breathing behind the wood, quick and ragged gulps of the hot, thick air.

"Why are you doing this to me, Jack!? Please let me in!"

"Not until you tell me!"

"What!?"

I held my hand on the doorknob, running the surface of my thumb over the lock. When I spoke to him I kept my voice as cool and as calm as I could. "You know what I want to know, sweetie. If you tell me, I'll let you in, but until then you can stay outside."

The sky sounded pissed off, and it let the earth below know it. I could already hear the pattering of rain. Eric's voice was choked and broken with his whimpering. "Jackie, please! You have to let me in, right fucking now!"

The door shook, rattled, and rolled, the hinges complaining. He was stronger than I expected, but then that was what fear did. I hated myself for what I was doing, but I believed, believed as well as I could, that what I was doing was cathartic, for him and for me. "You're the only one that can open the door," I told him, shouting to be heard over his pounding. "Just tell me."

"I can't!--"

Thunder drowned out everything else for a long few moments, the world a cataclysm of sound. He was crying now, and it was hard to tell if the crying was cut with swearing or the swearing cut with crying. The pounding stopped, and I heard his feet sprint off the porch, work around the cabin. I followed him, locking the windows while I was at it. He made it to the front door and began attacking it with the desperation of someone with hell on his heels. "Jack, for the love of god open this goddamn door!"

"You know what you have to do, Eric!"

"Please!"

The rain outside evolved into a downpour, almost immediately obscuring what minutes ago had been the woodlands. The door shook, the knob twisted, and when the thunder sounded off again, it seemed to be directed right at the cabin.

"You can do it, Eric! Just tell me all about it and you can--."

"Alright! Alright, I will! I'll tell you, now just let me in!"

"You promise?"

Rain, thunder, the trees screaming. "Yes, I promise! I promise I'll tell you, just please let me in!"

I flipped the latch, not sure what I should have been expecting. I twisted the knob a little bit and the door burst open, catching me on the chin. Eric slipped into the house, rainsoaked and disheveled and looking like something drug up from the lake, grimacing in sheer fright. I shut the door, locked it without knowing why.

The moment I turned around, Eric's fist found the side of my face. There was a flurry of soft punches and slaps, Eric's fear condensed and directed into anger at me, at what I had done. And I knew I deserved it.

"What the fuck is wrong with you!?" he screamed, shrill, bimbo-in-a-horror-movie screaming. "How could you do that--?"

I grabbed his wrists and brought them down to his sides. He was shorter than me, and we stared each other down for what felt like a very, very long time while another southern apocalypse rumbled outside.

Finally, the dam broke, and Eric began sobbing. He slid out of my arms and down to the floor, holding himself as if he would fall apart, and I could tell it was too late for that. I crouched down with him and took him in my arms, not judging him when he initially recoiled away from me.

"I hate this," he said, after a while.

"What?"

"Being scared."

The storm past us, circling back after half an hour, and again. The same storm swept over us maybe four times, I think, before turning away and dispersing back to wherever it came from. It was late in the evening by then; Eric and I held each other that whole time, just breathing.

"I think it's gone now," I said.

"It never is," he replied.

I took him into the bathroom, grabbed a towel the color of magnolias and draped it over him. Then we walked into the bedroom, sat down on the bed. It was too hot, too humid, and I took my damnably constricting shirt off. While he dried himself off, I looked at him and gave him a smile that I thought was apologetic. He didn't smile, but he did hold my eyes, which was something. I held his hand, feeling his fingers tighten around mine. It was a long time before he spoke.

"Jack, if I hadn't promised to tell you, would you have left me out there anyway?"

I kissed him on the cheek, and the other hand that wasn't holding his I placed around his shoulders. "Absolutely not," I said. Another lie I'll try to forget. He sat there quietly for a time, our heads pressed together, not saying a word. He smelled like marshland flowers. By the time he was ready to speak, I was so calmed down that his voice made me jump.

"I didn't...I didn't really have a bad childhood. I mean, it wasn't as good as others, but it wasn't really, very bad. My mom ran away after I was born; dad said she left for New York, but I think he just said that because he hated New York. We were just wood folk, you know, miles from the nearest town kind of thing, but I didn't mind. Dad homeschooled me and taught me about trees, plants, and stuff like that. I think the biggest problem I had was being around other people. There just weren't many people around. I had a couple friends, but after a while they didn't want to be around me. I never knew why. They were Cajuns, and half the time they spoke French so I couldn't understand the fuck they were saying.

"I remember I used to go out in the middle of this clearing not far from the house. There were a bunch of big rocks sort of arranged into a circle, and they were all surrounding this one big old willow tree. Sometimes I'd talk to it, tell it about things that happened in the day, tell it my problems and everything. When I was scared, I talked to the tree. When I realized that I liked boys more than girls, I talked to the tree. I used to pretend it was my mom. That, that's not weird, is it?"

"No," I said. Eric wiped at his eyes before continuing.

"Anyway...Sometimes dad would go out into the woods by himself. Usually during every full moon or new moon, something like that...I can't really remember the when's. He'd spend hours out there, going out in the morning and not coming back until the sun was going down. Sometimes after nightfall. I remember thinking 'maybe he has his own tree,' someone he talks to, just like me. One night, I followed him out, keeping far back. I knew where every stick was, and I knew where to step so I wouldn't make any noise.

"I saw him standing, like, just in the middle of the woods. He was standing, looking up at the sky. I saw his mouth was moving, but I didn't hear anything. I was scared and I don't really know why I was scared; there was just no reason for him to be out here, doing whatever it was he was doing. But then neither did I, I guess, with the tree.

"That was one night. There were other nights that I followed my dad and there was nothing really different. But there was one night, around spring, that I followed him and it was different. It...I wish I hadn't gone out there."

Eric stopped and wiped at his eyes again. He stared hard at the floor, and I waited for him to go on.

"That night, dad went outside and I followed him again. It became sort of a game, you know? There wasn't really a whole lot for me to do for entertainment. He was standing in the same place, always in the middle of the woods, but it...it _felt_different. I can't explain it right, but if I had to use a cliché, there was just something in the air. There was a different smell, a different feeling. The moon didn't look right, and that made the trees look weird, too. After a while, dad looked down at the ground, his head cocked to the side as if he'd heard something. He crouched down and started digging through the underbrush. He was pulling away dirt and nettles and things, and...when he stopped, I stepped a little bit closer. He was pulling something out of the ground, something dark and wet and coated with dirt. It made a sound that wasn't really a sound. It was a silence that hurt your ears. I couldn't see it right, but it looked like tentacles or roots and...I don't know what else."

Eric stopped to look at me, to make sure I wasn't about to laugh. I held his look, and told him to go on.

"After that night, things changed. Dad would get angry at the smallest things. I'd come into the house too loud and he'd yell at me to stop making so much noise. I'd be outside for too long, and he'd yell at me to get inside before I caught cold, even if it was seventy degree for a low. One time I dropped a glass of water and it shattered; dad made me take off my clothes and pick up every piece of glass on my hands and knees."

"What?"

Eric just gave me a pitiful look and shrugged. "Things were different. I couldn't change them. Sometimes he'd hit me, but most of the time he was indifferent. He'd just stand around with a blank look on his face. He stopped going to work, stopped doing everything that made him him. I talked to that old willow in the clearing, and Jack, I can't tell you how much I really, really wanted that tree to talk back to me.

"One day, dad came up to me and told me he was writing a book. I didn't really know what to say, so I said that's okay. He walked into the barn and locked the door and that was that; he stayed there for days, for days and he wouldn't come out for food or anything. I tried to talk to him but he yelled at me to fuck off and mind my own business. It was a long time before the door opened."

Eric stopped again, and I watched as his eyes hardened at that point on the floor. I watched as he retreated into the memory he was relating. Part of me wanted to see what he was seeing, but part of me didn't want to at all. "When dad walked out, he was naked. You could see his ribs--he hadn't eaten anything in a long time. He was holding this big book under one arm, something that looked like it was made out of grass and tree bark. In his other hand he was holding a big knife. There were cuts on his body, blood all over, but he was smiling. He told me to come to him, to help him finish the book. I said no, and he yelled something at the sky. It was like something in a different language."

"Do you remember what it sounded like?" I admit to a firm interest in languages, and though it was not important at the time, the curiosity was too much. Eric just shook his head.

"I don't know, it was so long ago and it was hard to pay attention to things like that. 'Shub Na'grath,' was the closest thing to it, or at least one of the things I can remember. Anyway, dad just shouted long and loud at the sky, and right around that time a storm was breaking. It was like he was talking to the storm, and the when the storm answered back I just wanted to run away. But...but he was my dad. But when he looked back down at me there was just this nothingness_in his eyes. In the movies you can tell when actors are wearing black contact lenses because light is still shining on them. Dad's eyes weren't like that; they were just, _nothing. His skin was changing, too, rippling like something was underneath it. He screamed at me to come to him and finish the book, so the circle can be completed. I didn't know what to do, I was so scared that I just started crying. It felt like the world was unraveling, winding down and breaking apart like an old junk clock. He came after me with the knife and the book raised up high, and he just howled, just let out this awful sound. I swear Jack, you'd never heard a sound so bad."

I nodded, knowing full well that he was right. Eric's lower lip disappeared between his teeth, the corners of his mouth drawing down, and tears descended when he shut his eyes. "He tried to kill me."

I held him tight as he began sobbing again. He broke apart again, and it was my duty to hold him together and help him pick himself back up. He leaned into me, and I told him it was okay, that everything was alright. And then I thought about the storms...

After ten minutes, he had regained himself, dabbing at his eyes with the towel. I rubbed his arms, trying to put warmth where there was cold. "What happened after that, Eric?"

He sniffled and wiped at his eyes, and I had never felt such a love for another being so strongly then I did right then. I brushed his hair out of his eyes before he continued. "Dad tried to get me, but the storm got him first."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean...I don't know what I mean. It was like the storm just reached down and took him away. Hand of god, or something else. He was screaming, punching and kicking at whatever it was that had him, but it took him away. His body just vanished, became smoke and part of the air. I think that's how it eats.

"I envy you, Jack. You have no idea how much I do. You don't know how hard it is, to be able to see the thing in the clouds, the thing in the sky that's always waiting to strike us down, like a bird waiting outside a bug nest. That's all we are to it. It'll take me, and it'll take you, maybe everyone on this stupid planet. You don't know how great and terrible it is."

"Eric..."

"Sometimes I wish I was blind so I didn't have to see it. Sometimes I think about getting someone to make it so I can't see anymore."

"Don't you say that, Eric. Don't you ever fucking say that."

He shook his head and held onto me like he or I was going to float away, pass through the window and disappear up into the thinning clouds. "I just don't know what to do," was all he said.

"You just be strong, sweetie. I'm right here, and I'm not going away. We're not going away." I told him that everything was going to be alright, and I didn't know if that was a lie, but what would it matter if it was or not? I believed it. The brightest delusions are the best.

Later, after I had apologized for doing what I had done and I was sure Eric was feeling up to it, we took a shower together. Then, we climbed into bed, arms locked around each other. We kissed, and kissed, and looked at each other. What else did we need to say?

The storm came back that night. I could tell it was the same one; it didn't feel like a new storm. They have personalities, just like us. Eric was asleep by then, but I was wide awake, watching my lover and the storm that seemed so damn hungry. The rain was like millipede legs scratching at our cabin, the thunder like signals for war, and the young oak tree outside began tapping at the window.

"Go away," I muttered at the rain and the shadows and whatever they might have held. "You go away, and keep your ass away from us."

Outside, the stomach of the universe grumbled.