Chapter 9

I heard my alarm clock go off and like every school morning, set in a repetitive routine, I rolled over to turn it off but it is not like every normal morning, for when I turn the switch of the lamp I am not met with my usual dawn view. Instead, David was the first thing I saw and he lunged at me, pushing his entire weight upon me.

 

“You damn f****r,” David’s words were coated with such a poison that I became scared to my very bones, “do you have any idea how fucked Asher is?”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

I tried to play the clueless card but neither of us bought the game. It wasn’t working. He knew that I was lying. I knew that Chase was gone, that his family had exterminated the abomination.

 

“His parents f*****g sent him to some camp out in the middle of nowhere,” David’s anger was at an intensity that crushed my abused wrists. I wanted to push him off but I was at his mercy.

 

“It’s not my fault,” I whispered.

 

“I hope you’re going to deal with the consequences Zane,” his voice suddenly an eerie calm, “because when I lose something of mine, I expect some compensation. Be prepared.”

 

He tortured me then, blazing kisses that trailed my neck and soft whispers of nothingness filled my ears. There was a sense of lost romance that tied us together; I was caught in a web of desire that trapped my will completely. His skin a tanned brown and it shown against my pale complexion, I felt as if I was kissing sin itself. It felt completely wrong, entirely exotic.

 

Without warning the feelings of pleasure halted, and I was pulled out of the trance that had overtaken me. A look of disgust contorted David’s face, his face lingered above mine. Instantly, I felt inadequate.

 

“This was what you stole from your cousin, Zane.”

 

As David left my room, I crumpled alongside my window. I wanted to say that I had resisted David, that I was determined to rid him from my life. I was in a way, I guess but in the three months that followed David became the center of my life. He was my life, as much as I am now shamed to say. I wanted to say that in those three months that shadowed Asher’s removal, I hadn’t fallen in love with David. But I cruelly had.

 

It was still my fault that Asher was gone; I had ruined his life in my selfishness. The tendrils of karma were already pulling at my heart. My de-forget demons. I was done with this inner turmoil; I already knew that I was no angel. I was not God’s child that surely my blood was already stained black as the morals they mirrored.

 

 

 

I felt as if I was walking with an empty soul that day. I was in a way soulless; I was drained of emotion and only the feeling of forgetfulness could cheer me. The school day passed as a great blank in my mind.

 

Thin artificial lights hung above me, mocking me as I left the school. I felt changed. I couldn’t say I was transformed, but instead in mid-transformation. The fresh wall I built between me and the world was poorly constructed. It had been made in grief and realization, materials not meant to shield me from the world. Nor was I the great carpenter to partake in such a project. I was ill-prepared for the consequences that followed me actions. But I guess we all lived in such a state of regret.

 

I was so caught in my self-pity that I missed the shouts that had been charting my steps. A group of my peers had singled me out and I had never noticed. I had never been a social child, never one to monitor the course of the network so it surprised me and the attention was unexpected.

 

“Hey, isn’t your cousin the f*g?”

 

It was Dianne whose impeccable smile was brought back into a sneer, her angelic proportions skewed by the turn of lips. She was a butterfly in the crowd and she flittered from person to person, always socializing. Unlike me, Dianne mattered in the world. Her opinion was revered and suddenly I was her next prey.

 

“He’s not a f*g,” shaky words said as the walls were already crumbling.

 

“Yeah he is, I heard from the headmaster himself. Does your entire family like to suck c**k or is it just him and his queer self,” another from the group chimed in. There was a circle around me, the soldiers of society calling their battles. They were God’s children, an association that I wasn’t a part of. I could feel my demons calling back to me. I would not welcome them. I refused, I was not the old me. I could not regress back to the old Zane.

 

I was surrounded. If God’s children could hold such menacing expressions, I questioned what I must have looked like in their eyes. I was instead a product of the marriage of sins and evils; surely I was a child of the Devil. I could stand and list my sins to them. Caught in the thickening guilt of incest while admitting the attraction to another man, even my own sins shamed me. The lies I had told, the life I had been leading, and it was all so guilt filled with my selfishness and demons. Their hands, their fists struck me and I let them. I was worthy of punishment but it was not the true repentance that I sought. I wanted to end everything.

 

Their assaults against my body were of an unrelenting nature, a soundtrack of giggling laughs filled my ears. Was it only fair that they had found humor in my humiliation? I couldn’t fight back. Who was I to dare God’s wrath?

 

“Stop,” urgency laced his words and I could hear rumors of a protector in my name, “what the f**k are you guys doing? Let go of him!”

 

He was the last person I thought would do such a thing. Perhaps it was the angry words that we had exchanged, or possibly it was my betrayal that would make me think of such a thing but still he had arrived to my rescue. I was taken off guard, but even more shocked at the events that had followed.

 

As the battle ended, they disappeared and David turned to me and his face spoke of complete determination. It was then that David had saved me. It was then that he had truly become the focus of my life. On the brink of sounding cliché, if not already: David was my savior that day.

 

 

“You’re mine.”

 

I did not question him. It was by now clear that I could not change his mind and that he have already altered my own. He had already state that he had expected compensation, that he expected repentance from me, that I was already his.

 

David’s tanned hand clasped mine and his narrow eyes sparked in a lust that I couldn’t match. I still resisted. He pulled me, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, to his heart. I could hear the heartbeats hidden beneath the cloth and skin. The beating filled my senses, as if the thick scent that clung to him danced with the sound and I felt for a moment a connection. There was a bond. It was then that I wanted him so much more. I kissed him without thinking, without knowing of the result.

 

I forgot about Asher in that moment. David brought the worst in me. We kissed over and over, as if we were lovers. He was the predator and I was the prey, a prey that was all too willing to be caught. There was this indescribable feeling I experienced in his arms. It was no love but it was something, something that I craved for. It was a conglomeration of safety, addictions, and pieces of lust. It was the beginning.