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And the ache was back.

“Faggot,” the doofus said again—like he’d always wanted a chance to really sound it out aloud, syllable by un-PC syllable. And I just nodded again, my fingers knitting fast behind me; weaving hidden sigils in that empty place where my shadow used to be, feeling them perfect themselves without even having to check that I was doing it right.

Immaculate. Effortless. Like signing your name in the dark.

“Something I can help you with?” I asked. Adding, for extra emphasis: “Gentlemen.”

One of them sniggered.

“Well, yes,” said the one with the big mouth, all mock-obsequious. “See, the guys and me were just thinkin’ . . . ”

Unlikely.

“ . . . about how just seein’ you come swishin’ along here made us wanna, kinda—y’know—fuck you—”

Before he could finish his little game of verbal connect-the-dots, I’d already upgraded my smile to a—wide, nasty—grin.

“Over?” I suggested, coolly. “Or was it . . . up? The ass?”

More sniggers, not all of them directed at me. “You wish,” my aspiring basher-to-be snapped back, a bit too quick for his own comfort.

I shrugged, bringing my hands forward. Rubbed my palms together, deliberately. Saw them all shiver and step back, as one, as the skin ignited—and winked, letting a spark of the same cheerless color flare in the pupil’s heart of either flat black eye. Allowing it to grow, to spread. To kiss both lids, and gild my lashes with purple flame.

And oh, but the ache was chest-high and higher now, jumping my neck to lodge behind my face: A hammer in my head, a hundred-watt bulb thrown mid-skull. Like a halo in reverse.

“Not particularly,” I replied.

Basher-boy’s buddies broke and ran as one, pack-minded to the last. But I had already crooked a burning finger at him, riveting him to the spot, a skewer of force run through every limb. Using them like strings, I walked him—a reluctant puppet—to the nearest alley. Paused behind a clutch of trash-cans, popped my fly to let it all hang out. And leaned back against the wall, waiting.

“Down,” I told him. “Now.”

He knelt, staring up. I stroked his jaw.

“Open up,” I said, sweetly.

And kept right on smiling, even after his formerly sneering lips hit the neatly-trimmed hair on my pubic ridge—right up until my sac swung free against his rigid, yet helplessly working, chin. I wasn’t thinking of him, of course, but at least I wasn’t thinking of that guy anymore—or myself, either. When I felt my orgasm at last, I came so hard I would have thought I was levitating, if I didn’t already know what that feels like: Off like a rocket, all in one choking gush. I held his head until I was done.

Then I stepped back, him still down on his knees in front of me, leaving him just enough room to pivot and puke everything I’d just given him back up on the asphalt beneath our feet.

My ache, conveniently enough, went along with it.

“You think you’re going to do something about this,” I told him, as I ordered my cuffs and tucked my shirt back in. “Not that you’d ever tell your buddies, of course. But you’re sitting there right now, thinking: ‘One day I’m gonna catch him in an alley, and he’ll have to eat through a straw for a month.’”

Closing my coat, I squatted down beside him, continuing: “But the thing is . . . even now, even with me right in front of you, you can’t really remember what I look like. And it’s getting worse. An hour from now, any given gay guy you meet might have been the one that did this to you. Am I right?” I leant a little towards him, and felt him just stop himself from shying away; that little jerk in his breath, like a slaughterhouse calf just before the bolt slams home. “Can’t tell, can you?” I asked, quietly.

He didn’t answer.

“And do you know what that means?” I went on, sitting back on my heels. “It means that the next time you see somebody coming down Church Street, and you want to say hello—I think you’re going to modify your tone a little. Lower your eyes, maybe. Not make any snap judgements. And definitely . . . under any circumstances at all . . . not call this person by insulting names. Because you never know.” I paused. “And you never will, either.”

Leaning forward again, I let my voice go cold. And whispered, right in his ear:

“So be polite, little ghost. From now on, just be very—very—polite.”

* * *

By the time I got home, one quick whiff was enough to tell me my neighbors were not only back, but already smoking up a storm. No ’80’s nostalgia dance mix filtering up through the floorboards as yet, though—so between the relative earliness of the hour and the obvious intensity of their hash-induced stupor, I figured I had about an hour before their proximity made it difficult to give the ritual I had in mind my fullest possible attention.

Because, morally repulsive as my pre-emptive strike on the Engineer might have been—even from my own (admittedly prejudiced) point of view—the plain fact was, it had done the trick. Back in that alley, the emotional cramp temporarily hampering my ability to plan ahead had flowed out of me, borne on a blissful surge of bodily fluids. And inspiration had taken its place.