It wasn’t that he couldn’t but he wouldn’t, and why should he, there was no reason for him to do it. Besides it was dark, like on a night where everything seems to be drenched with ebony, wrapped in nothing and glowing with darkness.

There was nothing to say to him, no words, no actions, no poetic metaphors.

Or maybe he was afraid of being captured, twisted and tortured until nothing but splutters of blood, crimson red in appearance but filled with a hateful black, came from him. Maybe that was it, a deep, growing dread of falling into his powerful grasp and letting him come off as the victor, leaving Eric as the weak underling, caught and trapped like a fish.

Brought in, hook, line and sinker.

He wouldn’t let him. So he wouldn’t, couldn’t apologize.

----

There was a coffee shop.

He always sat by the same window, in the corner to himself with a newspaper in hand and a cup of black coffee, no sugar, no milk.

But.

There was something, something pleasant, something not so distant, something amiable about him. Eric didn’t know what; there were endless possibilities. Maybe the way he held the newspaper, slowly sipping his coffee as if there was no one, not the tittering girls, the tapping of fingers on laptops, the orders placed at the front desk or the jazzy music playing over it all. Maybe it was the fact that he leaned forward in his seat, held his figure, portraying this image of a strong man who could do anything, accomplish whatever he wanted and get everything he dreamed of.

Eric felt a jolt run down his spine, tingling, freighting, terrific. Everything he dreamed of.

He wanted that, wanted that power, wanted that feeling, wanted that kind of ambition. He wanted him. Or maybe it was the other way around. Did the man come to the same coffee shop everyday because he was interested in him?

It couldn’t be. There was no chance, no possibility, no nothing. The man was too, too…too something.

Then his eyes met with the man’s. They were beautiful, flawless, divine.

Eric couldn’t look away. The feeling of being enticed, of being seduced, the feeling of wanting him sat in the air, still and silent, but forever there. The man stared, watched, licked his lips and blinked slowly, and as if time had slowed down, Eric stared back to see him blink in a measured seduction.

Suddenly, without notice, without warning, without any sort of indication, he looked away. Eric’s eyes felt deceived, and the lust grew. The yearning, the thoughts of what he could do, would do, would want him to do to him, hit him like a train and unlike a deer caught in headlights Eric willingly lets the train hit him. Full on, so hard, with a crushing impact.

Slaughtered. Eric would lay there, on the tracks, surrounded by dark endless forest with trees that would eat the sunshine as it hit the canopies, devouring the rays as if they were chocolate.

“Sir would you like more coffee?” Eric’s trying not to look at the man now, instead searching for something, anything, behind him, to escape in and get away from where he was.

He says nothing, but continues to read his newspaper, lost in the ink but Eric knew he was pretending. Trying to fool him, make him go away, but the eye contact.

Eric choked. His breathe caught in his throat, refusing to move. Gasp.

His eyes, they were coaxing him again, wrapping him up in their smugness, their blazing confidence. “I’d like a cup. Thank-you.”

That was it. Eric tore his eyes away, restless under his skin; he could feel the desire clawing at him, pathetic. He poured the man his cup of coffee, careful, precise, every drop landing in the cup.

He turned around, a ball of words sticking to his throat like glue, permanent. They wouldn’t come out, at least not now. Eric swallowed, hard. But they were still there. Sticking.

Feet dragging underneath him, heavy with a weight known only to Eric, he walked to the next table but every step was painful. His heart twisted, stomach twirling, ready to throw up. A cold sweat broke out all over him, and he asked the customer if they wanted more coffee. A roll of the eyes followed, with a jutting of the cup towards him, demanding the coffee. Eric poured, but the hatred returned.

Pouring coffee.

Was. This. It? He deserved more, quick, now, immediately. The man had it, Eric knew he did, and the lust grew, exponentially.

Around the entire shop, offering coffee and pouring coffee, with the sporadic request for a peanut butter cookie. Eric hated it, hated the job, what it involved and the cookies. But maybe that was because he hated peanut butter, it reminded him of how clingy he was, how much he needed something else to make him wanted.

He reached the front desk, finally done. Placing the coffee container in the sink, his long fingers let go, so fast, as if afraid that the coffee jug would cling to him, like peanut butter. He smiled, at his own joke, his pathetic attempt to link things together.

He walked straight into the back room, aiming for the back door, so he could escape the embarrassment, the coffee…the man.

Shaking fingers pushed the door open, a cold gush of wind ripping through his brown locks trying to chill him but lacking the bitterness. The bitterness to freeze Eric, turn him into ice, an ice so solid it would be unbreakable.

But Eric had it. He had the bitterness, and so he stepped out into the back alley, quivering hand reaching into the pocket of his pants, to pull out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. And with a conditioned ease, he took out one of the cylinders of death, placed it on his moist but tinged with a light blue, lips and lit the white chemically rich drug.

He sucked in, savouring the taste, the smoke, the toxins. Another wind blew; lighter, only able to tousle his hair back, changing nothing else. Not the garbage in the alley, not the posters plaster on the walls, nothing.

There was a shadow, Eric’s eyes leaped to its source in an attempt to absorb it all. Absorb every little detail, colour and shape. It’s the man, and he walks, with a leisure that produces in the minds of others, the concept that nothing, absolutely nothing of importance is happening.

He’s walking, and Eric sees it again. The power. And he’s so fucking filled with it, almost dripping off the rim. Eric swallows; the ball of words is growing, tangling together so quickly that Eric doesn’t even know what the words are anymore. His eyes are starting to get fogged, he can’t see – the smoke, the goddamn smoke – it’s in the way. He throws the cigarette out of his mouth, the smoke puffing out of his mouth, giant wispy white cloud after the other.

Grinding the cigarette out, Eric tries to look, past the smoke, the power, the man. But there’s nothing, he can’t, it’s getting blurry…when did it become so impossible?

“That’s a bad habit.” It’s the first time he’s spoken first. Eric can feel the blood rushing to his head, ready to squirt out his ears as soon as he explodes.

“But it’s a habit,” the response is unreal. He can’t believe it’s his, his words, his thoughts, his voice.

The smokes gone now, the man visible, clear, like the sun, shinning even in the black of the alley. He has a smirk on his face, the confidence, the self certainty, the knowledge that the world thinks he’s perfect, it’s all there, in the one smirk, the one expression.

Eric wants it. Oh, he wants it so bad, so fucking bad. But it’s out of his reach, not in his hands, not in his grasp, like the smoke, it’ll easily blow away. Whoosh.

He leans forward, startling Eric, enough to take a step back, a suffocating silence trapping him, rendering him voiceless, breathless. He takes a step forward, grabbing Eric by the shirt, pulling him in, pulling him in as if he owns him. Without pause he crashes his lips down.

Onto Erics’.

Wide eyed, Eric looks up to the man, and the taste hits him.

Harsh. Acrid. Mixed with caffeine. And it’s everything he wanted, everything he lusted after.

Hands reach up to the man’s face, the man who’s name Eric doesn’t know, who’s life, job, personality, ambitions, desires, wants, needs, Eric doesn’t know. But the power, the power’s there and his hands, his hands reach into his hair. His fingers lace into the soft, silky, smooth, hair and he can’t let go. It doesn’t end there, Eric can feel the man pressing against him, pushing him into the back door, and he’s getting hard. Harder than he’s ever gotten before but oh dear God, it’s everything he ever wanted.

A moan, it’s coming from Eric but why him, it sounds like a wail of desire, of wanton lust, of a fucked up fantasy to be this man’s everything. The lips move away, and once again the yearning’s taken away from him, but he feels a hand, slide, no grind across his stomach to his back, crawling up into his hair and his head’s pulled back. Yanked, “You’re mine.”

----

I lie to your face to get you to listen

And I’ll do it again to make you smitten.

You’ll be so drunk, tripping

Over yourself as you’re sipping

Every drop of your lust

As it tries to float away like dust.

----

It was silence.

All he ever got from him even if he himself never said a word, never dipped into conversation or looked at life in the way of speculating, understanding or rationalizing it.

He could hear the microwave in the background, making that peculiar sound that only existed because of the machine. The soft buzzing that sounded like a bee but not quite, almost like the sound of someone sleeping with a murmured snore but even that couldn’t define it.

He was like that. Indefinable. There were no words, only thoughts that were so blurry it was harder to see them than five feet ahead of you on a rainy day. But the kind of rain that came down so hard you would think the world was going to break, shatter into so many pieces that the men the King sent out to fix Humpty Dumpty would commit suicide trying to put the pieces back together again.

And they would be so small, the pieces, that they wouldn’t be able to see them, like a broken window, shattered everywhere and anywhere, minuscule.

Insanity. They would reach insanity, but Eric was positive he had already reached it. Now he was just begging to get away, to get away from the shattered pieces, the blurry thoughts and most of all the silence. The long, unbroken silence that seemed to go on forever, the kind that you could only find on a dark, stormy night. Like the one tonight.

----

He was volatile, cold, uncompassionate, a bastard, who got what he wanted when he wanted and to the point where the word “no” had disappeared from his vocabulary and he grabbed, snatched, stole, everything he wanted.

You’d give your soul to him with nothing but empty contempt and an envy for something exciting and never look back on what you did, until you’d see that nothing had ever happened. There was nothing to look back on and you’d feel that empty contempt consume you like a raging anger that didn’t want to stop.

He broke you, broke you so completely, that you thought you would fall apart and never get up again. And Eric couldn’t take it, he couldn’t take being torn apart, limb from limb, thrown aside, stomped on, forgotten.

Yet he was still there, clinging to this man, this man who was like a God, perfect, handsome, intelligent and most of all filled with power. A power that could make any man, women, child, succumb to their feet and kiss his ass.

It was destructive.

----

The movie was supposed to be amusing, something to pick him up, put a smile back on his face, but it was failing, miserably, falling, failing, dying.

Eric leaned back in the chair, the actor’s words echoing into his ears, “Ahhh! I’m blind!” It wasn’t funny, not at all, in fact it made Eric realize he was blind, blind like a bat whose ears had been chopped off.

The light from the movie cascaded over everything in the dim room, it was so vibrant, so painful to look at and even though he could feel his eyes water he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop staring at his reality, his life, his ambitions. They were all wrong, misplaced, like when you believe so badly that you’re going to be an astronaut when you’re young but then find out you have to study your life away to do so.

He hears the lock unclick, a key to the apartment slowly, steadily, gradually fulfilling its job.

The door opens and Eric knows it’s him, but he doesn’t want it anymore, he doesn’t want the feeling of being the victim, the one that’s going to be ripped apart, ravaged, for the desires of this man. This man who wants to be the predator, who wants to feel so good that the desire is borderline insane.

Eric remembers it, when he wanted the man to that extent, when he wanted to be the victim and feel like he was floating, floating on dirty water about to be cleaned.

No more. He. Didn’t. Want. Anymore.

It was enough, it was too much, it was crazy. A cold hand was placed on his cheek, lithe finger sliding up into his hair, cajoling him. No!

He wouldn’t fall, not this time, never again.

Yet there he was, falling.

Falling, moaning, groaning.

Every touch felt so good it was sending him into bliss, bliss that he wanted to bottle up and keep forever.

The apology?

It would come…it always did.

----

fin

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