Page 53
Story: Kissing Carrion
“Naw, don’t think so” he said. “Little pretty kitty fag-boy you? Be serious.” Leaning closer, showing me his: Bigger, whiter, sharper. “Believe that when I—”
—see it?
(Well . . . okay.)
And then, with a growl, I was on him—had him on his back, struggling, before he even had time to count his losses. We went at it hand to hand, no holds barred. I kneed him hard in the groin; he roared but sucked it up, cracking me across the jaw so hard I bit my own lip. Finally, as I hissed blood, he got his knees between mine and spread them hard, pinning me. I raked his face, so he flipped me, bit into my nape, and gave a flesh-smothered crow of surprise and delight. Rumbling, while I thrashed beneath him—
“Ah, now—that’s better.”
I bucked up like a hard-rode horse, made it to my knees—then froze as he slipped into position, humping me higher, drawing a helpless moan. So quick, for all his bulk. And the touch of him, raising hairs where I barely knew I had them—so raw, so rank, so right. So utterly, unnaturally Goddamn . . . natural.
“This,” he told me, firmly, “this’s how it should be. Way you’re feelin’, that ain’t something you manage—that’s an ancestor-gift, Lee, pure and simple. The very best part of your heritage.”
Trying to unseat him, and failing miserably. I gave one last half-hearted flail, one last hoarse groan, then managed:
“This’s me getting pissed, that’s all. Nothing more, nothing—”
A snort. “That’s your bear, Lee, lookin’ out through those baby blues. Sayin’ ‘hi’ to mine . . . ”
( . . . the way bears do.)
All hot breath and hunger, carrion-rank, honey-sweet. Grappling and snuffling. All claws and jaws and blood in every part of me, pumping me hard enough to pop on contact. Making me feel alive in a way I’ve never felt since: Not then, not now. Not before. And sure as hell not—
(after)
“Oh, shit,” I hissed, finally. “Just . . . shut the fuck up and fuck me, you fucking freak.”
Another grin, into my spine. “Whatever you say—”
(shield-)
“—brother.”
Karl didn’t just accept my unsociably low tolerance for annoyance, he encouraged it; we’d fist-fight as foreplay, go straight from making bruises to licking them. While all the men around him had been trained to try and keep their tempers—keep them on a leash, keep them in check—if Karl felt it, you knew it. It was like breathing to him, like sex. Like prayer. For Karl, rage was a means to its own end, its own energy and its own purpose: A negative rush, infinitely destructive and potent. It was meditation, masturbation, sex and drugs and rock and roll, all rolled up into one. An in-body out-of-body experience. Losing yourself.
Or, maybe—
—finding yourself.
“These guys I run with,” he said, “they’re weekend warriors, mostly. Talk big, sure, but ain’t nothin’ under their skin worth the lettin’ out. You, though . . . ” He paused. “You could go all the way, you wanted to.”
“All the way where?”
Well . . .
. . . that’d be the question.
(Wouldn’t it?)
Wherever Karl went, I suppose, all those years ago. Wherever he left me for, after I—finally—
—left him.
I try not to think much about that last night we spent together, if I can help it. That time we went up alone, just the two of us, with no disciples invited—when we built a fire so big it felt like we were cooking in our own sweat and fucked in every splintery corner of the house Karl’s Grampaw built, ‘till we were both so hot and tender we could barely move. And then, when everything was at its peak . . . when Karl, who never drank, had already downed what seemed like a potentially fatal load of fermented honey-mead he’d bought from some fellow Viking-obsessed freak in the Society for Creative Anachronisms, and made me match him slug for slug from a couple of dirty steins . . .
. . . then, if I force myself, I can just about barely remember what it felt like to find him pulling me outside by my hair, holding me upright against the wind and pointing me towards the trees. Crooning so low I could hear it move through his chest and into mine, like some subsonic earthquake-warning; pressing a knife—a Goddamn *knife*, serrated blade long as my femur—into my limp right hand, and telling me:
C’mon, Lee—tonight’s the night. Can’t you feel it comin’? My—
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53 (Reading here)
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102