By Quon and Tom
3.
Paul could think of nothing else. The hipster grapevine was in full force and
rumors abounded, especially when the kid’s body was found. In the corners of clubs
and the back rooms of bars, people exchanged ever more salacious tidbits of
information. Apparently, he had died from blood loss. Apparently, he had a strange
wound on his neck. Apparently, Carlos was the last to see him alive.
“He looked like you,” a guy had said to Paul. He said it slowly, with
significance: “a lot like you.”
Paul had no response. He felt chilled, a feeling that had hovered around his
shoulders since that night at the club. He needed answers, he needed understanding:
he needed Carlos to tell him exactly what had happened.
He called his friend’s phone. Carlos sounded distant but agreed to meet at a
bar that evening. Late, he said, as late as possible.
When Paul walked through the door that night, he felt like he was entering
hell. The walls were blood red and the dim lights cast deep shadows. Deep in the
back was a booth. Carlos sat within. His face was like ivory in the gloom, his lips
were dyed scarlet by the shades of the walls.
The sight made Paul’s insides squirm guiltily, like knowing that the wine is
laced with weed killer but drinking it anyway because it’s the best wine he’s ever
tasted. He sat in the booth with Carlos, watching him apprehensively. He watched
Carlos’s eyes first, black as midnight, then his tinted mouth, its softness revealed by
the dark light. It was like hell, perhaps, but only to his conscience; the rest of it was
like being in the chamber of a freshly stopped heart.
The first question Paul had not meant to ask came unbidden to his lips:
“What’s going on?”
Carlos’s eyes flickered dangerously. He lowered his head, glanced around
nervously; he looked more like a trapped wild animal than the beautiful, damned
creature of the night he always seemed to be, looking over his shoulder and fleeing
at the mere thought of danger. His hair had been mussed, and curls appeared
against the glitter of sweat on his normally perfect face.
He waited a moment before answering. “Paul, that’s the thing, I don’t
know,” He said desperately under his breath. “I’m scared because I don’t know
what happened to that kid.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!”
“Carlos, listen. Something really fucked up is going on here. Did you hear
what happened to him?”
“What?”
“Some psycho sucked out all his blood, man! What the fuck kind of freak
could do that? And you were the last one to see him alive.”
If it had been possible for Carlos to pale, Paul wouldn’t have known it, but
Carlos’s ivory flesh blanched in the low light.
“That is fucked up.”
“You think?”
“Fuck, Paul. I just don’t know.” He leaned back and thought back, recalling
weaving memories and tipsy recollections…
The kid had watched him for hours…Carlos took him outside…the smell of
blood pungent in his nostrils…then blackness.
Another memory jarred him suddenly. Christian, looking so like Paul
underneath him, writhing like a tortured creature, naked and flushed. It was only a
second’s worth of thought, but it made Carlos blush, looking at Paul’s face as he
remembered what had been happening. He felt no shame in what he’d done with
the kid, just a sort of awkwardness sitting with Paul afterward.
“What do you remember? Anything? Tell me.”
Carlos hesitated. He wasn’t much for talking about his endeavors. “I, um,
fucked him.”
“Imagine that.” Paul snorted.
“Well, what else would I have done with him?”
“Point taken. Then what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even remember much about that part. I remember
just a second of it.”
“Fuck!” Paul slammed his hands down on the table, then leaned back into
the seat, thinking hard. He started putting pieces together: Carlos’s strange
behaviour, the kid who looked like him, the strange starved expression in his eyes
last night. Then this kid’s disappearance, the fact that Carlos screwed him, the
thought of the pale throat torn open and the parched flesh flaking away to little more
than bone under a touch, sucked dry of juices.
“Carlos?”
“What?”
Paul didn’t look up at him right away. “Do you…” His eyes flared beneath
his long hair and he bored a hole right into Carlos’s face, but his nerve failed him.
“Nothing.”
“What, Paul?”
“Nothing.” Paul stated flatly, and he started to rise, but Carlos caught his
wrist.
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Tell them what? That you fucked him?”
“Well…yeah. Just don’t tell anyone we talked, okay?”
“Sure, Carlos.” Carlos smiled down at him, but it looked worried and
awkward. Paul put his hand on Carlos’s shoulder. “Look, man, we’ll get this all
figured out. Promise. It’ll be all right.”