Erich - Twelve

Erich

 

            Don’t ask me why I did it, because I don’t know the answer.

            I don’t know what I expected to find when I went looking for Gabe that night. Hell, yes I did. Abrahamson really knew what he was talking about. I told myself I wanted to prove him wrong, but I knew better than that. I could only think from the attacker’s point of view, but Hersch knew how to deal with being the victim. I knew he was right the second we realized Gabe was gone.

            In retrospect, it would have been smart to let the other guys come with me. The numbers would have been even and I probably wouldn’t have gotten my hand cut open. But, before I realized that the fight might actually be dangerous, I had thought it would look impressive if I beat the wankers by myself. And I hadn’t wanted the guys to see me defending Gabe. I didn’t want them to see me defending anyone. What would they think of me then?

            The numbers had been uneven, but the fight itself wasn’t so hard. I was the best hand combat man in my unit, used to make money on the side in amateur bare-knuckle boxing matches. I could pull a shoulder out of its socket with one tug, which was exactly what I had done.

It hadn’t been enough, though. Once the goddamn redheaded wanker came at me with his knife, I didn’t have a choice but to pull my gun. I had purposely avoided using it; I would be thrown out of school in a second if Knight found out I had it. I hadn’t used it in ages, and I had forgotten what if felt like to point a gun at someone.

Once we got back to the room, Hersch and Jim were all over us.

“Holy s**t, what happened?”

“What the hell?”

“What did you do?”

“Was it the wankers?”

“How many were there?”

“Did Knight catch you?”

“Are you okay?”

I didn’t have the patience to deal with them. Gabe and I both needed help, but I hated having people worry about me, like I couldn’t take care of myself.

“Shut up! Shut up!” I roared. “You two get the hell out of here and do something useful. Go get bandages and ice and some meat for his eye. And clean up the blood in the hallway so Knight doesn’t see it.”

Hersch nodded and headed for the door, but Jim look reluctant. “Amery, let me…” I mustered up all the energy I could and threw it all into one angry, intimidating look, and he scurried out the door.

A minute after they left, I heard a crunching and looked over at Gabe in time to see him groan as he set his nose straight. He sat in his bed, propped up against the headboard with his arms draped across his knees, grimacing in pain and coughing. There was no doubt about it, they had clobbered him. It wasn’t the worst beating I had ever seen, but still pretty bad. There was blood in his teeth and nose and his face looked completely smashed, already swelling and black and blue. He was panting, and I figured they had gotten him in the stomach a few times, knocked the wind out of him. Even with the cut, I had made it out in better shape than him.

Even I knew what it was like to lose a fight, fair or not, and I knew he must have been absolutely humiliated. For once in my life, I could relate to him.

I watched him raise a hand to the back of his head and wince. I had seen him hit the cement just as I came around the corner. “How’s your head?” I asked roughly, not looking him in the eye.

Gabe looked up in surprise, like he hadn’t expected me to want to talk about it. “Spinning,” he answered weakly, “Throbbing, actually.”

I nodded, “probably a concussion. You’ll be all right. Just don’t pass out.” The pain in my hand seared and I groaned, clutching my wrist to try and slow down the bleeding. I was pretty used to this kind of thing, but I was worried that the guys wouldn’t be able to find any bandages.

Gabe noticed. “How’s your hand?” he asked in return.

I scowled at him. “How do you think?”

He looked down. “Sorry.”

I didn’t answer but pressed my other thumb into the cut. “Goddamn it!” I cursed. It felt like fire.

Gabe blinked hard a couple of times, probably just clearing his head, then shakily stood up. He slowly made his way over to me. I felt more and more uncomfortable the closer he got, until finally he kneeled down on one knee in front of me. “Let me see,” he murmured, reaching for my hand. I jerked it away instinctively, not wanting to touch him. “Come on, just let me see,” he insisted softly. It hurt too much to try and get away, so I had to give up.

He took my hand in his, inspecting the cut. It was a good sized slice, running from the space between my thumb and index finger to the heel of my hand, near the wrist. Gabe looked at it with concern. “Lucky you’re left handed,” he said. How the hell had he noticed that? I realized for the first time how much smaller and more delicate (despite the ragged, chewed fingernails) his hands were than mine. “This should probably get stitched up.”

I sneered at him. “Yeah? By who? We can’t just walk into the infirmary and tell them the wankers pulled a knife on us.”

Gabe didn’t argue. He never did. Instead, he pulled his shirt over his head. I’m sure my face was probably some ugly mix of surprise, confusion, and disgust, but Gabe didn’t seem to care. He ripped off the sleeve. “It’s ruined anyway,” he said quietly, as if that explained everything. He pressed the fabric against my cut. It hurt.

“F**k!” I howled, jerking my hand away. “Don’t do that!”

Gabe looked annoyed and held out his hand. “Come on, Erich. If you don’t stop the bleeding you’re going to black out.” I was starting to feel dizzy, and I figured he was right. I gave him my hand back sullenly.

Gabe silently wiped the blood away from my arm and hand, so it didn’t look as gruesome. I grabbed a half-full bottle of whiskey off the desk and took a long sip, hoping to numb the pain. I noticed that the black-beaded rosary still hung around his neck. Pummeled to a pulp, Gabe looked worse off than the little Jesus hanging from the cross.

After a few minutes, he dropped my hand suddenly and bent over, clutching his side. He cringed and breathed in sharply through his teeth.

“What?” I asked, surprising myself by feeling actual concern.

Gabe shook his head. “I don’t know. Something… something from when Davis was on me,” He took his hands away and I could see the nasty black and blue mark already appearing on the right side of his chest.

“Bruised rib, I think” I said. “That’s a b***h. You’ll be limping for a while. Could have been worse if he snapped it, though.”

 He didn’t answer, but went back to bandaging my hand. Now that we had actually started to talk about the fight, I half expected him to start up some sentimental speech about my saving his life, but instead he said: “you have a gun.”

It wasn’t a question. The pistol was still in my back pocket, and I tossed it on the table. “Yeah,” I muttered. “It was my dad’s. He gave it to me four years ago, when I was fourteen and I moved up in the Hitlerjugend �" the Youth. Might have been the only time he was ever proud of me.” What the hell? What was it about this guy that made me want to tell him everything?

Gabe kept his eyes down, focusing on my hand. “Why do you have it now?”

I thought about telling him to piss off and stay out of my business, but when I looked down and saw him staring up at me with those big green eyes, the truth just came out, “Because I don’t feel safe without it.” Arschloch! How could I say that? How could I show him, again, just how weak I was?

Gabe didn’t even seem to notice. He tore off another strip from his shirt and began wrapping it around my hand. “I’m glad you had it,” he said quietly. “They probably would have killed me.”

I scoffed. “Nah. They wouldn’t have gone that far. Knocked in a few teeth, probably.”

He didn’t respond right away but just kept winding the fabric around my hand. “Sorry you had to do that,” his voice was so quiet and scared I wasn’t even sure he said it.

Looking down at my hand, I realized it really was his fault this had happened. If he hadn’t been walking around alone at night, if he would just act like a normal guy and come back to the dorm with us, nothing would have happened. But I wasn’t angry at him. I was so surprised to realize this I couldn’t say anything to him for a long minute. I was always angry, and I was especially always angry at Gabe. So why now, when he had actually done me harm, did I not care?

My answer came before I could think about it. “You would have done the same for me.” It was the truth, but since when did I treat Gabe like he treated me?

Gabe smiled for the first time all night. He tied off the bandage on my hand and stood up, “If I could. I couldn’t even take one of those guys. You were… amazing.”

Damn it! He always made things so uncomfortable, always went a little too far. I looked down and tried to brush the comment off. “Yeah, I’m… pretty good at that kind of stuff.”

I was still waiting for the speech, but nothing came. Instead, Gabe just nodded. “Well, thanks.” I avoided his eyes and fixed my gaze on his shoulder. That was when I noticed the round, fresh burn mark on his collarbone.

I knew exactly what that was. “Goddamn,” I breathed. “Cigarette?” I asked, nodding towards the burn.

Gabe looked embarrassed, probably not wanting to talk about what they had done to him before I showed up. “Yeah, I guess.”

I looked up at him, really looked at him for the first time. In a month and a half I had never really noticed what he looked like. I don’t know what possessed me right then, but that was the moment I chose to stare at him.

Gabe’s skin was a dark tan, a true Italian tan. He was slight, almost delicate, but not without muscle, and half a head shorter than me. His hair was loosely curly and pitch-black. His features were large, huge eyes and full, round lips. His face was swollen and bruised now, and on a good day he was a little odd looking, but never ugly. His bone structure was almost feminine, but with a stronger jaw. His chest was smooth, but there were tufts of black hair in his armpits and a trail of it running from his belly button into his pants. He was…

That was when I realized I was staring. Neither of us had said anything for a long time, and now it was just awkward. I felt warm and lightheaded, probably from loosing all that blood. “I’m going to lie down,” I muttered. Gabe shrugged and turned back to his own bunk. That was when I first noticed the smattering of freckles across his surprisingly well-muscled shoulders.

I laid down in Hersch’s bed, across from Gabe, squeezing my eyes shut. My hand hadn’t stopped bleeding, but the makeshift bandage was helping. I watched the red stain slowly grow larger on the clean, white material.

Lying there on my back, I thought about what the wankers had said. They had called Gabe a fairy more than once, and he hadn’t fought them. I had wanted to kill Davis when he called me a cocksucker, but the accusations didn’t seem to faze Gabe. I was suddenly wildly curious: was he really…?

“Hey Gabe?” the words were out of my mouth before I could think about it.

“What?”

I took a deep breath. “Are you...”

At that second, the door burst open. I sat up so fast my head spun. Hersch and Jim were back, holding what looked like a pile of completely random items.

“Hey!” Jim panted. “We got everything,” he held up each thing as he listed it off. “Bandages, water, ice, thread…”

I looked at them suspiciously. “Thread for what?” I knew one of those idiots was planning to stitch me up.

Jim went on without listening. “Antibiotics, meat…”

He tossed a cut of meat at Gabe and it landed with a thump on his chest. Gabe held it up with a disbelieving look on his face.

“Chicken?”

“It was all they had!”

I shook my head. “Arschloch.”

…

            I went to bed that night with a bottle of whiskey and fresh, real bandage on my hand. Jim had gotten it into his head that he was some kind of doctor �" no one believed him until he started reading out loud from a stack of medical books he had stashed in his trunk. He’s actually kind of a genius; who knew?

Jim checked his books and decided that Gabe did have a bruised rib and a mild concussion. And eventually Jim convinced me to let him stitch up the cut. It had hurt like hell, but the bleeding stopped and I had my whiskey, so it wasn’t so bad. The worst part was having to sit there and let them watch, trying not to show that I was in pain. Never show anyone that you’re hurt, I thought; no one can help you anyway.

Most of the supplies were devoted to patching up Gabe. By the end of the night, he had ice on his head, gauze on his burn, meat on his eye, and a mile long stretch of bandages wrapped around his chest.

Gabe and I told our sides of the story while Jim sewed up my hand. I enjoyed that more than he did, since I obviously had something to brag about. Gabe couldn’t talk big about anything. According to him, they had just pummeled him without even giving him the chance to fight back.

Anyway, we eventually all calmed down and called it a night. We promised to take shifts waking Gabe up every couple of hours, to make sure his concussion didn’t get any worse. My hand was still aching, but the whiskey made me sleepy.

What a dirty fight, I thought groggily. Four against one, trapped him, never even gave him a chance. Just like… just like…

I was asleep before I could remember what it was like, but the thought gave me a stomachache all the same.

            In the dream, the air was dark and thick and foggy, like it was in the industrial side of town back home. It was the dream I always had, so I knew exactly who was coming at me when the shadowy silhouette appeared in the distance.

Brigitte prowled towards me, like a cat stalking her prey. I smiled watching her, remembering her sharp features, slanted hazel eyes, stringy blonde hair. She took me by the collar of my shirt and kissed me. I wrapped my arms around her, savoring the familiar feeling of her bony body under my hands. She stroked by biceps; she had always loved how strong I was.

I stuck my tongue in her mouth and she moaned. Oh yeah, I remembered how she liked me sloppy. She took my face in her hands and returned the gesture. I knotted my fingers in her hair, refusing to let her escape from my lips. I could feel her sticky lipstick smearing across my face and heard the wet smack of shared saliva. My hands moved down, groping at her small breasts harshly and feeling the curve of her waist before finally letting them rest on her a*s.

Brigitte let me fondle her for a minute before doing anything in return. Her fingers traced down my chest, undid my belt buckle and entered my pants. I groaned at the feeling and kissed down her throat, sucking in hard on her neck.

That was when it went horribly wrong.

Her body was suddenly so flat and hard against me.

I opened my eyes. Her skin was tan and her shoulders were smattered with freckles.

Her face came into focus slowly, so at first all I could see was dark, curly hair.

I lifted my eyes and gazed in horror at the face staring looking intensely back at me. There was no trace of Brigitte left in the person I was kissing. Instead, I was gazing back at the green-eyed stare of…

“Gabe!”

I must have shot ten feet up in the air. I jolted awake so hard the whole room shook. I whacked my head on the ceiling and spilled my whiskey. The light came on and, without even thinking about where it had come from, I rushed to cover my massive erection.

“Amery, what the hell?”

I looked up to see all three of them staring at me. Hersch was squinting at me icily, Jim looked half conscious, and Gabe had a chicken cutlet clinging to his face.

I scrambled with a lie, not even bothering to consider just how bad the truth was. “It’s my turn!” I said hastily. “Ah… uh… waking Gabe up. It’s-it’s my shift,” I babbled.

Hersch furrowed his brow. “Amery, it’s only been twenty minutes.”

S**t. Bad lie. I felt my face turning red. “Right… okay… then I guess, ah… nightmare!” I sounded like an idiot. I was talking at the speed of a runaway train. “I-I-I had a nightmare!” That much was true. I watched as the chicken slid down Gabe’s face, leaving a greasy streak over his eye. The erection did not go away. “Really bad dream. Nothing to worry about, ah… back to bed, then. Wake Gabe up at midnight? Right then, uh, good night.”

I flipped back over in bed before any of them could say anything. It was quiet for a minute, and I was terrified that one of them might have realized what had happened. I had never lost control of what I was saying like that in front of any of them.

“Erich…” the shy, concerned voice could only come from one person.

Suddenly, I wanted to kill him. All I wanted to do was hit him until he bled, until I felt better about myself. I felt my fists curl just thinking about it. He had done this to me.

It took all the strength I had not to jump out of bed and beat him worse than the wankers had. “F**k off, Moretti!” I roared, not turning around. In my head, I ordered myself to calm down - You don’t want to hurt him. You don’t want to hurt him - until I heard them all get back into bed. When the light finally went off again, I lost it. The voice in my mind was angrier than it had ever been in my entire life. I was angrier than I had ever been in my entire life.

I didn’t sleep a second that night, just waited for the ache between my legs to dull and gave myself over to the chaos in my head. Sometimes I heard my dad’s voice, screaming at me in German the same words I had heard the night of the air raid. Sometimes I heard Davis, just the one word: cocksucker. Sometimes it was just me, deliriously trying to remember f*****g Brigitte, to remember how much I liked it. Nothing made me feel better.

By the end of the night, when I finally heard the other guys stirring in their beds and my eyes were swollen with exhaustion, I could only think one thing, one truth that I had played over and over in my head for hours.

It was just a dream. Didn’t mean anything. Just a dream.

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A lot of conversation and problems to be solved in this chapter. I like the way they took care of their friend. Erick dreams are a haunting him. No weakness in this excellent chapter.
Coyote

[Jake Donald Stephens]

Well, I most sure as hell never saw THAT coming.
Erich is still my favorite character.
Even more than everybody else.

.novelists.elite.info.
.display. .jake.006.
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.username. DesertKing
.novels. Cliff, The Cult, Back To The Shack
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[Arianna]

:D happy face.