Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Is this how They are born?
Is he becoming one of Them?
“Elias …” he moans. “We need … We need to …”
Elias has reached the point of no return. Kyle feels it just as certainly as his own. The two come together with their crazed eyes locked upon each other’s. Their orgasms carry on as long as the sex itself did, wave after wave, every pinch of tension in their bodies breaking away, every worry, every frustration.
A calm settles over them. Elias takes hold of Kyle’s face so gently, he’d think he was made of glass.
He says, “You mean everything to me, Kyle.”
Kyle swallows, staring back into Elias’s eyes, overwhelmed. Every time after sex, the connection is there, but only slightly, as it starts to detach, thread by thread, the presence of Elias in Kyle’s mind slowly ebbing.
“You mean everything to me,” Elias repeats so soft, nearly inaudible. “Everything …”
Kyle brings his lips to Elias right then, kissing him.
It’s the only thing he can do.
It’s the only thing, to stop the voices in Kyle’s head that tell him they shouldn’t do this anymore.
Hours later, the men hold each other on the couch, Kyle swimming in the afterglow of Elias’s taste. So many nights have passed now, so many nights Kyle didn’t have the strength to resist Elias, to stop him, to have the talk.
So many nights, their feelings have grown.
“Do you ever worry someone will find out about us?” asks Kyle after a while of silence, lost in thought.
Elias is half asleep already. “Mmm… how can anyone find out? Your secret only exists here, between us, in the walls of this old—” He fights off a yawn. “—this old house you let no one else in. No one in the world can threaten that.” His words run together as sleep takes over. “Not even if … if she sends a hundred cars out here looking for me …”
Kyle lifts his face from Elias’s chest. “She? Who’s she?”
Elias starts snoring.
Kyle frowns, then lays his head back on Elias’s chest.
Time carries on, indifferent to Kyle’s daily internal battle. Every night at work, Kyle can’t help but obsess about how Elias tasted the night before. Or the hungry look in Elias’s eyes. Or the hypnotizing sound of his strong and racing heart.
Every morning after, Kyle’s resolve crumbles further, yet he recites to himself anyway: “We won’t do this again.”
Then they do it again.
And again.
It’s a Wednesday when Kyle stares at the clock on the wall of the bar, waiting for the night to end. Or is it Tuesday? Every shift at the bar is just an obstacle in the way of what he really wants: to be home, taking a taste of whatever body part Elias offers. It has consumed him. It’s all he can think about, all he cares about, all he wants.
“Don’t worry,” says Leland as he sweeps the floor with a broom, too bored and restless to stay in the kitchen. “He will get picked up by his nephew, as usual.” He’s talking about their last customer, an old man who passed out half an hour ago at the bar, face nearly planted in the peanut bowl. If it wasn’t for that damned customer, they might be closed already, and Kyle could go home. “Hey, you alright, Henry? Bet you could use a night off. Becks would come in for you tomorrow if you asked.” Leland hums to himself as he returns to sweeping the floor, then yawns.
Kyle stares at the old man’s glass, an inch of bourbon still in it, and imagines that it’s an inch of blood instead.
He licks his lips as he thinks about what it would taste like.
Every nerve ending in Kyle’s body feels like it’s been pulled taut, wound up to exhaustion, like strings of a guitar tuned too tightly, on the verge of snapping. Something happy and terrible jumps around inside of him, excited, yearning, impatient.
Impatient to a degree that feels fatal.
Impatient to a degree that overwrites all sense, all logic, all maturity.
At once he’s next to the counter, teeth bared, glaring at that inch of bourbon, that wasteful inch of bourbon sitting in the glass. He beholds yet another fantasy of Elias, who saunters to the other side of the bar, slices his thumb, and pours it into the glass with a knowing smirk. “Drink,” this fantasy Elias says, commanding him, yearning to watch it. “Drink me from this glass, drink me from my body, drink every inch of me.”
Drink every inch of me.
Every inch, until there’s nothing left.
Nothing left but bone and meat.
Nothing left but spilled blood.
Drink.
Kyle shuts his eyes, rubs them aggressively, then lets out a shout that makes Leland jump, startled, as well as the old man at the bar, who flinches awake so violently, he nearly knocks his glass straight off the counter. Kyle grabs that glass, kicks it back at once, then slams it down and squeezes shut his eyes as the alcohol burns over his tongue, savors it as if the fantasy is real, as if it’s blood, Elias’s.