Boys In Heat, page 10
“Before we go in,” said Petr, leaning close and whispering, “I must warn you of the mess. You understand, it has been a hectic few months, and certain things have slipped.”
The apartment was one room divided down the center by a breakfast bar. There was one other door; a bathroom I assumed. As a place to live it was economical, neatly packaged. In the corner was a bed, unmade, blankets and sheets half on the floor. And across the floor were a series of Polaroid photos, all boys’ faces.
“It’s nothing like that,” said Petr, who must have noticed the direction of my gaze. “My intentions are always toward females. These pictures, they are the victims.” And then quite needlessly he added, “Of the serial killer.”
Somehow, not wanting to get into all that now, it seeming a better topic for sobriety and the morning, I picked up the only other object on the floor. This was a wooden toilet seat fitted with four six-inch legs. I thought it perhaps an object of communism little talked about in the West.
“Ah that,” said Petr. “That is my own design.” He seemed flustered, his bluffness for the first time deteriorating. “You have to remember that with the end of communism came this sense that we could try almost anything, that anything was permissible in the market of supply and demand.”
I turned the toilet seat over. Obviously, a lot of work had gone into it. Each of the legs fitted flush with the base and at the end of each leg was a perfect little wheel. I could imagine it scooting across the floor, almost a child’s plaything.
“There is a certain lady I pay to lie below this seat,” said Petr. “I like her there while I am watching the television. The sensation, how shall we say it, pleases me.”
“I see,” I said.
“At the time I am quite naked,” said Petr. “It is only a little thing. Now,” Petr clasped his hands together, “could I get you a nightcap?”
There was none of the usual awkwardness that comes when two men share a room, of working out who was going to sleep where. After all, there was only one bed. At some point Petr stood up and removed all his clothes. Due the smallness of the apartment I suddenly found myself face to face with Petr’s extremely large and heavy penis. It was surrounded by a thick bush of hair. In fact, this hair continued all the way up Petr’s body. My initial instinct was to reach out and cup the balls with my hand, but Petr currently being my immediate supervisor, I decided this was not a matter for consideration.
While Petr was in the toilet I removed my own clothes, rearranged the bed covers and slipped inside. I could clearly hear Petr grunting over the toilet bowl and I thought of that poor girl who was made to lie for hours with her face pressed against his arse. Or maybe not so poor, for who are we to judge others? Maybe this was her darkest wish too. Perhaps, in a Catholic sense, she saw Petr as her saint.
I must have been asleep when Petr got into bed for I don’t remember him doing so. I woke up once and his arm was around me, his hairy front pressed to my smooth back. He had a nighttime erection and his penis had worked its way so it was nestled between my thighs. The sensation was not unpleasant.
When I woke a second time light from a full moon was shining through the uncurtained window. In its spidery glow I could see picked out each of the faces of the murdered boys and every time I opened my eyes after this, feeling disconcerted, there they were. Eventually I could stand it no more and I got out from under the warmth of the bed and one by one turned them over to face the floor.
In my absence Petr had turned to the wall and the covers had slipped away. His arse was meaty, as hairy as his front. I got in next to him, nestled my own penis against this hairy area and fell back into a more than comfortable sleep.
I was dreaming of a steady life in Poland, with my own apartment, and myself as head of a bicycle task force when I felt myself being jolted awake. I opened my eyes to find Petr standing over me, still naked, phone pressed to his ear.
“It’s Ivan,” said Petr, and it took me a moment to comprehend he was speaking to me and not into the headset. “He’s gone. They think the serial killer has struck again. Come, get ready. We must leave now.”
I looked around the apartment for last night’s discarded underpants. As I pulled them on over my morning erection I wondered what the day held in store for me.
The lads were in a state of high agitation. Apparently there had been an argument; teasing about the phallus had turned somewhat nasty and Ivan had said he was going home to his mother’s.
“But that is strictly forbidden,” said Petr.
Ivan’s closest ally in the group, Stepanek, said he knew this, so he had contacted the mother in the early hours of the morning so that Ivan could return before his absence was noted. He was informed that Ivan had indeed been home but had only been there a few moments, in his own bedroom, before he had stormed out again with the words, “I will show those buggers. I will get the bastard myself.”
Apparently unbeknownst to everyone but Stepanek, Ivan had been doing his own investigation into the serial killer and had confided to his friend that he had a more than firm lead.
“Then this morning,” said Stepanek, “came the light.”
I looked across at Petr and incomprehension must have shown on my face.
“There are certain details,” said Petr, “in any investigation that are never released to the press. Just before dawn on the night of each killing, a light in the shape of a penis is shone into the sky. It is an indication of a murder.”
Stepanek was almost beside himself. “Ivan is missing. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the facts.”
“You never know, until you know,” said Petr. “Stepanek, we will go to his house. That is where the trail currently goes dead.” At the door Petr turned and looked directly at me. “You too. You are needed. Your experience may help us dearly.”
Ivan’s mother was a tiny lady in a thick coat. She was far removed from the fine specimen that was Ivan. I was made to sit with her while Petr and Stepanek searched his room for clues. She served me a strong alcoholic drink in a tiny glass and passed me a plate of pickles to eat. I felt she was holding back, that at the slightest hint from me, she would burst into hysterical tears.
After what seemed like hours Petr and Stepanek emerged from the room. I could tell from their downcast faces that nothing had been found.
“If you don’t mind…” I said.
Petr shook his head. “An extra pair of eyes. You may see what we did not.”
The room had the unadorned transience of a room in an assignation house. Above the bed was a picture of a lake with ducks, in a corner a sparsely stacked bookcase, pornographic magazines spread across the bottom shelf. All these items, I imagined, had been duly noted and checked. No doubt Petr had not risen to his position of power by being unmethodical.
I remembered the way Ivan had looked at me as I applied the lube to his arsehole, the mumbled “thank you.” There had been a connection between us. Perhaps that’s what Petr and Stepanek were missing, that connection.
Ivan had been bullied by the other boys and the nature of this bullying was over the phallus inside him. This was his sense of shame, not perhaps the object itself, but the others’ perception of it. In the corner was a small wicker basket, an item that with no stretch of the imagination could be linked to laundry.
A large object up the arse may cause some bleeding and this blood in Ivan’s mind would be symbolic of his humiliation. I guessed he would want to remove the pants that held this symbol.
Bingo! There, at the bottom, were the pants. I picked them up, and following my instinct, I held the front of the pants to my nose. The smell was masculine, comforting and intimate at the same time.
It was as I was placing the pants back that I noticed the slip of paper, lying alone at the bottom of the laundry basket. Its story was very short. St. Barnabas Church, it said.
“If I pushed Ivan the hardest,” said Petr, “it was only because I felt he had the most exceptional talent.”
Stepanek was sitting tight-lipped in the front of the car. I was squeezed in the back. We were worming our way upward, thick trees pressing in on either side.
Snow had started to fall again and when the trees did finally break I felt I had been presented with a scene you normally see in a snow globe.
The church stood alone on an outcropping of rock. Across its façade were flying buttresses, the carved faces of screaming monkeys, and below them, window after window after window, the glass a blaze of every color under the sun.
Access to the church was by a wooden walkway held secure by ropes above the precipice below. Petr went first, then Stepanek, then me. Once across, Petr held two fingers to his lips and gestured we should go to the side of the church.
“Who knows what we are getting ourselves into,” he whispered.
About a third of the way down, at about knee height, was a small glass window.
“There is talk of St. Barnabas,” said Stepanek, “that once you join its order you are there for life.”
On the other side of the window was a room. It was sparsely lit, bare except for a stone table in the center. A door in the room opened and a young man stepped in. He was wearing a monk’s habit and the back of his head was shaved in a perfect semicircle. He walked up to the table, lay his hands upon it, bent and kissed it reverently.
There was an air of serenity about the young man. He raised his hands to his neck and fumbled there and the habit fell away. He was naked underneath, his body perfectly shaved. He lifted himself up and lay facedown on the table, his legs slightly apart. Just visible was the tip of his penis, flattened against the tabletop.
The door of the room opened again and another young man entered. He was swinging a censer in front of him and by the way his lips were moving it was obvious he was reciting some incantation.
I was so drawn to the naked youth that I almost missed the third. This one had an extremely large nose and was holding a red cushion on the palm of his hand. In the center of this cushion was a small round wafer.
The youth on the table lifted his head slightly, looked around, smiled. The large-nosed youth placed the cushion down on the table, picked the wafer from it and very carefully parted the arsecheeks of the naked youth. The sphincter, like the rest of the body, was perfectly shaved.
“It’s a kind of ceremony,” whispered Stepanek.
I felt my own penis stiffen. In my head was Ivan. Unconsciously I had replaced the youth on the table with him.
The youth with the large nose bent forward, licked the arsehole with an almost feverish passion, so that when he came away the arsehole was glistening, even in the half-light. With his other hand he then pressed the wafer against the sphincter. After some initial resistance it disappeared inside and I could imagine it there and I wanted to be part of it. However, I was torn from my reverie by several things happening very quickly and almost at once.
Ivan stepped into the room, Stepanek called out his name, and Petr, Stepanek and I all felt the heavy fall of a hand on our shoulders. We leapt up and turned around and there were four more monks. Each was holding a gun. The guns were pointing at us.
We were standing before the priest. He was flanked on either side by the monks. A little away from them was Ivan, his head down.
“You do realize,” said the priest, “that the interruption of the Eucharist is a very serious matter.”
Petr’s face flushed red. He stepped forward with clenched fists. The priest held up a hand.
“My son, your anger is best directed toward more productive avenues.”
It was then Stepanek who spoke, voicing something that I myself had been thinking. “But Ivan, you are alive?”
Ivan looked puzzled. “Alive, but of course I am.”
“We saw the light,” said Stepanek. “We thought you were the next victim.”
“Ah,” said the priest, “that I can explain.”
The priest led us back outside, back across the narrow wooden walkway. As we went he talked.
“The Church has its own way of dealing with these serial killers. A trap was laid. A monk was set as bait. The serial killer struck.”
“The monk was killed?” I said.
“Oh no,” said the priest. He stopped. We were in a barren field a short distance from the church. “The monk was saved but the killer escaped. He left only this.” The priest pointed toward a contraption on the ground. It was a light box.
“The penis in the sky,” said Petr.
“The net is closing,” said the priest. He turned to Ivan. “And you, my boy, must make your choice. It is the bicycle task force or my monks. The State or the Church. In Poland that is the way it has always been.”
Ivan put a hand up to his mouth then dropped it. He looked at me. “What about you,” he said. “What are you going to do?”
Petr pursed his lips. “I can swing it with your captain. Say you are doing important work here. It’s your choice.”
My choice, I thought and then again, Why me? This time though, there was a competing and more appealing thought. Why not?
I was assigned a room in the barracks with Ivan. By day I was advisor to the bicycle task force, by night I slept side by side with Ivan. On our third night together he slipped his penis inside me. There was no ceremony about it and no talk. I liked the feel of it there and pushed myself back against him. As he came he twisted my head around and kissed me.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he said.
I thought of my life up until then, my life in the barracks back home. I had been an outsider, excluded. There had been no room for love. Everything had been a series of feints, moves, ritual maneuvering.
“Can I fuck you?” I said.
Ivan gripped my arsecheeks as I fucked him, his legs over my shoulders. It was my first time and I watched the head of my penis as it disappeared inside him. After, we showered together. Ivan got down on his knees and took each of my balls in his mouth. As we were getting dried Ivan passed me his underpants.
“Would you wear these today? I want to think of you in them.”
Then we were back outside. Petr arrived later than usual and he asked to speak to me in private. He was holding a slip of paper.
“It’s bad news,” he said. “The killer has struck again. This time for real. They want us to go fully operational, now rather than later. Do you think you’re ready?”
I was aching where Ivan had been inside me. I thought of more nights of us inside each other. Somehow this felt like the important thing. Everything else was peripheral, even death.
“Let’s go for it,” I said.
BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL
Michael Cain
Andy stumbled through my dorm room door. A thin sheen of sweat showed on his forehead and moistened his bulging biceps and forearms. His light blond hair was matted—and he was missing a sock.
“Where have you been? Project’s due on Monday,” I said, sitting at my desk, and getting a woody looking at him. Six feet tall; a tight, sweet body; the bluest eyes.
“It was only twenty minutes,” he countered, raking a hand through his disheveled locks.
So he had timed this break? I had an idea why.
“So what were ya doing?” I said in my best sorority-girl chirp.
“Shane…er—he needed me.”
“Needed you, how?” I couldn’t contain my curiosity. And thank god I had a book in my lap, or I wouldn’t have been able to contain my erection either.
“You know…boyfriend stuff.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“He needed to fuck me before he went to sleep.”
Bingo!
“I thought jocks were supposed to abstain before a big game,” I said.
“Well, yeah. But we broke that rule once, and they won against a top-ten team. So now it’s before every game.”
“Charming…” I adjusted my erection. “But you don’t look like a man who just got off.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ah, I’d hit a nerve. “Nothing, really. Just…most guys look… relaxed and, well…happy after they shoot.”
He scratched the back of his neck in consternation.
“Shane’s under a lot of pressure. I don’t expect him to expend the extra…energy to get me off.”
I gave him an Oh, that’s so pitiful roll of my eyes. He slumped against the edge of my desk, right where I wanted him.
“I’ll take care of it later,” he said.
By now his cock was as hard as mine, bulging under his jeans. I reached out, grabbing him by the waistband, and pulled him to me. From eye level with his crotch, I looked up into his pretty-boy face.
“I think I can help with that,” I said.
He gulped, troubled by the push and pull between doing the right thing thing, and need.
But I didn’t hear no, don’t, or I can’t.
What I heard was him breathing heavily as I deftly undid his jeans, pulling them open and scooping out his swollen cock and balls. What I felt was the softness of his skin, the hardness of his generously endowed dick in my hand, and the grip of his hands on my shoulders. What I tasted was sweet sweat and salty precome.
Yeah, he really needed to shoot his load!
His breath caught with a hiss as I took him in my mouth, swirling my tongue, swallowing him whole. I’m a saxophone player, a pretty good one—classical, jazz, whatever—so I have a talented mouth. I could’ve made Andy blow his load in thirty seconds, if I had wanted to. But the monster between my legs was hungry for his ass, and I always do right by my monster.
So I teased and sucked, and then I stopped. I teased, I sucked, gave it a lick, stopped again. After about five agonizing minutes Andy’s legs were shaking and his fingers were laced around the back of my head, messing up my hair.
