Category: The Pigtown Chronicles

TPC: Chapter 2.1

Part 2 – Into the Gyre

Chapter 1 – Back to Reality

Dennis and Barry didn’t speak much for the rest of the weekend, after their night out at Depot. It was clear that something between them was withering in a way that was rather unexpected, but neither of them could articulate. Barry, however, was closer to understanding it. It was the same sensation that he always felt after a circuit party, or an orgy, when he was back in the quiet house again. He was back in reality. The party, the club, the sex, all of that was just fantasy, it couldn’t penetrate him. He couldn’t allow it to penetrate him. But when he saw someone like Samuel, or Parker, who not only allowed that energy to flow through them, but lived and breathed it, all he felt was restless. Like he’d done scuba diving, with all of this protection, only to discover other guys he knew had gills. That Dennis had intruded on that rather sacred experience, injected his own kind of order and justice and control into it only made him feel more sour, more disconnected, more jealous of what he could be, if he hadn’t chosen all of this.

Dennis, on the other hand, was feeling usurped. Annoyed that Barry had dragged him to that party, annoyed that he had challenged him when it came to Kyle and threatening to tell his father, annoyed that he felt bad about it, most of all. He’d done the right thing, he was sure of that. Kyle shouldn’t have been there, he was too young. It was illegal. Pretty much everything that was happening in that club was illegal, in fact. But Barry had put him on the defensive, a position Dennis hated, since he was very careful to always maintain a moral high ground. He felt like he needed to defend something that ought to be obvious. The fact that Barry apparently disagreed only made his own values feel more slippery. 

Barry dealt with the frustration by going to the gym, and stopping off at a gay sauna on the way back for a little action. Dennis dealt with it by making calls to the health department, the liquor control board, and the police department, reporting the myriad of violations he had witnessed at Depot on Friday. Neither of them felt satisfied, by the end of it. The energy that Barry was craving just wasn’t there, like it had been at Depot. The guys were all too nervous, too embarrassed, mostly older closeted men with wives in the suburbs. It only made Barry feel more hemmed in than before. Dennis kept getting the runaround from every agency he called. They would seem interested, and then as soon as he mentioned where he had been and they confirmed the address, the person on the other line would go quiet, say that wasn’t their jurisdiction, thank him for his vigilance and hang up on him. Only once, with a police officer, did he manage to get a little bit of info out of him. “Look, the folks you ought to talk to are down at Precinct 27. They handle everything in that neighborhood.” Frustrated, and again feeling like he was running into some bureaucratic red tape he hadn’t expected, he decided he’d pay a visit to the precinct sometime in the next week, and get some answers there. Surely they would have a more difficult time dismissing his complaints in person.

Monday came for them both. Dennis headed for the hospital–Monday was usually a day for appointments, and getting his surgeries for the rest of the week planned out and organized. Barry headed into the office, dreading it more than he had in some time. He’d hoped that seeing Samuel and having a chance to blow off some steam would have helped soften the blow of being passed over for a promotion, again. Instead, he just felt caught between two worlds, one unsatisfactory foot in each. He couldn’t invest himself entirely in his job–it bored him to death, and he didn’t understand how Dennis could stand being so normal all the time–but if he didn’t, he’d never get the respect there he longed for. Each time he saw Samuel though, it was like looking at some amazing being. He was so free. Sure, his life likely wasn’t easy, but it seemed effortless and fun and exhilarating in a way Barry’s had never been. It also terrified him, all the same, and he hadn’t even been able to hack an hour on the dance floor on Friday. He got settled in his office, and got caught up on his email for the first couple of hours, before the usual Monday morning meeting was due to start.

This is what he was dreading the most, of the entire day. He showed up a bit late, took a seat towards the far end of the table. Evan Ternbull, his current boss, was sitting at the front, and off to his left was Richard Carlisle, the man that Barry privately considered his rival, but they had never spoken more than a few words to each other, since Richard was a relatively new hire, and they’d been working on different projects.

“As you know,” Evan said once getting everyone in order, “I’m going to be transferring over to a new project team in a month or so, which I know all of you are so disappointed to hear about. I’m happy to announce today that Richard here will be stepping up into my role and overseeing your team for the remainder of your project. As you know, Richard is relatively new here, but he comes with some great outside experience, and I am very confident that he will be a great project lead.”

The folks around the table clapped for Richard, who stood up, looking a bit sheepish. How old could he be, really? Twenty-five, twenty-six? Slender, twinkish but clearly straight, Richard got up and introduced himself, talking about his wife, and about the baby they had on the way. The table clapped again, and Barry tried to mask his scowl as he clapped along. Part of him felt a bit bad now for feeling so entitled to the position. Dennis and he were doing just fine with their incomes, and he knew that kids were expensive–one of many reasons he’d never wanted one. But as soon as that sympathy popped up, he pushed it back down. Just because he was straight, just because he was “starting a family” didn’t mean he was entitled to more money than him. It didn’t mean he was entitled more respect.

That was it, wasn’t it? The respect. He didn’t feel respected here. He didn’t feel respected at home, even. Dennis loved him, sure, but did he respect him, really? Did it feel like a relationship between equals all the time? It didn’t. Barry would goad him, and half the time Dennis would just dismiss him out of hand, refuse to even engage, like fighting with Barry was simply beneath him. Like he knew that no matter how dissatisfied he might be, he’d never leave him, because he liked the money, and the lifestyle, and Barry’s own job here couldn’t afford it. 

He could barely focus for the rest of the meeting. After an hour, he faked a phone call, and retreated to his cubicle to think. Mostly, he stared at the little business card that Hugh had given him, and thought about what on earth “Broker” might mean. Someone in the drug trade, apparently, if Hugh worked for him. So much of that conversation had been…weirdly cryptic, but Hugh had been right about the central proposition. Barry was unsatisfied with his life, and more hemmed in he felt–by Evan, by Dennis, by Richard now–

“Hey, Billy, right?”

He was startled up from his thought, looked up and saw Richard looming in the doorway of his cubicle. The meeting was over apparently–was this the first thing he’d thought to do? Hunt Barry down?

“Barry, actually.”

“Oh shoot, sorry man. Everything alright? You zipped out of there in a hurry.”

“Yeah, just the husband, you know. Everything sounds like an emergency to him.”

Richard laughed, “Yeah man, I get it. Hey, Evan told me that you were on the shortlist for the position, and I just wanted to let you know that he thought you would have been a great choice too, and he wants you to keep throwing your hat in the ring, alright? He just didn’t think that this position would be a better stepping stone for me, since we’re at the tail end of a project, about to ship. He knows that wouldn’t have been a challenge for you.”

Barry’s face was growing a bit heated. Evan thought so, huh? Then why wasn’t Evan here telling him this? Why send this cherub faced little shit to come apologize on his behalf? “Sure thing, I understand. Besides, you got the growing family to feed, right?” Barry said, stretching his mouth into something he hoped was a smile and not a sneer, and from the way Richard’s face lit up back, he must have managed well enough. They chatted a bit about Barry’s current duties, and then Richard moved on to the next member of the team.

That settled it, then. If nothing else, he would have his curiosity satisfied. If it was a service that could make his life better, than great. Why care that the info came from a drug dealer? He pulled out the card Hugh had given him on Friday–it was rather simple. All it had was a name, Ian Miller, the word “Broker” below it, and on the bottom of the card, a phone number. He picked up his phone, and gave the mysterious number a call.

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TPC – Chapter 1.11

Chapter 11 – Shadow’s Den

Whether it was morning or night now, Marlon didn’t know. One moment, he’d been on the sidewalk with Jimmy, talking about the streetlights or the shadows or something, and the next, he’d stepped into the dark and everything had disappeared around him–and now he was here. It wasn’t that he was falling, or at least, it didn’t feel like falling. There was nothing to fall relative to, so he could have just as easily been floating. He called out to Jimmy, but his voice wouldn’t cut through the vacuum. After some amount of time, it was difficult to say whether it was minutes or seconds, a figure had appeared in the dark with him. It was the man who had stepped from the shadows, before he’d fallen in. He called out to him, asking him for help. The man came close, and perspectives shifted. He became larger, and swaddled Marlon somehow, there in the dark. Cupped him in the darkness itself, and he felt it crush against him, even though there was nothing there. It was like drowning, like he was seven in his cousin’s pool again when hadn’t quite mastered swimming enough for the deep end. He was certain he should have died, at some point. Perhaps, he told himself, he had. But the darkness ebbed away, or pulled back from him, replaced with a deep red light.

There was space again. The colored light was disorienting, but he could make out that he was in what looked like a basement, or at least, a room with no windows–or doors, he realized after that. The floor was concrete, and the walls were adorned with what he could only really describe as a dungeon, though he’d never been one for fetish porn on the internet. He himself, he realized, was in a cage–thick metal bars, not tall enough for him to stand up inside. There was a sound behind him, and he managed to twist around. There on the wall were two figures hanging from a pair of wooden crosses, their limbs in steel manacles and pulled tight. Their faces were hooded, they were naked, and Marlon realized that he was naked as well. There were no clothes anywhere that he could see in the room. 

He was aware of the darkness in the room somehow solidifying, and the man from the street stepped out of what should have been a wall, just appeared with no way to explain how. Marlon scrambled back, banged his head on the metal of the cage, his vision bursting with stars. The man chuckled, strode over to the cage in the middle of the room, and squatted down. “A shame, the two of you would have been fun together, but this will be just as nice, and more filling.”

“Who…who are you? Let me out of here, please, I’m not into this shit!”

“You’re not?” the man said, pushing his face closer to the bars. The light in the room was strong enough that Marlon knew he should have been able to see the stranger’s face through the shadow of his cap, but it was made of the same inky darkness that had surrounded him before. “How do you know, little one? Have you ever tried any of it? Did you ever ask your shadow what he might like to try?” his mouth gave a little smile, “I asked him for you, by the way. He was more than a little curious.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Later, little one. I’m famished.”

“Wait! Don’t leave me here.”

“I’m not going anywhere little one, I have my meal right here,” he said, and walked over to where the two figures were strung up against the wall. The man made a little motion with his hands, and the hoods that were covering the faces of the prisoners melted away–Marlon realized that what he’d thought had been leather had been more shadow. A moment later, one of them gasped, his eyes opening wide, followed by the other, looking around, before staring at the leatherman in front of them. “You–you’re not a puppet, you’re Shadow! But you’re in the fucking jail, how did you get out?”

“Oh, it was harder than I thought it would be, I’ll admit that. Almost gave up a time or two, but why give up when I had such good reason to get out again, and see all you officers of the law again, after where you put me?” he said, gripping their faces with his hands. “One thing is for sure though, I am absolutely starving.”

Their eyes went wide. “No! Wait, we…we’ll get you the commander, that’s who you really want, right?” one said, “Please, Shadow, don’t!”

Marlon watched what happened next, from just a few feet away, and when it was done, he still couldn’t convince himself that he hadn’t dreamt it. Shadow, or at least, that’s what he assumed was the leatherman’s name, pulled one hand away from a face, and his fingers started to wriggle, and then extend. The way they slid across the man’s face, they were somehow flat, and yet retained all of their texture, then divided into even more tendrils, and began to dig their way into his nose, his mouth, his eyes, his ears. The man choked and shuddered as Shadow did his work, thrusting in deeper into the man’s mind, and then there was light–or a kind of light. It pumped it’s way backwards, drawn from the man down the tendrils of shadow and into Shadow’s arm, and when it reached his body, he gave a contented sigh. “Oh yes, quite delectable.”

After a few minutes of pulling whatever that light was from the man, he retracted the tendrils and the man’s face sagged forward. The last thing Marlon saw was the man’s eyes, which were now hollow sockets, as it dropped. He wondered if he was dead, but when Shadow unhooked the man’s manacles and the body slumped to the floor, he could see that he was still breathing, though it was shallow. His face had landed facing him, and Marlon stared into the hollowness, but the eyes were still there. They were just pitch black. Then the man’s own shadow rose up from the floor, spreading up around him, drawing his body in and holding it in something that looked like a cocoon. As soon as it was sealed, it shuddered and there was a scream from within–muffled, but obvious. The other man was shaking and pleading, but Shadow did the same to him, and when he was finished with his meal, there were two blobs of shadow there on the floor of the dungeon, quivering occasionally, mumbling and shouting and yelling. He drew down some darkness from the ceiling, strung the two cocoons up and left them to hang, while he turned his attention to Marlon again.

He was pressed up against the bars of the cage, trying to reach something that he could use to fight back, but there was nothing near him. Shadow squatted down in front of the cage again. “Much better, little one–now where were we?”

“What did you do to them?”

“I ate some of them, and left the rest of them for their own shadows. They’ll be ready in a while. You don’t need to worry about that just yet.”

“Are…you gonna eat me?”

“I don’t know, are you delicious?” Shadow said, and Marlon gulped. After letting the silence hang for a moment, Shadow laughed, “No, I don’t think I’ll be eating you. I already promised your shadow that we’d play for a while.”

“What do you mean?”

Marlon felt something come unstuck from him, something he didn’t even know could come away, and there, standing outside the cage, was a silhouette. His silhouette. He looked down, and underneath him where no light should have been, his shadow had simply disappeared–or rather, left him somehow. Shadow stood up, and embraced Marlon’s shadow, pulled it close, and he felt the embrace there in the cage, and shuddered, felt Shadow’s tongue press into his silhouette’s mouth. 

“Oh yes, I do like you, very much. I think I will keep you,” Shadow said, “You don’t mind, do you?”

Marlon objected, but realized that Shadow had not been talking to him–he had been addressing his silhouette, who nodded vigorously, and then looked to Marlon there in the cage.

“Don’t worry about that–come now, I want to play, little darkness. Here, taste this,” Shadow said, put a finger to the silhouette’s lips and a bit of the light that had come from the two men before slid into it–and Marlon watched as his shadow shuddered, and popped. For a moment, it had definition, depth, presence. And when it had, Marlon gasped, and felt a moment of weakness wash through him. 

“See? Doesn’t that taste good? He’ll never be able to give you that, but I can. I can give you so much. All you have to do is let me guide you. There’s so much I can show you–pleasure, pain, power. Isn’t that what you want?”

Marlon’s silhouette nodded, and Shadow embraced it again, then bent it over a bench, and fucked it–and Marlon, there in the cage, felt every thrust–but he felt something else too. Delight. Ecstasy. They weren’t his feelings though. It was his silhouette thinking and feeling all on its own, and realizing it was thinking and feeling on its own, and delighting in the sensation of the world around it. Marlon begged, when they finished. Begged Shadow to let him go, but Shadow never addressed him again, directly. He was no longer important. In the darkness, shades ruled, and Shadow ruled the shades of Pigtown–and Shadow was back at last.

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TPC – Chapter 1.10

Chapter 10 – Visions of Flesh

As Samuel crossed the club floor, he found himself blinking a bit too much, his eyes still watering and stinging after that odd moment in the VIP lounge upstairs, where his eyes had met Rod’s. The club was dark, but each time a spotlight swung around him he would freeze, like it might reveal something other than the other horny men around him. Something monstrous, but once he processed it again, he saw that it was just men engaged in the usual sort of acts that Depot inspired. But the sense that something was wrong with him continued to plague him as he found his way to the bathrooms. Had there been something in the drink? He hadn’t really seen the bartender mix it, and Rod had seemed rather…familiar with him, verging on obsessed, even. He stumbled down the hallway into the bathroom, and found a continuation of the scene he’d watched unfolding on the small TV set upstairs. 

Patrick had a twink up on the bar between the two sinks, legs up on his shoulders, dick deep in the young man’s hole. Samuel found himself feeling a little jealous at first–Patrick hadn’t been that hard during one of their fucks in a very long time. The smell of musk and cum and sweat hung heavy in the air all around them, and while it had seemed…rougher on that silent screen, it was clear from his moaning that the twink was rather enjoying himself, and that Patrick was getting close to orgasm.

But something else was off too. The two of them weren’t alone in the bathroom, there was a small collection of men all around Patrick’s feet, rubbing and groping him, all of them moaning and pleading, and from the cum drooling out of their holes, it seemed easy to conclude that Patrick had fucked all of them in turn–and all of them were aching for more. Samuel felt his head start to throb, his head pounding in time with the music–no, not his whole head, his eyes, what the fuck was wrong with his eyes? He gripped them in pain, and fell back against the wall, groaning, and when he opened them again, he swore that he had torn his eyelids apart–but it wasn’t that. His body wasn’t ripping, it was everything around him, some giant tear across the room, cutting across Patrick, across the twink, across the men fawning at his feet, and it was growing larger, it was consuming everything, and all Samuel could do was look.

Were they still in the bathroom? It hardly mattered where they were. It was Patrick that had changed the most. The tear opened wide, and revealed a massive figure where Patrick was standing, easily a foot taller, head close to the ceiling that couldn’t really be seen through the tear. The twink was groaning, coated in a sheen of sweat, and swelling. As Patrick fucked him, or the thing behind Patrick, the thing inside him and beside him, the twink was swelling, belly expanding, filling with cum, perhaps. It was difficult to know what it was, but it was inflating him, pumping him full, his face turning fat and pudgy, letting off a long moan of delight as his own cock was swallowed up inside his growing body, and with a massive thrust, Patrick…split the young man open, his skin shredding like a popped balloon in slow motion, pulling away and shrinking away, and underneath, coated in some sort of mucus, was another man, the same man, something born from that moment. Slick with gunk, soft and turgid, with a mouth that seemed too fluid, a body that didn’t have quite enough bones, both skinny and flabby at the same time, the moans and groans coming from it curdling in the air. The beast that was Patrick fucked harder and came at last, pumping a massive load into the thing’s hole, and when he had finished, he pulled his massive cock free, and the thing slumped off the counter and onto the floor, where the others had all pooled similarly, a tangled, throbbing mass of flabby things, mouths sucking at their god, crawling and sliming over one another, hungry for more, no longer hungry for anything else.

Patrick, or the beast beside him, turned to look at Samuel, smiling. It beckoned him. Samuel didn’t know how to get there, didn’t know how to cross the void between them. Black was enveloping him, clouding his vision. He thought at first it was another tear, another break, and terrified, he thrashed about in the dark until he flung over and found himself in his own bed, Patrick splayed out on top of the covers beside him, naked, snoring heavily himself. Samuel heaved himself out of bed, squinting, made it to the bathroom in time to get most of the vomit into the bowl of the toilet, and when he was sure his guts were empty, or at least no longer threatening revolt, he turned around and sat on the floor of the bathroom, against the cabinets, catching his breath and trying to push that image in his mind further away, but it was there. Impossibly close, burned into him, somehow. He rubbed his eyes, feeling them aching still. He had to have been drugged, what other possibility could it have been? He must have freaked out in the bathroom, maybe Patrick managed to get him home somehow.

He had made enough noise that he could hear Patrick rousing himself in the bed, and after a moment, he stumbled in, stepping over Samuel on the floor, so he could take a long piss into the toilet beside him. “Fuck, rough night, huh?”

“I…Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

“I don’t remember shit man, fuck,” Patrick said, “Hugh gave me a sample of a new steroid he’s selling, that shit is…fucking hell, it’s wild…You…you must have gotten me home last night, I guess?”

“Uh…I figured you’d gotten me home, I don’t remember.”

“Huh…”

Samuel thought about trying to explain what he’d seen the night before in the bathroom, but where would he even start? Besides, it wasn’t like Patrick to really empathize with the inner life of someone else–that was labor he usually left for Samuel to pick up.

“I’m gonna hit the gym, I’m still feeling fucking pumped, you know?” Patrick said, stepping back over Samuel on the floor without offering to help him up.

After another couple minutes, Samuel flipped around and used the counter to pull himself up. In any case, that fucker Rod could take his offer and shove it. If his idea of patronage was drugging someone without even giving them a heads up, there was no way he was going to have any further dealing with the guy, no matter how much money it meant. But while his resolve started out that way, three things happened that made him waver again.

The first was his eyes in the mirror when he pulled himself up. His eyes had always been green, but in the mirror, they weren’t…entirely green anymore. The color was darker, and leaning in to look closer, he saw that there were swirls of the same cloudy grey that Rod’s had been. He couldn’t be sure that they hadn’t always had that coloring, and yet, he had never noticed it before in his life. Looking closer, he also was certain he could see the colors swirling about slightly, but that, he knew, was ridiculous.

The second, was when he dug his phone out of his pocket, he had a message from an unknown contact, that said, “What did you see?” He found the card Rod had handed him, and the number matched. He thought about replying and telling him off, but every time he tried to start the message it fell flat. Too angry, or too apologetic, or too many questions. He pictured Rod up in the VIP lounge, watching him freak out in the bathroom, and he felt like a fool, but the question was still there. He wanted to know. He knew that Samuel had seen something, and that it was important to him. If he had drugged him, it was because he wanted this from him. That made Samuel madder, of course, but it also made him feel important, and special, and he had a weakness for flattery.

The third, was that for the rest of the morning, he couldn’t seem to shake the feeling from his bones that what he’d seen hadn’t just been a wild trip–it had been real. Beyond real. Something and somewhere else. He just couldn’t stop seeing it, no matter how hard he tried to push it away, it was always just there, a heaving, pulsating image; a horror. He ate a little, but felt the gorge rise again, and instead left the apartment, for a constitutional that he hoped would clear his mind a bit. His feet took him past the gallery where he’d started his night, and he looked at his work. Work he’d been so proud of, it all felt so empty now. He had seen something true, and before this, he’d been painting around the edges of another world, another existence, and this was a vision right into the heart of it, he was somehow certain of this. He resisted the urge to pull it all down and tear it up–instead, he went to the studio and tried to paint it, tried, desperately, to force it out of him, to sketch it, to mold it, to paint it, to pin it down as something outside of himself at last.

Every hour or so, he would stare at that text again, and ponder it. The art wasn’t coming, but he had to know more, he wanted to know what he’d seen. 

“Can we meet again?” he texted back.

They arranged another meeting in a few days, and Samuel sat back in his chair, rearranged patterns on the ceiling, thought of the tear, thought of stepping through it, of what he might find. ‘Flesh’, his mind replied without prompting. Flesh–he would find true flesh.

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TPC – Chapter 1.9

Chapter 9 – A Virgin Smoke

Feeling like he’d dodged a bit of a bullet, Kyle took off down the driveway and onto the sidewalk, only slowing up when he’d gotten a few houses away from Dennis and Barrys’ home. “Fucking hell, I’d thought they’d be cooler,” he muttered to himself. The gay couple on the street had always held a certain mystique for him as he was growing up, even though he knew his rather conservative parents were highly suspicious of them. When Barry had come around to ask if Kyle might watch their cat while they were on vacation, he remembered how reluctant his dad had been to let him. They weren’t even going to be home, and yet somehow he was still certain his son would see something horrifying. 

Of course, Kyle had poked around a bit, but other than a few dildos, there hadn’t been anything interesting, like the sort of stuff he’d been checking out on the internet since he was fourteen. Despite protesting otherwise to Dennis back in the club, he was still a relative virgin. The closest he’d gotten at this point was an awkward threesome, oral only, with Marlon and Jimmy, the couple he’d gone to Depot with that evening. He checked his phone–no messages from them. Some friends, what if he’d gotten kidnapped or something? He sent them a message, telling them that he was home already, he’d gotten tired and bussed back home. The lie was stupid, but he didn’t really feel like dealing with the truth right now.

The stupidest part, he supposed, was that he’d always harbored a little crush on Dennis. Kyle had a bit of a thing for older, bearish guys, and while Dennis would have shuddered knowing that anyone thought he might be a bear, his dad bod and beard was the only thing around the suburb to fantasize about that seemed remotely plausible. Then, there had been the kiss. They’d never talked about it, of course, but Kyle had hoped it meant Dennis at least liked him. It had made tonight’s betrayal more stark, that his neighborhood crush had been so eager to turn him in and drag him home, to put him back in the little box Kyle hated so damn much.

All these little boxes, he thought, looking at the dark houses around him. The city felt so vibrant, that club felt so full of life, and everything around here was so dead and empty. Every adult he knew was so focused on him succeeding, and none of them even bothered to ask him what he might think success would look like for him. Kyle didn’t even know what it might look like, but it wasn’t this. He hated this. He hated hiding himself, he hated being someone that other people wanted him to be, and he kept thinking about that burly fellow, about the leather, the cigar, the smell and taste of him, what he might have shown him tonight, if Dennis hadn’t stepped in and squashed it.

He knew it was dangerous. He knew it was a bad idea. But he also knew that he wanted it, and he’d tried not wanting it, he’d tried telling himself all of the dangers, all of the bad things that might happen if he went there, but none of it had put out the fire that was in him, and so he’d gone anyway. His friends hadn’t even really wanted to, and now they weren’t even answering his texts back. Assholes. 

He let himself into his house. It was dark too, his parents already in bed. To them, a high school party wasn’t a reason to worry, and Kyle hadn’t driven anywhere, which was their big concern if he drank. It confused him, sometimes, that they could be so controlling about his future, and yet seemed so uninterested in partying, or drinking, or anything like that. Just last month, one of the football players had gotten caught buying alcohol underage, and gotten his admission and athletic scholarship revoked. His whole life was over. But that wasn’t risky, somehow, to them. He took the steps two at a time to his room, and only when the door was securely shut and locked, did he dare, finally, pull out the thing he’d felt that bear slide into his back pocket, when Dennis had shown up and interrupted them. He had an inkling of what it might be, and sure enough, he found himself holding a cigar.

Kyle had never smoked one before, but he’d always been intrigued by them. His dad wasn’t fond of smoking, and when his older brother had been caught with cigarettes years ago, he had gotten in a rather impressive amount of trouble. Kyle hadn’t wanted to repeat the same mistake. The allure was there all the same–what was the worst that could happen, really? Not in here though–the smell would give him away in the morning. He went downstairs, found a book of matches in the drawer, and then slipped into the backyard, squeaking open the door to the shed and sliding inside.

The space was cramped, but better than nothing. He looked over the cigar, saw it had been punched already, and put that end in his mouth. He knew that much at least. Then he struck a match and took a few puffs, like he’d seen guys do in a few of the videos he’d watched. It took three or four before he’d managed to get the light mostly even across the end, and he’d needed at least one break to cough a bit, after taking too much smoke in. Was this supposed to be sexy? It didn’t really feel that sexy. But then, here he was, crouched in his parent’s shed, hiding away with an illicit smoke slipped to him by a stranger in a club…nothing about this was very sexy. He was about to snuff the thing out and figure out how to dispose of the evidence, when he noticed that the cigar was putting out a bit more smoke than he thought it should be, since he wasn’t actively smoking it. He watched it curl around in the still air of the shed, and after a moment, it formed into…into a face.

“Ah, there you are,” it said, giving Kyle a wink. “Now, shall we continue from where we were so rudely interrupted?”

It was hard to tell in the dark, but from the voice, Kyle was sure, somehow, he was talking to the guy from the bar, who had given him the cigar. He went to snuff it out, certain it must be laced with something, only for the face to swoop down and stop him.

“Hold up there boy, calm down. Nothing to worry about here, trust me.”

“How…how the fuck are you talking to me?”

The head gave something like a shrug, without the shoulders. “Why don’t you keep smoking that cigar there, and then I can do something more than talk, eh?”

He hesitated a moment, then took another drag off the cigar, exhaled, and the smoke swirled around the head, adding to it, neck and the tops of the shoulders taking shape. Another drag, and he was looking at a proper bust. Another, and the man was there from the waist up. Tentatively, Kyle reached out to touch him, and felt his hand slide right through the figure–but when the man’s hand reached over gripped his wrist, and pulled his hand free, he could have sworn he was being touched by real flesh and blood. “I don’t understand how any of this is possible.”

“But you want to find out, don’t you boy?” the man said, one hand plucking the cigar from Kyle’s mouth, putting it in his own, and took a long inhale off it himself, the smoke pouring into him, filling out his body, making him appear more solid. More of him formed as well, and after a few more drags, His body was complete, including the sizable cock and balls hovering not too far from Kyle’s face. He took another drag, but held it this time, leaned in, locked lips with Kyle and exhaled it into him. The smoke was harsh, but he didn’t feel the urge to cough. It was just a sudden rush, all through his system, and he moaned, leaning back against the wall of the shed. 

“Take it easy there boy, just let Daddy handle things from here.”

The bear pushed the cigar back into Kyle’s mouth, opened up the fly of Kyle’s pants and pulled his cock free. Despite how strange the whole situation was, Kyle was rock hard, and the bear took it in his mouth and sucked. The mouth was warm, but not wet. He could feel the tongue and the throat, but nothing slick. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t…real. It wasn’t a body. Then something pushed against the head of his cock, and burrowed down, sliding in and out, making him shudder and gasp. He tried to push the bear off, but again, his hands slipped right through him, unable to touch him.

“Easy boy, just relax. I just want to make you feel good is all,”

“I don’t…how are you doing this?”

“If you really want answers, I can give them to you. But for now, I need you to relax. Just inhale, and relax…I’m not going to hurt you. I just want you to feel good, alright?”

Kyle nodded, took another drag off the cigar, and relaxed again. The bear returned to his cock, sounding him with his smoke again, and he could feel the heat of it, the sensation. Kyle shuddered again and moaned, and it wasn’t long before his cock exploded in the bear’s mouth–or rather all over the floor of the shed, since like the rest of him, it couldn’t seem to touch him.

The cigar was dwindling at this point, and Kyle felt sick to his stomach from it. “I think that’s enough for tonight, boy,” the bear said, “I’ll be going soon. If you want to know more, go ahead and check the band–I’ll be waiting for you, if you want more.”

With that, the bear’s body dissolved back into smoke, leaving Kyle alone in the shed, still uncertain that the entire experience had actually occurred. He snuffed out the cigar and took the band off the end. It wasn’t a label he recognized, but then, he wasn’t sure why he would have expected to. He flipped it over, and on the inside, which had been against the leaf, there was something stamped. The name of a smoke shop, apparently, along with an address. If he was placing it right, it was just a couple blocks over from Depot, a little deeper into Pigtown than the club had been.

Kyle tucked the band into his pocket and got himself pulled together again. After a late night shower to get the worst of the smoky smell off him, he headed for bed, but whether it was the nicotine or the experience itself, he didn’t sleep for most of the night. He just…thought. Thought about that bear, thought about his dad, thought about college starting in a few months. Thought about what he wanted. Thought about the impossible.

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TPC – Chapter 1.8

Chapter 8 – Pigtown’s Shadow

Both Marlon and Jimmy had been reluctant when Kyle had suggested going out to a club that night. It wasn’t that they were bothered by the idea of going out, or drinking underage, it was that in their opinion, gay clubs were passé. Who went out to a club anymore? It seemed like such an anachronism. If you wanted to meet a guy, you got on tinder. If you wanted to get a drink or party, there were way more exciting places to do it than with a bunch of gay guys. But with enough badgering they relented, climbed into Jimmy’s car, and headed downtown to Depot.

But now, Jimmy and Marlon were converts. The sheer energy and vitality in the room was unlike anything they’d felt before, and by far, the strangest and most thrilling part was that in Depot they were normal. Growing up in the wealthy suburbs, going to wealthy schools, they were all part of the same upper class as the rest of their peers, and for the most part, the homophobia they’d faced was minimal in the liberal culture. But while they weren’t hated, they weren’t normal, either. They’d never really thought about all the ways they were constantly pressured to conform and tone themselves down, so that the people around them–the straight people–didn’t have reasons to be afraid of them. To hate them.

But here, they weren’t just normal, if anything, they were boring. The makeup, the bodies, the sex, all of it. The energy was infectious, and by the time last call came around, the two of them were amazed to discover that hours had passed and felt like no time at all. That, and Kyle was nowhere to be found. They checked their phone and found his message saying he’d gone home already, and they chuckled at that. The guy who had been so eager to come out had left early, and here they were, still having fun. 

In an effort to be responsible, Jimmy hadn’t had a drink since that first one, but Marlon had gone back to the bar for a few more as the night progressed. He wasn’t falling over wasted, but he was more than a bit drunk, enough that as they walked down the sidewalk towards where they’d parked the car, he was leaning on Jimmy for some support. It was cute, Jimmy thought. Looking around, the streets were emptier than he’d ever seen, and it was a little unnerving. As they got closer to the car, he also had the distinct sensation that something was watching them.

He paused, and Marlon almost fell over. “What’s up?”

Jimmy looked behind them, but there was no one there that he could see–but oddly enough, from the corner they’d come around, to a couple of yards away, all of the street lights had gone out. And not just the streetlights–every light on the street. About twenty yards away, everything just went completely black, which shouldn’t even be possible. There was still light around, after all–but it was like something was just absorbing all of it. As he stared into it, trying to look and see what might be in there, another street light flickered and went out, leaving just two between them and the void.

“Come on Jimmy, what’s up?”

“Doesn’t that seem strange to you?” he said, pointing into the darkness. “Those were all lit up a second ago.”

“Everything around here is falling apart man, it’s not that strange,” Marlon said. He tried to stand up on his own, but ended up stumbling over and leaning against the side of the building.

“Hello there, boys, how’s the night?” The voice came from the doorway not far from where Marlon was leaning. The space was dark, the same kind of shadowdark as the street they’d come from. A man in full black leather stepped out onto the sidewalk, the only bit of skin visible was the lower part of his face, and even that was obscured by a thick black beard. The band of his muir cap was pulled low, so his eyes were impossible to see. “You aren’t going home yet, are you? You know the night’s just getting started around here.”

“Actually, we are heading home, thanks,” Jimmy said, pulled Marlon over to him, and they kept walking down the street. As they passed under each street light ahead of them, it would flicker, and then go out as they crossed to the next. He looked behind them, but the man had slipped back into the darkness and was impossible to see. They were almost to the car, which was on the next block, and at least the guy seemed to be alone. But then, the light ahead of them flickered and went out leaving an empty hole in front of them. Jimmy pulled up short, but Marlon, whose head had been watching the sidewalk for cracks, stumbled on into the dark, and just…disappeared. 

Jimmy just waited, expecting him to come back out, but there was nothing. Not even the sound of his footsteps, or of him breathing. He stepped closer to the edge of the light, when he heard something behind him. Boots on pavement. The stranger stepped out of the shadow again, right on the edge of the light. “Where’s your friend, boy? Wasn’t he just here?”

“Dude, get the fuck away from me, alright?”

“He just stumbled into the darkness, didn’t he? He can’t be that far away. Go on, just take a little step–you aren’t afraid of the dark, are you?”

The man stepped closer, looming over him, the dark behind him, the man before him. He edged his foot back, but he couldn’t…feel the sidewalk there, in the dark. He felt like he was being pushed to the edge of a pit.

“Jimmy?”

It was Marlon’s voice, but it seemed so far away. “Jimmy, where are you?” he replied.

“Right here Jimmy, I’m at the car. Come on, Jimmy, let’s go home, you have the keys.”

Another moment, and maybe he would have stepped back, and found out what was in the dark. But instead, a bright beam of light cut through the dark behind the man, and he winced, visibly, as though the light had hurt him. 

“Fuck, is it another one of Shadow’s puppets? I thought we’d gotten them all!” someone shouted.

“He has someone cornered!” 

The man in the leather, glowered. “A pity,” he said, straightened his coat, stepped past Jimmy into the dark, and like a switch, all of the lights came back on up and down the street. He blinked, and saw a couple of men running towards him with flashlights, and coming closer, he saw they were police officers. “Fuck, it’s just a kid,” one of them said. 

Jimmy looked around for Marlon, but he wasn’t on the sidewalk. Looking further up, to the car, he wasn’t there either, that he could see. “M-Marlon?” he called out. “Marlon!”

“Hey, hey!” one of the officers grabbed him by the arm, and shone the light in his eyes. “What the fuck are you doing out here this time of night, kid?”

“I…My boyfriend and I, we were just going home!”

“What the fuck are you doing out here? God fucking damn it!”

“Give him a break Williams,” the other officer said, and pulled the other off him. Something seemed off about the two of them, somehow–they weren’t quite…right. They didn’t quite seem to have the build he would have expected from the police officers out in the suburbs. Their beards were longer and unkempt, their uniforms dirty and wrinkled. “Did you say your boyfriend?” the officer asked. 

“Yeah, he…he stepped into the dark, and…and now I don’t know where he is.”

“Into the dark?” the officer said, “What do you mean ‘into’?”

“It was the shadows, I don’t know. The guy wanted me to go in too, but then you showed up.”

“I didn’t think any of his puppets could do that,” the other officer said, looking around.

“What’s your name, kid?” the nicer officer asked.

“Jimmy.”

“Alright Jimmy, I need you to listen to me,” he said, and locked eyes with him. A sense of calm washed over him, and the only thing that was keeping him standing was the officer’s firm hand on his shoulder. “Is that your car over there, kid?”

Jimmy nodded.

“You’re going to walk straight there, Jimmy. You’re going to get in, and drive home. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

“M-Marlon.”

“You let us take care of Marlon. You don’t need to worry about him. You don’t need to think about him for a while, or wonder where he is. The most important thing for you to do now, is to go home, and don’t come back here, for Christ’s sake kid. Stay the fuck out of Pigtown if you know what’s best for you.”

Jimmy nodded, the officer looked away, and gave him a little push towards his car. Jimmy did as the officer said, went right to his car–half expecting that Marlon might be inside waiting for him, but he wasn’t. He drove himself home, and found himself staring at every shadow he passed, but they were all empty ,and normal. Not like that strange, deep darkness. Still, he kept a lamp on next to his bed all night long, not that he slept much. He might not have been afraid of the dark before–but he was now.

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TPC: Chapter 1.7

Chapter 7 – Home Safe

The ride home was quiet. Dennis was driving, Barry was sitting in the passenger seat, and Kyle was in the back, slumped against the window, not quite sure whether he should be angry or terrified. Barry wasn’t quite sure what Dennis had in mind with this whole thing–was he really going to out the kid to his asshole father, just for wanting to get into a gay club? It seemed…cruel, but then, Dennis had always had a bit of a cruel streak in him. Barry had largely been able to avoid it, but his husband had never had much sympathy for gays who fell outside of the normal range of behavior that his rather conservative upbringing could tolerate. Assimilation or scorn were the choices, and Barry had chosen the first. He regretted it at times, but at least he was comfortable.

It took about half an hour to get out of the city and into the suburb where the three of them lived. It was an older subdivision, built in the early 90’s. The lots still had yards in the front and the back, rather than the strips of grass that passed for outdoor space in more modern construction, with your neighbor’s prying eyes six feet away from you next door. Barry expected him to drop Kyle off at his house, but they drove past it and arrived at their own, pulling into the driveway.

“So, do your parents know you were out tonight, or did you sneak out?”

“I…I told them I was over at a friend’s house for the evening. They don’t mind if I get back home late.”

“Look, I’m doing this for your own good, alright?” Dennis said, “I know that places like that seem fun, but trust me when I say, they’re dangerous–”

There was a light scoff that came from Barry at that, but Dennis ignored it, aside from a little pause.

“–Guys do a lot of drugs in places like that, and there are guys who will take advantage of you, alright?”

“I’m not a virgin, you know,” Kyle said, “I know what sex is, you don’t have to treat me like a kid.”

“You are a fucking kid though, and I know you don’t see that, but when you’re grown up, and have a job, you’ll understand that this was for the best, and I expect a thank you note when you get there.”

Kyle looked away at the window. “Are you gonna tell my dad?”

“It depends–”

“Of course we won’t.”

Dennis looked over at Barry, who was glaring at him from the passenger seat. “We’re not going to tell his dad, that’s fucking awful to even suggest it,” Barry said.

“Alright, I’m not going to tell your dad, this time, but you know what Kyle? You need to tell him. I know it’s scary, alright? My parents weren’t exactly the…most supportive people, of the lifestyle.”

“You didn’t come out to them until you were thirty, Dennis, stop making it sound like you’re some brave soul,” Barry said, and flipped around, “I don’t think there was anything wrong with you being there, I think you were right to get out of from under your parents thumb, and I don’t really think you should listen to Dennis on this one. Live your fucking life while you still can, alright Kyle? And if you go out again, and you get in trouble, then call us and we’ll come pick you up, alright?”

“Barry, that’s–”

“Let it go, Dennis, I think you got your little snitch high from this already, he’s scared enough. Go home Kyle.”

Sensing an opportunity to get away from this uncomfortable situation at last, Kyle nodded, thanked them for the ride home, and took off down the sidewalk at a quick stroll, leaving Barry and Dennis in the car, silent. Barry got out first, and went into the house, with Dennis following close behind. “Is there something you want to say to me?” he asked, “It seems like there’s something you’d like to talk about.”

“I can’t fucking believe you sometimes, you know that?” Barry said.

“What! He’s underage! He shouldn’t be in a place like that, and you know it.”

“Just because you were immature, and too scared to do anything fun when you were younger, doesn’t mean the rest of us weren’t willing to take a risk now and then. And threatening to out him to his father! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“He’ll have to tell him at some point, he might as well rip the bandaid off now.”

“Brave words from you. Why didn’t you tell your parents, huh?”

“That was different, and you know it.”

“Why weren’t you brave, Dennis? Just rip the bandaid off, you know, it’s easy!” Barry said, cooing at him. “We both know full well why you didn’t, and you were right to not tell them until when you did. And Kyle is right for not telling them too! Why the fuck are you like this? Why are you such a fucking hypocrite?”

“Excuse me?”

“You think you know exactly what’s best for everyone else, all the fucking time, and you dole out all of this mealy-mouthed advice, which everyone knows you would never do in a million years. You’re a fucking coward, Dennis, and you want everyone else to do the work so you don’t have to change.”

“It’s called being an adult, Barry, maybe you should try it sometime. You act like a child, you know that? You’re almost forty for fuck’s sake, why can’t you act like it? You have a good time tonight, pretending you’re a cool kid again? Make you feel better about getting turned down for that amazing promotion yet again?”

“You know damn well why I got turned down.”

“It’s not because you’re gay, Barry. It’s because you’re unserious. Because you’re immature. You think you can go out and party and still be treated like an adult, well at some point, you’re going to have to grow the fuck up.”

“I can’t fucking deal with you sometimes!”

“Well we both know you’ll never leave, because as much as you want to be a little party whore, you want the nice house and the respectable life more, and you’re lucky I’m willing to put up with your shit to give it to you. We both know who pays the fucking mortgage, after all.”

Barry gave up at that point–as soon as Dennis brought up the bills, he knew he’d lost. It was his husband’s favorite point of leverage. Barry made good money, but he didn’t make money like Dennis did, and as much as Barry might resent him for it, he did like it. He liked being taken care of, he liked the comfort. He went upstairs to the bedroom, Dennis stayed down in the living room after getting a beer out of the fridge–most likely, he’d end up sleeping on the couch, which is what usually happened after one of their arguments. Come morning, neither of them would apologize, and they would just move on with their life together, pasting over their frustrations again, and again, because usually, things were fine. Usually. Barry found himself peeling back layers, unable to help himself, wondering how many times you could cover something up before it just came apart anyway.

He got out of his clothes and into bed without a shower, closed his eyes and thought about that pounding bass on the dance floor again, thought about being swept away. Thought about how he’d been too scared to do it, too old. He was getting old, he was getting fucking old! He hated that, he hated how it felt like he had wasted his youth trying to be a good gay, trying to be a smart, clever, business gay, and now here he was, stuck in a job he hated, with the ladder rapidly getting pulled up away from him. He’d been passed over for a promotion again, for someone younger than him, a good little straight boy, twenty-eight, with a wife and a kid on the way. He knew the reasoning. He had a family to support, after all. But Barry didn’t want a family, Barry just wanted to be respected. He wanted his work to be seen and appreciated. He wanted the money too, of course. But why had he worked so hard, and missed so much, if all he got for it was a boring office job as he just kept getting older, and older, and older.

He got up again, dug around in the pocket of his pants, and pulled the card out Hugh had given him. None of what Hugh had told him seemed possible. None of it had even made sense. If he told Dennis about it he would scoff at the fantasy, but after the argument, that just made it more appealing. Mostly he was tired. Tired of things being safe, tired of being bored. It couldn’t hurt to ask, right? 

TPC – Chapter 1.6

Chapter 6 – The VIP

For Samuel, the coke had kicked in, the floor, the air, the bodies around him were all thrumming with energy and rhythm, and he was swept elsewhere for a time. It didn’t bother him that he’d lost track of Barry–his ex was such a square. It was clear that Barry missed him and the scene and he wondered what he could have had if the two of them had stuck it out, but as Samuel had told him when they broke up, there was no real future between them. They existed in totally different realms, on different layers of reality. There would never be a place for either of them in the other’s world–not without a substantial change for one of them, something neither was really willing to do. Dennis was a bore, but if Barry liked that, and he’d liked it enough to marry it, good for him. Samuel didn’t understand it at all, but knowing how much Dennis made, and how Barry had always thirsted for a climb up the corporate ladder, maybe for the right price, you could like anything, really.

It was fun, getting back together on occasion though. Samuel got bored easily–of his art, of his patrons, of his boyfriends. He thought about going to find Parker, but that was beginning to bore him as well. Sure, he was hot. Sure, he could fuck. But he couldn’t hold a conversation for more than a minute without losing track of it, and as hot as his body was, his steroid habit was taking the fun out of sex for them both, since his dick couldn’t get hard. Probably time to cut that off soon, he supposed, but there was still a little fun to squeeze out before parting ways, and moving on to someone else.

He was coming down a bit, the music was slowing, the smell of the dance floor was becoming a little more ripe than he usually liked, and he allowed himself to be washed up on the edge, damp and breathing hard, but exhilarated for the moment. He made his way towards the patio for another drink, and maybe another bump from Hugh, but before he got there, a bouncer came over and stepped in front of him.

“Pardon me, Mr. Boone? Samuel Boone?”

He stopped short and looked around. “Me? How do you know my name?”

“I have a member in the VIP lounge who would like you to join him for a moment,” the bouncer said, avoiding the question.

Samuel hadn’t even been aware that Depot had a VIP lounge. “I mean…sure. Did he say why?”

“Follow me,” the bouncer said, and they headed for a corner of the room, off to one side from the stage, which Samuel had always assumed was a blank wall. In fact, there was a hallway that wound deeper into the building, until it came to a red lit junction. There was the break room for the staff ahead, and to the left a velvet rope. Not a very attractive VIP area. The bouncer unhooked the rope, and they ended up climbing a flight of stairs to the upper level, where the old overseer’s area of the building had been converted into a rather cozy bar above the stage. There were a dozen or so men there, most of them sprawled out on something between a bed and a pile of pillows, engaged in rather slow, methodical sex. To Samuel, it looked like acid sex. The bouncer didn’t give the orgy much of a look, but took Samuel over to the short bar, where an older fellow in a well tailored suit was sitting, sipping a cocktail. He turned on the stool and his dark grey eyes lit up. “Ah! I had heard we had an emerging artist in the building. Welcome, my name’s Rod,” he said, getting up and extending his hand, “Have a seat, won’t you?”

Samuel did, and the bartender set the drink he’d been mixing in front of him–the same he’d ordered earlier when he’d walked in, but with top shelf liquor this time. “Alright, this is a bit strange. How did you know I was here? And how did you know to make this?”

Ron motioned to an alcove behind the bar, where there were a number of television screens, all of them broadcasting the activities of the folks below. Most of them were focused on the…seedier corners and corridors where the sex was happening, but there were also a few at the entrance, and the patio. Enough to collect intel, if necessary. “Perhaps it seems invasive, but I want my guests to have a good time. A little supervision goes a long way towards letting my team deal with bad actors.”

“I see,” Samuel said.

“Now, I must apologize, I wanted to attend your event earlier this evening, but my work here takes precedence. I saw your art when I passed the gallery earlier this week, and was rather mesmerized. You have a spectacular eye, you know. A little more development, and I believe you would be a singular talent. When I recognized you on the screen, I knew I needed to see you this evening, and had my bouncers keep an eye out.”

It sounded like flattery, and it probably was, but Samuel didn’t mind it. That didn’t mean he didn’t want something from him, probably a discount. “Anything piece that particularly struck you?”

“Untitled number 13. I purchased it on sight.”

Samuel had been alerted to the sale, to an anonymous buyer. He was impressed, that piece was sizable, and quite expensive. “Well, if you’d wanted to meet me, why the anonymous purchase? For someone with eyes everywhere, you seem to keep a double standard for yourself.”

“Ah, well, perhaps you’re right. But wealth does afford you a measure of hypocrisy, I’ve found,” Rod said, reached over, grabbed hold of Samuel’s jaw, and turned his face towards his own. Their eyes met, and The grey shade of them struck Samuel again, like clouds rolling on a day before a storm, threatening rain or snow, and then he snapped away, something like a zap passing between them, making Samuel blink and his eyes water.

“Fuck, what the hell?” Samuel said, rubbing his eyes.

“My apologies, again,” Rod said. “I mostly wanted to meet you so that I might extend an offer. Patronage, you could say. A monthly stipend and a studio. No strings really, I merely ask that your next project be focused here, on Pigtown.”

That was a lot of money for someone to hand over, with so few conditions. He was suspicious, but also tempted. What starving artist wouldn’t be? 

“Look, give it some thought–the offer is open, no deadline,” Rod said, and passed him a business card with his contact information on it.

“Thanks, I’ll give it some thought.”

“Now, maybe you’d be so kind as to step in with your boyfriend in the bathroom? That is right, isn’t it? He seems to be…escalating, and I would prefer you manage it, rather than one of my bouncers.”

“What?” Samuel said. Rod pointed to one of the monitors, currently showing the bathroom, where Parker had a young man bent over the sink, fucking him rather…roughly. “God damn it…” Samuel muttered.

“Thank you, and do consider my offer, won’t you?”

“Sure thing,” Samuel said, and followed the bouncer back downstairs to the bar proper. He’d seen Hugh and Parker go off talking, before hitting the dance floor with Barry. Those two, probably some fucking experimental shit he’d have to talk him down from–again. Where the fuck did Hugh keep getting that shit from? Why did he even care? He paused for a moment, considering just letting things sort themselves out instead…but already, he could feel his priorities realigning, after that offer of patronage. Rod had asked him to do it–and that made it feel like a test. A silly test, certainly, but Samuel also knew full well he was being watched this moment. It made him feel dirty. With a scowl, he set off for the bathrooms. The sooner he got Parker out of here, the sooner he could get out too, and think about all of this with a clear head.

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TPC – Chapter 1.5

Chapter 5 – The Offer

Barry was panting and sweating through his shirt, trying to decide if he was having a good time or not. The beat of the music only seemed to be quickening, the crush of the bodies around him growing thicker with each moment. It had probably only been a few minutes ago when Samuel had been pulled away from him, but it felt like hours in the throng. Someone pushed up against him, looked down at him, placed two hands on the sides of his face, and kissed him, only to be whisked away by the current of bodies, and replaced by someone else. Why the fuck had he turned down Samuel’s offer of coke a moment before? Why had he thought this would be a good idea? He hadn’t been on a dance floor like this since his mid 20’s, not long after graduating from college, before the pace of work had decimated all nightlife for him aside from the occasional breeder dinner party with Dennis.

He knew from experience that the only way through was surrender. Just give in, forget everything else for a bit and just let the music and the vibe hold him. Each time he tried though, he lost it and just felt out of place and embarrassed. The crowd was well mixed, but he was still older than most of the guys there. He was out of shape, his knees were hurting. Somehow he was sure that Dennis was watching him, scoffing, thinking about what a fool he was being, and that was enough to make him push for the edge of the floor, stumble out of the mass and stand by a table, trying to not look as panicked as he looked around for his shirt and jacket, tugging them on before anyone could look and really see how out of shape he was.

The air was still too thick, the smell of sweat and everything else in the room overwhelming him. He pushed away, looking around for Dennis and an exit. He stumbled out a side door, and found himself in a small patio area where guys were smoking and chatting, or kissing and fucking off in the darker corners of the fenced area. At least the air was cooler, despite the smell of cigars that Barry had never really enjoyed.

“Having a good time?” a voice said.

Barry looked over, and sawt the dealer from before, who had sold Samuel the cocaine, smoking a cigarette. “It was Hugh, right?” Barry asked.

The man nodded. “Looks like you bit off a bit more than you were expecting. Need a bump?”

It sounded appealing, but despite wishing for it out on the floor, he no longer thought it would do much for him, and he shook his head. “I just haven’t been in a club in a while. I’m not quite the twink I like to think of myself as, you know?”

Hugh laughed, “Yeah, it’s a wild scene in there, but good for business. Hell, the whole district has really taken off in the last year. Crazy to think how many places were going under just a couple years ago, but everything is really getting revived. Some solid private investment, I’ve heard, but I don’t know that much about it, really. Here, can I get you another drink at least?”

“Just a water, thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” Hugh said, went over to the smaller bar out on the patio, and returned with a bottle of water that Barry guzzled down. “So, you two don’t seem like the usual types who come around here. That other guy, he your husband?”

Barry nodded. “Yeah, we don’t have much time for a nightlife. I was just trying to pin down when I’d last been in a place like this, and I think…it’s been most of a decade?”

“Work keeps you busy, huh?”

“Yeah. Dennis is a surgeon–joint replacements mostly. I work with CelTech, in their sales department.”

“Sounds dreary to me.”

It was a bit, but Barry didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right. Certainly after his time on the floor, he was almost looking forward to the simplicity and safety offered by his office come Monday.

“Have you ever considered giving it all up? Finding something a little closer to your passions?”

“Excuse me?”

“You have some valuable assets, Barry. They could be worth a lot of money to the right folks, and you could get yourself a life more in line with what you want–what you really want.”

Barry just stared at him. Was he really thinking about networking through a drug dealer, that he’d just met a few minutes ago? 

“Look, I’m just a connector. I connect people to things that they want. A lot of guys here, they want drugs, but I like to think that I can offer many things to many people.”

“And what do you charge for such a service?”

“Oh, I don’t get paid by you. I do receive a commission from the client if I bring them someone who goes through the process successfully, but I guarantee you, you’d get more out of it than me.”

Barry was saved from having to find out more, by Dennis pushing his way through the door and out onto the patio, dragging Kyle out with him. “There you are Barry, come on, it’s time to go.”

Barry looked from Dennis to Kyle and back, confused. “Uh, yeah, sure. Why…Kyle?”

“Hi Mr. Gershom.”

“You’re…oh, I see,” he said, looking back at Dennis. “What happened?”

“This young man got in here, underaged, and I suggested that he let us take him home, or else I’ll tell his father where he’s been sneaking off to.”

“Dennis let go, you have a deathgrip on him.”

Dennis looked over at Kyle, and let go of his wrist, a bit embarrassed. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I’m fucking not, and you’re not my fucking parents anyway.”

Dennis held back an exasperated sigh, glad he’d never had to suffer through children at least. “Let’s just go home, alright?”

Barry nodded, and followed Dennis away, but not before Hugh pressed a business card into his hand. “If you need a contact, you know. There’s better lives out there, if you want them.”

He nodded, and left. Finding their way out of Depot was more difficult than getting in. Barry got the distinct impression, somehow, that the building didn’t want them to go, not yet. It was a silly sensation, but the pull and the flow of bodies, the positioning of walls, all of it made him feel a bit claustrophobic. In the end, they found their way out of the unmarked door and back onto the sidewalk. It was less busy, the city already beginning to turn in for the evening, but the guys who were still out were a little less friendly than Barry preferred. “Come on, let’s go find the car,” Dennis said, and led the way. Barry followed behind him, and Kyle lagged a bit further back, but wasn’t trying to ditch them. Barry wondered what he might say, to help. Looking at the young man’s face, it was a look he recognized–he was unhappy, and he wanted freedom, or something more free than what he had. He thought about telling Dennis they should let him go back, that he should have a chance to be young, and have fun, and feel like himself for a moment at least, but he didn’t. Dennis was right–he was too young to be out here, especially in a place like that. He felt like a snitch all the same, and while Dennis was happy in the role, Barry had always chafed under it, and he resented Dennis for putting him there. At least he’d had a little fun. He sent a text to Samuel explaining their sudden exit and thanking him for the evening, found their car, bundled in and headed home, to the suburbs.

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TPC – Chapter 1.4

Chapter 4 – The Crow’s Nest

Dennis was left behind, as he’d expected he would be. If you’d pinned him down on it, he would have even admitted that he wanted to be abandoned, that it would confirm for him that this was somewhere he didn’t belong, and where he didn’t want to be. He sighed–Barry had promised him one drink, but he could already tell that he’d have to drag him out of here in a couple of hours. He could be such a child.

He started looking for somewhere that he could wait, preferably somewhere quiet and away from the noise of the dance floor, but most of the nooks he found were largely taken up by guys in various states of making out or full blown sex. One thing was for sure, when he was out of here, he’d be dropping an anonymous tip to the liquor control board and the health department, because none of this was acceptable to him, and everyone here should be ashamed of themselves.

Dennis had grown up the son of two doctors, with well entrenched class interests that neither had done much to examine. Dennis’ homosexuality had been a minor wrench in their family, but quickly smoothed over. An anecdote, real or not, that Barry had heard many times at many dinner parties, was that his parents would have been more scandalized by him not going to medical school, than the fact he was gay. His parents’ orthodoxy hadn’t entirely rubbed off on him, but he’d imagined that the sort of debauchery all around him now was beneath gay men, as a culture. They could get married now! They were on TV all the time. This sort of thing just wasn’t necessary, or at the very least, could be kept more discrete. He found a set of stairs leading up. They weren’t cordoned off, but no one seemed to be on the upper level that he could see. On the stairs, someone had spray painted the words “Crow’s Nest” along with an arrow pointing up. A bit curious, he climbed them and found himself on a set of narrow walkways suspended over the warehouse floor. Entirely unsafe, and most certainly another violation of some sort. He’d always kind of enjoyed being a snitch.

The view gave him a good view of the place. There was the dance floor where he was sure Barry and Samuel were still satisfying some of their baser urges. He looked around for where the hell knew where that shady fucker and the meathead had gone, but soon lost interest. He polished off the beer, and set the can off in a little cubby on the wall, and leaned over the railing by the entrance to the bar, deciding to just spend his time looking at the flow of guys coming in, as something to do.

It was after about twenty minutes, when he was contemplating going down and beginning the process of extricating Barry from the place so they could go home, that he saw a trio of younger guys enter the bar. Obviously underage–not surprising, since the bouncer didn’t seem interested in checking ID. They were looking around nervously, tittering a bit and huddling together, before they headed for the bar to get a drink. As they passed under a light, though, Barry realized that he recognized one of them–Kyle Hendricks, a son of one of their neighbors, who they paid to watch their cat, Misty, while they were on vacation.

And so, the snitch in Dennis was torn. On one hand, he loved the idea of getting someone in trouble. On the other hand, Kyle was a good kid, and he’d always taken good care of their home and Misty for them. Besides that, there was the issue of Kyle’s father. It didn’t surprise Dennis to see Kyle here–Barry and him both had sussed out the teenager’s preference rather quickly after their initial introduction. What had concerned them both, though, was the cold treatment they’d gotten from Kyle’s father ever since they’d moved in. He seemed like a garden variety homophobe. He could tolerate Dennis and Barry in his neighborhood, because at least they were respectable, but Dennis didn’t think he would be as accommodating with his own son somehow. There was also the matter of what had happened last summer, but Dennis avoided thinking about that in the moment. What was there to tell anyway? He’d offered to pay Kyle in exchange for helping with cleaning out the garage. Sure, there had been some flirting, maybe. Just some play, really. But then Kyle had kissed him, and Dennis had kissed him back, nothing more, but he was thinking about it now, he knew better than to think about it. Best to bury things like that deep down, and never tell a soul. It was safer that way.

The three young men moved deeper into the bar, and other two kids started making out, while Kyle kept drinking–classic third wheel, then. Maybe he’d come along just to keep them company. Maybe he didn’t even want to be here. The two disappeared into the dance floor not long after that, leaving Kyle alone–and Dennis felt a certain camaraderie, having been abandoned in these sorts of places often, including tonight. If he went down, he could offer him an escape hatch at least. He’d probably be thankful for it. There was no way a good kid like him wanted to be somewhere like this. Kyle finished his beer, and Dennis thought he’d probably just be a good wall flower and stay put, but he didn’t. He was looking around at the other men around, then pushed off from the table, and headed towards…well, Dennis found his theory full of holes already.

Kyle slid closer to the object of interest, a leather clad bear smoking a cigar (indoor smoking, another violation) who was easily twice his age, if not more than that. Older than Dennis, surely. The man looked Kyle over and gave him a nod, the two of them started chatting, and it wasn’t long before the man slid an arm around him and pulled Kyle closer. Dennis wracked his head, trying to remember exactly how old Kyle was. He knew Kyle was eighteen (though he’d been seventeen the summer before, but Dennis definitely wasn’t thinking about that). He was too young to know what he was getting into, what this place was, who that man was and what he was into. Finally feeling a solid moral ground, he headed down to the main floor, and pushed towards the dance floor.

The club had been only moderately packed when they’d entered, and now was beginning to feel crushing. Dennis hadn’t been this close to so many men in a very long time, but rather than exciting, it was just frustrating him. By the time he’d reached the tables around the dance floor, he saw the bear and Kyle had moved from heavy petting to kissing. Dennis walked over, grabbed Kyle by the shoulder and hauled him away from the older man. “Kyle Hendricks, what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

Kyle’s eyes went wide in the dark, and he tried to bolt, but Dennis kept a firm grip on his upper arm.

The bear got up, “Hey man, what’s the deal, this your boy or something?”

“He’s my neighbor, and he’s underage.”

The bear laughed, “Come on man, this is Pigtown–everyone who’s here belongs here, don’t you know that? The kid came onto me, anyway. I was gonna be gentle.”

Dennis gave the bear a glare, and pulled Kyle further away from him. Kyle was a scrawny kid, with long hair that tended to fall over his eyes, something he liked to hide behind. “If you bolt, I swear to God, I will tell your dad what you were doing tonight, and where you were doing it.”

Kyle’s eyes went from startled, to legitimate terror at the threat. “Mr. Case, you–he’d fucking kill me, come on, I just…my friends wanted to come out, and I…I didn’t really want to, I…”

“Yeah yeah, you just wanted to get all up in some leather bear’s grill, huh? I am going to firmly suggest that you are probably too young to know what you actually want.”

“I’m…I’m eighteen, it’s legal.”

“There’s a distinction between legal and right. Now, Barry and I are going to take you home, and if I catch wind of you doing anything like this again, I will have to make an issue of it with your father, do you understand?” He stood Kyle next to an empty table. “Now, I have to find Barry, and then we’re leaving. You do not take your hand off this table, do you understand me?”

Kyle nodded, and watched as Dennis slipped into the throng of bodies on the dance floor, looking for his husband, surprisingly satisfied to have both the moral high ground, and an indisputable reason to leave this place. Kyle heaved a sigh, trying to get his heart to stop pounding in his ears, and looked back over at the bear a few yards away. The leather bear was looking back at him, with a rather pitiful look, and that just made Kyle angrier. He hated pity. His friends pitied him, for his asshole family. He pitied himself, because he was scrawny. He’d been the one to suggest this place, anyway, not that Dennis needed to know that. He looked down at his hand, still on the table where Dennis had put it. He could let go–he knew that. He could go back over to that bear, he…he could say fuck it. Who cares if his Dad knew, anyway? He’d figure it out. But he didn’t pull his hand away–he just waited, feeling like the child he mostly was still, and hating himself for it. 

The bear just shrugged, and took another drag on his cigar. The boy would have to grow up sometime, after all. Besides, he was pretty sure he’d be seeing more of him soon enough.

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TPC – Chapter 1.3

Chapter 3 – A Dose of BHB

Parker watched Samuel pull that prudish looking little twerp away towards the dance floor, and if he hadn’t been coasting on the high from the weed he and Samuel had smoked before the gallery show, he might have been able to muster some resentment, or perhaps, jealousy. Instead, he pulled Hugh off in another direction, beside a few small tables and the hallway that led down to the bathrooms. Parker liked Hugh, they understood each other. It helped that the dealer was a slight fellow, he could overpower if he had to, and Hugh obviously had the hots for him, letting him get a discount on occasion, That was just perks though–it was the slicked back hair, the try hard suit that didn’t quite fit, the scruff, the cheap cologne–that was how Parker had known just from looking at him that they’d both come from relatively nothing. They were both just trying to make their way up in a world of their liking–Hugh was pushing his way up, and Parker was lifting and fucking his way there.

“You have my stuff?” Parker asked. Hugh had been his hookup for various steroids and hormones for about a year now, since Pigtown had really started taking off. The dealer was actually how Parker and Samuel had met, in fact. They’d both been buying from him at the same time, at Poni–a little hole in the wall bar that was defunct now–and the two of them, high on their preferred substances, had fucked in the bathroom, and woken up together in Samuel’s apartment the next day, no real memory of how they’d gotten there. That had been happening more and more, lately–not remembering how he got home, and not just to him. Samuel had noticed it, along with some of their friends, who had taken to calling it a Pigtown hangover. He knew it was probably worrisome, but it never felt…disorienting, or like he’d been in danger. If anything, it was a sign that he was living life to the fullest. “Took me a bit to work the funds up for you, sorry,” Parker said, and pulled out a wad of cash, some of which he’d pilfered from Samuel earlier that day. It wasn’t the first time. If Samuel noticed, he didn’t say anything about it. It was the price you had to pay, if you wanted to keep a stud like Parker around, after all.

“Yeah man, of course,” Hugh said. “But before we get to that, I got my hands on that new shit we’d discussed last week.”

“Oh?”

“Yep,” Hugh said, dug around in a pocket, and pulled out a little vial of clear liquid–no label. “Combination steroid, performance enhancer, and aphrodisiac. Like I said, it hits like a ton of bricks, cock rock hard whenever you want it.”

Parker loved the body he was getting on the drugs Hugh had been selling him, but one of the side effects had been some rather embarrassing impotence. He hadn’t been able to get hard for Samuel regularly all of a sudden, something that his boyfriend had proceeded to mock him over, only for Parker to take shots at Samuel’s chubby frame in retaliation. They put on a good show out in public, but things were getting rocky between them. As much as the artist could annoy the fuck out of him, he happily enabled Parker’s drug habit, his gym membership, and he hadn’t had to hold down an actual job in months, since Samuel’s year had been flush. “What’s it called?”

“Some guys are calling it BHB, or Big Horny Bastard.”

“Is it hormones? Some of those you’ve given me fuck me up, you know that.”

“Trade secrets, you know that.”

“Fine, I’ll try it.”

Hugh motioned down the hallway, “Come on then, stud, let’s get it in you.”

Hugh led the way, his rather slight frame, dwarfed by Parker following behind him. The bathroom wasn’t empty, but that didn’t matter. No one here really used the bathrooms as a bathroom. They found an empty stall, Parker dropped his pants and turned around, pushing his ass, speckled with acne, back towards Hugh. The dealer pulled out a clean hypo, drew the serum from the vial, jabbed it into Parker’s ass, and gave it a squeeze. “Now, it’s subcutaneous, but give it ten minutes or so, and you’ll be feeling it.”

Parker gripped his waistband, but Hugh tugged the shorts he had on down further. Knowing the deal, and willing to get his discount, Hugh turned around, sat down on the toilet, and let Hugh get down on his knees in front of him, and take his soft cock in his mouth, Hugh’s hands exploring his thighs and chest as he sucked. After a minute, Parker’s face went a bit red–he was still soft. This was the fucking problem! He pushed Hugh off him, embarrassed and frustrated. ‘It’s not working,” he said.

“Give it a bit, alright?” Hugh said, and pushed Parker’s hand away. “Trust me.”

Parker let Hugh get back to sucking, and after a couple minutes, he did feel something. First, and most important, his cock got hard. And not the usual sort of hard-ish he’d been working with for months now. It had been enough to get into a well worked hole, but not quite hard enough to satisfy the bottom, or give him the confidence to really thrust and drive deep. It certainly hadn’t been hard enough to crack a cherry. But this…this was properly hard. Hugh looked up from where he was sucking, grinning around Parker’s cock, knowing his customer was satisfied. But the hardness wasn’t all of it. There was sensitivity. There was control. The sensation thrumming through his cock wasn’t overwhelming, though it was intense. He didn’t feel like he was about to blow at any moment. He knew exactly how distant he was from orgasm, and when he felt Hugh getting him close to the edge, he pushed him back–not ready to cum just yet.

“What’s up?”

“Don’t want to cum yet.”

“You’ll still be hard after, trust me.”

Parker was reluctant, but when Hugh went back to sucking, he didn’t object, riding the wave of pleasure until he burst down Hugh’s throat. Hugh pulled away, licking his lips and stood up. Parker looked down and saw that, true to Hugh’s word, his cock was still plenty hard–that, and he was still horny as hell. Every touch to his cock seemed to set it further on fire, and he shook his head, trying to keep himself under control. “Fuck, this is intense.”

“Not too bad, I hope.”

“Fuck no! It’s amazing.”

“Good to hear. Now, listen, it’s not like anyone has tested this shit a lot, alright? I’m not hearing about any big problems, but currently, I’m recommending that you dose two days, and then cycle off, and repeat that each week, alright? You notice anything off, you call me right away.”

“Sure, sure.”

Have the rest of this vial. That’ll be your dose tomorrow. As always, please use clean needles.”

“Whatever, fuck! I’m so fucking hard!” Parker said, gripping his cock and squeezing it, enjoying the sensation that he hadn’t felt it quite some time. 

“Happy to be of service, as always.”

“I bet you are,” Parker said, got up and pushed Hugh against the wall of the stall, running a hand down the back of his pants. He felt good. Really fucking good, and he was ready to go all over again. “How about another tip?”

Hugh pushed back, hard enough to make Parker move away. “Not now, I have business, you know that.”

“Fine, if you say so, but you know you want it.”

“I’m sure I’ll get a taste soon enough,” Hugh said, and gave Parker a kiss on the cheek. “Pleased to be of service stud. Now, my fee? I’ll take the usual this week, but just so you know, this shit is expensive. Only one supplier, you know the deal. Gonna be $200 a week.”

“Seriously?”

“You know I would never rip you off stud.”

Fuck, I don’t have that much.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, or we can go back to the usual.”

Yeah right, like Parker was going to do that, after how good he was feeling on this shit. He pulled the wad of cash he’d taken out earlier at Hugh, the dealer took it, and slipped out of the bathroom, leaving Parker alone, and still plenty horny. Should he go find Samuel, drag him back here, and remind him why he’s with him? He considered it, but a cubbish fellow peeked into the stall, saw how hard Parker was still, and turned around, hole loose and still drooling cum from whoever had last used him. He wasn’t going to object. He pulled the boy in, left the door open for anyone could watch if they wanted, and all that passed between them was a series of grunts and moans, Parker taking his time, and giving the cub the proper sort of fuck that he wouldn’t forget anytime soon. 

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