A Deep Love By James
Disclaimer
This story deals with sexual as well as romantic situations between teenaged males. Should you not be of the legal age to read such material, or if you're offended by this type of story then please find something else to read. Also remember to donate to Nifty so that these stories can remain free to the public.
Book 2 Chapter 16
September 2007
Michael
The cool September day was absolutely beautiful. The sun shown bright in the sky and there were no clouds to speak of. Deep blue stretched as far as the eye could see and I stood in the back yard watching the kids play and run around. Never before had I felt so peaceful and free. I was doing better and so was Josh. He was going through counseling and so was I. My dad and the others were doing a wonderful job helping us get through the horror and trauma of what had happened and although I was having some of the psychological trauma that is associated with something like that, I was more worried about Josh and the issues he might have. Most of all, I was worried about how badly he would ultimately be effected, as it was his own mother after all, who had for all practical purposes tried to kill him. He seemed to be coming back fairly well and exceeding my dad and everyone else's expectations. Just then, I was startled out of my thoughts by someone calling my name, then I felt a small hand in mine. I looked down and saw that it was Angel.
"Michael?" she said looking up at me concerned. "Didn't you hear me calling you?"
"Sorry sweetheart," I said. "I was just thinking."
"It didn't look like you were thinking about anything happy," she said. "You looked sad. I never like it when you or the other kids around here are sad."
I hugged her and held her in my arms for a moment. She was right, I was happy, but there was some sadness. Mostly, it was for Josh and what he was having to deal with and I worried how well he would ultimately be able to process and eventually move on from everything that had happened.
"You're right," I said. "I am happy though, but a little sad."
"Why?" she asked.
"Well, remember when Josh and I were taken a few months ago?"
"Yeah, I remember that," she said. "I was really scared that you guys wouldn't come back."
"So was I," I replied. "Anyway, I was just thinking about how Josh is going to be able to deal with everything that had happened in the future I mean. I'm also worried about the part of what had happened where he found out that it was his mother who was behind everything."
"Well, you guys are good to him," Angel said. "I'm sure that you and everyone else will be able to help him."
"Yeah, me too," I answered.
"So do you want to come and play with us now?" Angel asked.
"Yeah," I replied. "That sounds good."
I got out further in the yard with Angel and the others and we all ran and would have one another run to see who could outlast everyone else. We agreed that the winner would have to buy dessert for all of us. It was Noah and I that out-ran everyone, so he and I after getting cleaned up, went out to get ice-cream for everyone. We had finished dinner by then and it was dusk out now. After making sure that the house was locked and secure, Noah and I got in the van and left.
Once the van was parked, Noah and I got out to walk the remaining couple of blocks. I suggested it since I wanted to talk with him for a bit and see how he really was doing. Noah had his own stuff to work through. Yes, he killed the four guards as well as Dr. Richardson, and it was justified, as they were trying to take our lives. That didn't mean though, that he wasn't still going to have some issues to deal with because of it.
As we began walking, I asked him how he was doing. He turned and stopped walking. I stopped as well and when we did, I saw that there was a bench beside me on the right. I sat down and he joined me.
"I have some bad dreams," he said once we were seated. "I don't feel guilty, at least not yet anyway. A part of me thinks about how they were human beings, but I can't feel too sorry for them."
"Neither can I," I said.
"I just don't want to take too much pleasure in what I did," Noah said looking deeply in to my eyes. "If I did, then I would be no better than I was when I first came to live with you guys. I would be no better than I was, especially before I came to the house."
"I think that's a good thing to keep in mind," I said. "So how's Chase doing with everything?"
"When I'm with him, he has his moments of being afraid," Noah replied. "He has nightmares where he thinks he's losing me. I mean, he has dreams where he sees me get killed and he can't do anything about it. In the dreams, he's paralyzed."
"Does he have the dreams very often?" I asked.
"Not too many times," Noah said.
"I think that when Josh and I talk with him, it helps him," I said. "He doesn't seem like he's too traumatized by what had happened."
"I'm glad of that," Noah responded. "At least he calms down fairly quickly once he wakes up and when I'm comforting him."
"I agree," I said. "You've been really good to and for him."
"Thanks," Noah said and hugged me. "You've been good for all of us."
"You're welcome," I replied. "And thanks for allowing me to help and letting me in."
"You're welcome," he said.
Once back at the house, we all had our ice-cream, then the kids went to bed. It was only Ashley and I who were up. Josh was tired from the day and so he went to bed early. I told him that I would be in later and after a gentle goodnight kiss, he went to our room. I went out on the back deck with my cup of tea and looked up at the stars. The crickets were out singing and it felt so peaceful and I was calm for the first time in a long time. I then heard the door open and I looked to my right and saw Ashley coming out and she sat down beside me on the glider.
"Hi," I said and hugged her.
"Hey," she said quietly and hugged back. "I'm glad you decided to stay up for a bit."
"Why's that," I asked. "Are you okay?"
"They did the final tests on my baby," she said.
"What did they say?" I asked. I looked at her expression and I knew that whatever they told her, the news wasn't good. Her baby was a girl who she named Lisa Angel Williams. The last name after me since we legally adopted her. All of the tests so far showed that there was nothing wrong with her baby, but something must have changed in the past month.
"They did the final tests today," she said again. "They couldn't hear the heartbeat at first and they tried to adjust the tools, but they still couldn't hear it."
She started crying and I held her close.
"I'm really sorry," I said beginning to cry myself.
"They looked on the ultrasound and after a few more tests, they said that she's gone," she said through her tears.
She couldn't speak after that as her crying grew harder. I continued to hold her and rock her gently.
"I really am sorry Ashly," I said again. "I know you loved Lisa. You would have made a wonderful mother to her."
Her tears eventually stopped and she looked up at me.
"They think that it was all of the trauma I went through before your men found me," she said. "They said that I've done all the right things once I came to live with you guys, but I still feel guilty about when I was still with the group. I should have left sooner."
"No," I said taking her in my arms again. "Please, don't do that. Please don't blame yourself. Those bastards are the ones to hold accountable, not you."
We stayed like that for a long time, then she was calm again.
"By trauma," Ashley said darkly and hatefully. "They must mean that Bitch punching me in the stomach over and over again when I was with the group in the last couple of weeks before I escaped. I hate her. I know she's Josh's Mother, but I could kill her and that fucking doctor, but Noah already did that."
"I don't think any of us around here can look at Tammy Henderson's humanity at this point," I responded. "I've wanted to get my hands on her as well. I still think about it, but am able to calm myself down along with the help of everyone else here."
"Me too," she said.
Once we finished talking, I went to get in to bed with Josh. Ashley and I agreed that I could tell Josh since he knew that something would be wrong, and if he asked about it if he woke up when I got in to bed. He did wake up as soon as I eased myself between the sheets. He never slept well when I was away from him, and the feeling was mutual. I took him in my arms and kissed him softly on his cheek.
"I'm glad to be here with you now," I said softly.
"Me too," he said. "What's wrong though."
I knew that he could hear the shaking in my voice, and I began crying again.
"I was up with Ashley talking when you went to bed," I began. "She lost her. She lost Lisa."
"Oh my god," Josh said sadly and held me close as well as we let our tears fall. "I'm really sorry. I feel horrible for what she's going through right now."
"So am I," I said.
After our tears were gone and we talked a little more, we kissed a couple of times, declared our love for each other and fell asleep in each other's arms.
0000
Tammy Henderson lay awake in her cell trying to fall back to sleep. She awoke suddenly and was unsure as to what had disturbed her sleep. It was after 2:00 A.M. and the storm was raging outside. She could hear it through the walls and it didn't do a thing to calm her.
Suddenly, she felt something on the sheet. It felt like a small animal running across her legs. She looked down and saw a rat looking up at her. Its red shining eyes and long sharp fangs were more than she could take. She screamed, but no sound came out. She tried to move and she found that she was paralyzed. She tried to move again, but was still stuck. The rat moved up until it was just inches from her face and it growled and hissed at her. She could feel its whiskers on her cheek and could feel the sting as it pushed its fangs in to her flesh. Then she was awake.
She sat up terrified and she took relief in the fact that it had only been a dream. She looked around her cell and tried to remember the good times, the ones before Josh was tainted by sin. Suddenly though, bright light flooded the cell and she saw beings surrounding her prison bed. She tried to move, but she saw that she was frozen in place.
She tried to scream, but nothing came out. One of the beings stepped forward and looked at her.
The beings were monstrous looking and had hate-filled red eyes and skin from which festering lesions dripped pus and blood. Their fangs were long, thin and sharp. She felt like she would go insane and it was at that point that the demonic spirit directly at the foot of her bed spoke. It was in a soft and menacing tone which made her skin crawl.
"We knew that you'd link up with us eventually Tammy," the demon said.
"No!" she yelled. "I don't worship you! I'm on the side of Christ!"
The demon laughed a deep and hateful laugh that made her scream.
"You stupid Bitch," it said. "Don't you remember one of the teachings of your shit religion? The way in which we trick people in to joining us is to make them think that we don't exist for one thing. Then we fool them in to thinking that the wrong thing is the right thing blessed by God. So are you finding out what our secret is now?"
"I don't understand any of this!" Tammy yelled. The short relief that she felt when she could speak was just that, a short relief that was giving way to extreme terror now.
"Our secret is this," the demon began. "In all of the years you thought you were worshiping Christ, we got you to our side. That my foolish Bitch, is our secret. Imagine it, the sick humor. The sick and wonderful humor in which we took great pleasure knowing that we had you tainted by the very evil against which you tried to fight and protect yourselves and your fagot son for so long!"
Tammy screamed long and loud as everything she had done, from the things in the group to what she was almost going to do to Josh and Michael flashed before her eyes. She screamed until she felt blood gushing from her throat. Then she sat up in a cold sweat.
She looked around her cell and hoped that this time, the dream was just that. Suddenly, flames shot up all around her. She saw a man standing at the foot of her bed where the demon had stood speaking with her just seconds before.
"No!" she screamed. "This isn't real! This is a nightmare! I have to wake up!"
"No," the man said. "This is no nightmare and you're awake. More awake than you could ever know, Bitch!"
"No!" she screamed and tried to get out of the bed, but an invisible force held her in place.
"Now that's no way to act," the man said. "I'm still here. I just figured that you'd like me better in this form."
"Noooooo!!!!!" she screamed with every ounce of force she could produce.
"Yes," the demon said. "This is your new home. I have much to show you. Many things. Just sit back and enjoy the show."
The scene changed and she saw faces of boys who had underwent the procedure and had died as a result of both medical complications and by way of suicide. The boys looked at her and they began stumbling towards her.
"No!" she screamed. "Get away from me!"
"This is who we are now," the boys said all in unison and in a flat monotone that caused her terror to only increase.
"You did this to us," the voices said as the boys came closer and closer. "You stole our lives and who we are, Bitch."
"God!" she screamed. "Please God, help me! Please help me in the name of Jesus!"
"He won't hear you," the voices said as the boys closed in on her.
They grabbed at her and slowly and agonizingly began to pull her from one side and soon, they were literally ripping her apart. She screamed long and loud until her throat ruptured! She then awoke again.
This time in complete reality, she was truly awake. She knew it now, but could still see the faces and hate-filled eyes of the spirits of the murdered boys. She also saw Josh's face, even though he was still alive. She sat there as she remembered everything that she had done and waves of terror, guilt and fear crashed in upon her. She felt the deep and true loss of the lord's protection and she knew now what she had to do.
The pain was far more terrifying than she ever thought it could be. She was hanging just inches above her bed by the sheets which were tied to one of the bars of the door of her cell. As she slowly strangled, she saw the fires of Hell, the demons, the Devil and the faces of the dead boys. It would never be over, she understood that as the last few seconds of consciousness faded away. She was found the next morning dead. Just a dead child murderer and terrorist who put wild and deadly utopian visions ahead of being a mother and loving her fellow human beings.
0000
Michael
The call came that afternoon after Josh and I finished up with our own counseling sessions with our dad and a couple of other adult counselors. The visits were helping us and not only did they help us both deal with the horrors of the past involving Josh's mom, but with everything else. It also helped us be better counselors and friends to the kids and to our brothers.
As I walked to mine and Josh's room I heard someone calling my name. I turned to see my dad running towards me. When he ran, I knew that it wasn't anything good. I waited for him with a feeling of cold dread washing over my body and soul.
"Dad," I called to him. "What is it, what's going on?"
"I need to talk to you and Josh," he said.
Once in my room, Josh, my dad, Chad, my mom and I sat down and after the door was closed, my dad said what he had to say.
The white florescent lights coldly and clinically exposed everything as we walked along the lime-green hallway to the room in which Tammy's body was being held for identification. I spent a few minutes with Josh talking with him after dad had told us the news about Tammy being found dead. Josh wanted to go and identify the body. I spent those few minutes comforting him as he cried, and I also talked to him about how we would all understand if he didn't want to do it. A part of me felt bad about saying that. I knew that part of it was my own feelings and my own hatred I still held for her, but I was worried about what seeing her like that would do to him. In truth, I just wanted it all to be over. I wanted Josh as my husband, I wanted him as well as our brothers and the kids happy and free from these people once and for all and I just wanted to continue through my journey of the last couple of years of being a kid, but I already knew that that care-free child-like innocents written about by deep thinkers such as Dostoyevsky and others, was gone.
We all lose the innocents of childhood, sooner or later. There are no exceptions and we don't go through our lives and get to stay in this area of our lives eternally. For some, the loss comes through constant situations of being confronted with their own mortality such as children with childhood cancers, others go through losing it through the normal stages of growing up in so far as that is possible and for some such as myself, I lost it because of being shoved in to the reality of who I was and who I am in the context of my sexuality and for a time not being strong enough to face it and having strong thoughts at one time of ending my life. Then there are the ones, and I include myself who lose this innocents through the horrors brought upon us by the larrys of the world and other criminal types.
For Josh, the loss of innocents came partly through the normal child development, but also through knowing that he was gay and having some of the same feelings at 14 that I had a year younger than him, but more than that, the final shreds of his childhood died when he met up with his mother in that final confrontation, then when he saw her body lying on the table cold and dead on that dark and rainy day.
I stood there along-side Josh as he looked with unseeing eyes at the woman who had not only brought him in to the world, but who, 15 years later would attempt to kill him, but in hopes of saving him according to her dark utopian visions. As I stood there watching Josh looking down at the body, I remember thinking of what Josef Conrad had to say about human nature when he wrote that man is a cruel animal. If that's true, and we all collectively are equipped with dark dimensions to our human nature from which there is no escape, than Tammy is a dark and terrifying example of what Conrad understood to be sure.
As Josh and I walked in to the dark and rainy day after he gave his identification of her body, I began to wonder about my own evil side. Of course I didn't feel, nor do I feel compelled to go and kill or do violent acts in the name of a better world, but I was thinking on that day for the first time and in a deep way, at what point could I be convinced to do something in the name of a great notion of good. I remembered at one point when Josh and I after we found Eric and brought him home, that later that night, Josh and I were lying in bed and talking about how we could never be religious, and that we could never take seriously the moral dictates of Christianity. I felt at that point that if it came down to it, I could harm anyone who called themselves a Christian, especially the ones who were antigay in the name of their own interpretation of Christianity. Over the subsequent months, through John Martin and my reading of deep moral thinkers both Christian and of other religions, I came to understand the dark, but unavoidable truth that we all have the capacity for evil, there is no exception to that rule, not ever. I was coming to understand, and I eventually understood with absolute clarity that fact on that dark rainy day on which Josh's Mother did the final act which would destroy her own life in the final way from which there would be no escape for her.
We all can be blinded by utopian ideals. No one is immune. For some, the attempts at building a utopian world can come in the form of labor camps and gas chambers masked as shower stalls. For other groups, it can come in the form of the enslavement of people who have a darker skin color than mine. For some however, it can come in the form of believing that through the misuse of religion, in this case the Christian religion, a better world can be created if GLBT people would either convert or be eradicated. So if this sort of utopian world could come true through people such as Adolf Hitler, Pat Robertson or through Tammy Henderson. If this perfect world could be created and put in to action, what would it look like and what would the people in this world be like? If they could be this perfect and if we all could be everything that these utopians wanted and none of us would have to be killed for their utopian ideals and we could live and do everything they ask to the letter, then what would that in the end do to us? How much of our humanity would we destroy?
"What are you thinking about?" Josh asked as we got in the car and Andrew drove away from the morgue.
I told him everything I was thinking and he didn't mock me, nor did he laugh at anything I had to say. He told me that he was waking up to the same realities and though terrifying, it was also liberating to become aware of this aspect of himself so that he could do more to make choices that would keep him from going down any road similar to what happened with his mother. I told him that I felt the same way, and we for a while, fell asleep on the way home.
Author's Notes
The Supreme Court ruling on Friday, June 26, 2015 was one that I was more happy to see than I could describe in words. I never actually thought that it would happen in my lifetime, but it did. We all should be happy and celebrate this decision. We all should also remember that as marriage has been shown to be for all, not just the typical man and woman, that while this ruling was handed down, in cities across America members of the KKK are tossing bags of gifts on the yards of various people in front of their houses. In these bags contain white supremacy writings, Tootsie Rolls, Pepper Mints and a piece of paper on which is the number to call so that one can learn more about the KKK's beliefs and possibly join them. I would argue that the addition of the candy is to bring children in to their movement. It's said that it's important to get them while they're young and the KKK clearly understands this. The point being, that racism is alive and well even as we're making more and more advances towards equality for The GLBT Community. There are also other types of discrimination we as The GLBT Community have to fight against even as we have the marriage equality we've fought for, for so long.
The Supreme Court's ruling is our period of light, but the antics of the KKK are our period of darkness. We do not progress morally, that is that we will never get to a point of our morality where evil and the subjugation of others and/or the murder of others will be phased out of our morality in the way that certain genetic short-comings have been mutated out of our DNA over generations. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris believe that we are morally progressing to a better world, one in which Science and reason will help us to not kill, not enslave our fellow human beings and not cause any other harms to others. They believe in the perfectibility of the human species and that one of the impediments, the main impediment to this progression to this better world is religion. For Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins, there is no way to be religious in a way that doesn't lead to being antigay, anti-Science or in a forward thinking manner. They believe that at the most, people who are religious might have to be converted to their way of thinking. Harris goes so far as to say that some people might have religious ideas that could be so dangerous that it might be as he describes it, ethical to possibly even kill them for believing in them. Harris also supports torture of terrorist suspects and he believes that this will allow us to get the information from them to further our operations in The Middle East of changing the minds of people who believe in Islam. Thus, these three New Atheist writers are just as fundamentalist as the religious fundamentalists they condemn.
Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins along with Pat Robertson and people who think the way he does show that Atheism as well as religion are not the problems. The problems are fundamentalism itself as well as our fixed human nature, especially the dark areas of our humanity from which there is no escape. Reason and Science along with Fundamentalist Religion will not save us. None of these ideas will save us any more than removing certain portions of a teenaged boy's brain and replacing it with other samples of brain tissue will rid our nation or world of homosexuality. This is just one more utopian idea that is just as dangerous within the writing of this story as it would be if it were to be attempted in real life.
The word Utopia was coined by Thomas More to describe ideas that push us to live outside the constraints of reality. The word Utopia comes from the Greek words for no and place. To live in a utopia and to attempt to make a better world in which there are no imperfections of any kind is to remove ourselves from reality and to live in no place at all. It is only by rejecting such utopian ideals, by recognizing that we all no matter how idealistic can at times give in to the dark side of our human nature and avoiding these desires whenever possible, as well as by understanding that we move through our lives in cycles of light and darkness and not on a linear journey towards a final endpoint of utopia, that we can save ourselves.
So I hope everyone had a good Fourth of July, and I'll see everyone in the next and final chapter of this story.