The Keeper
by Ocean Lover
<1>
The night's crowd was beginning to head out. He hadn't found what he was looking for among the hard bodied youth gathered at Seance. He hadn't found anyone worthy of a second glance, let along a detailed inspection, in the last three weeks. More of the same, more of the undifferentiated.
Maybe the pool is drying up. He disagreed with his own thought. I'm looking in the wrong places, he corrected himself. The most interesting ones would never show themselves in such a common place.
He began looking toward the door. It was a beautiful room, for a club. The exiting inhabitants barely deserved the quality of the space they were in. The wrought iron dancing around the doorway brought a smile to his face. The concrete, tile, and wooden segments of the floor seemed to have been thrown in the air and landed where they would. Unplanned in appearance, but so deliberately conceived, he could spend minutes just staring at the patterns. He loved this room at closing time.
He looked up at the doorway again. His eyes started tracking one youth. A ripple of familiarity ran through his body. Yes, he had had the pleasure of that one's company a year or more ago. He was blond now, far more toned, and appeared to no longer be wearing silver hardware in his ear, eyebrow, and several more delicate parts of his body. He had been worth the effort to know.
At the time, the black-headed youth, barely fifteen, asked to be called Strife. The name alone was worth the beer the young boy had asked for. He had bought for Strife and they had talked that first evening.
He won't recognize me now. My appearance is even more severely modified than his. I look younger tonight, sleeker. Then, I would have appeared twenty-five, very buff. Tonight, I look like my eighteenth year has not yet visited me.
He stood up and began moving toward the door. He wondered how Strife was faring these days. He wouldn't make contact, but maybe in another two or three years he might visit the striking young man with a mind that sparkled once again.
"Elias," he heard the voice behind him. It took him a moment to remember his current identity. He turned around to see who had used his name.
The bulked-up barkeep was motioning him back into the club, back to him. Young, barely twenty-one, but stupid. This well-fashioned body, great for gathering tips, was not what he had been seeking this evening.
"Yes," he said.
"Here's your card, Elias," the barkeep, with the forgettable name, said. The card made it safely back into his pants.
"Did you give yourself a tip," `Elias' asked.
"I was hoping you'd give me one personally," the panting man said.
`Elias' reached into his tight black slacks and pulled out a twenty. "For the wonderful service," he said as he handed the barkeep the tip.
The man's face fell. "When are we going to get together," the barkeep asked. "You're hot and..." The rest of the words stayed in his mouth as he could see the overture was not earning him what he wanted.
It was time to move on, he decided. Buffed, overly obvious, and not at all interesting.
He smiled at the barkeep. "Trust me, you don't want to know me that way." The tone oozed mystery. In the barkeep's line of work, it could mean one of a small number of things. Big, mean boyfriend, a troublesome HIV status, or a penchant for kinks far outside the mainstream. The warning signs were enough to get the pest to stop without having to escalate the conflict.
He turned and walked out of Seance. He would not return.
He scanned the street and tried to locate Strife. No such luck.
He walked into his apartment. He had only moved in six months previously but it already felt like he had lived in it a dozen years. Everything in its place with all the details fully ironed out. It felt comfortable, clean, and lived in. He had spent the last few years in Santa Monica before moving into this small building, with only eight apartments, in West Hollywood. Location, location, location. Most of the obvious venues were within walking distance of his new home. It was a good transition.
He turned on a light in the alcove and shut the door. He turned the lock and set the chain in place. He wasn't sure why he used any of the security measures. He wasn't worried about theft or an attack on himself. Maybe I am becoming attached to my possessions, he thought.
He felt hungry. He looked at his kitchen and dining areas. For show, he kept a few things around when he found the right person to bring back with him for an evening and a day. He kept the non-perishable things, like alcohol and some basic foods, in his refrigerator. He had a box of hot chocolate packets in one of the cabinets. He had a set of pans he had never used. Some of his one-day friends had wanted to show off their culinary skills.
He walked into his bedroom and started pulling the clothes from his body. The tightness of his slacks against his current body was exhilarating, but wasn't a feeling he desired when he ate. He never bothered with undergarments. He only bothered with clothes for his brief trips out his apartment, at most four or five hours per day.
He placed his clothes back into his closet. Unless some fool spilled a drink on him or flicked hot ash toward him, he didn't need to get his garments cleaned.
Once he was properly attired for feeding, he walked to a large wooden cabinet. Anyone could mistake it for an entertainment center. He opened the door and looked at the shelves filled with gently glowing frames. Each rectangular frame, perhaps six inches long and eight inches tall, contained a single still image. The whole item was only a quarter-inch thick and weighed an ounce.
The pulsing lights were beautiful to him tonight. He smiled. It had been some time since he had fed properly. His energy levels were lower than he liked. He couldn't remember why he had stayed away from the cabinet for the last three days. He hadn't had anything special to accomplish.
He reached far back onto the shelf with a specific intent. The frame he pulled out contained the image of Strife, with black hair and many pieces of metal inserted into his stunning face. He held the frame carefully, painfully aware that its contents were irreplaceable. He could build another frame -- at a cost of five weeks of his uninterrupted energies -- but the day in Strife's existence he held would be lost forever should the frame ever shatter.
He sat on his bed and set the frame beside him. With his right index finger, he stroked the image. The frame grew bright and a flash erupted in the room. When the flash cleared, a thick haze hung in the room. The frame and the person caressing it were no longer visible.
<2>
Brian Thomas sat in his room listening to the newest Twink Eater CD. The quality was pretty horrible. They probably only had the money for a mid-level sound studio and not much of a technician. Looking behind it, he could feel the pain, the love, the hate they were trying to put into his mind. Thommy Blix, the drummer, was his current boyfriend. Thommy liked them young and Brian had, over the last year, begun to like them older.
Brian's hole still felt like the whole world could fall inside it without much of a fuss. He had spent the morning with Thommy. Thommy had spent the morning plugging away at Brian's bottom. The guy was almost twenty, but he could hold out for forty minutes each time. Patience mixed with stamina was really potent.
The pain emanating from his backside made Brian very aware of his boyfriend's talents.
Brian had demanded that Thommy call him Pud all throughout the morning's fuck session. The more Thommy said it, the more it seemed to get Brian off. Brian had to smile as he thought of all the dirty, cliched things that Thommy had said this morning. His favorite had been, "Pud, Pud, I'm going to fill you so full, you'll be shooting my junk too, you motherfucking Pud."
Brian wasn't sure how much longer he wanted to keep up with Thommy. He had a killer body and an orgasmic bedroom technique, but he couldn't talk with the guy. Whenever they were together they were undressing (Thommy's version of foreplay), fucking, or redressing.
Thommy would have been perfect a year and a half ago. The Brian of that time would only think of music and the life around music. It had been all-consuming.
Now, his interests lay a bit elsewhere.
He still loved to come up with unusual names. For two months, he made people call him Tonka. His favorite name, but one he wouldn't let anyone use anymore, had been Strife. That night more than a year ago made him begin to treasure the name.
The man had looked at him all evening. Brian had finally walked over and asked for a beer.
"Are you worth it," the man had asked. The question stunned Brian. It took him a moment for his persona to reestablish itself.
"Name's Strife and you'll only find out if you buy me one," he had said.
He couldn't really remember the night -- or the following day -- very well. He just had a very warm spot in his mind whenever he thought of the man.
He had stopped back at that apartment two months back. Someone else lived there now; no forwarding address. The man who had begun occupying all his thoughts, Willem or Wilmer or something, had moved on.
Brian Thomas hadn't.
A sound from downstairs pulled Brian from his thoughts. Dinner time, he knew.
He stood up and the dull throbbing pain in his ass became a physical force that shot through his body. A very good pain. Thommy was dedicated to his hobbies and enormously skilled. If he were a painter, he could be said to paint with a very large brush and command a very large price for his commissions. Brian smiled and started walking awkwardly toward his door.
Brian remembered the first time he had felt this postcoital pain. More than two years ago. He had begun fiddling with his friends at age ten. By twelve he had his first boyfriend. At thirteen he had given up his ass and received his first in return. He would be sixteen in a few months.
He came to the stairs and sighed. Not a pleasant trip. His mom popped around the corner and looked up the stairs at him.
"Dinner. Are you making your own good sweet time?" She smiled.
He knew she got a bit of pleasure from seeing him so tired from his extracurricular activities. His parents had stopped buying his excuses for his being tired and listless after sleepovers with friends, always younger, always male. They had had the talk more than a year ago, a few weeks before he had met Wilmer or Willem.
"I'm shuffling along as fast as I can."
"Do I need to ask why you're having so much trouble coming down to dinner."
"I'd tell you if I really thought you'd like to know," he said. He smiled because his parents had both asked him to be safe, discreet, and to keep the graphic details out of their imaginations. "No coercion. Everything has to be consensual," they had said to finish the discussion.
His thoughts would soon turn from those younger than him to the beauty of the older man.
"That's okay," she said.
"I'll be down," he said. "But give me a few minutes."
Brian reached out for the handrail and started his way down the all-too-many steps someone had seen fit to install in this house.
He had spent almost eight hours with Strife before rematerializing. He felt full. He hadn't inserted himself into the day, just remained as a presence watching the boy live out a day in the memory cell that he had never really lived on Earth.
The boy had traveled between packs of his friends, found one of his buddies to fuck, and had returned home to pull out the hardware on his face before sitting down to dinner with his parents and older sister. He had spent a little bit of time visiting this day of Strife's life. Usually he just observed his memoriands; once he had remade himself as Strife's fuckbuddy of the day. The kid had some talent as a top. But he hadn't relived that experience today.
He walked to his kitchen. He was waiting until the last possible minute to pull on clothes. He opened one of the drawers and fished around. He pulled out a small packet and ripped open the envelope. He dropped the contents onto the table. A license, a credit card, and all the other minutiae he would need to adjust his identity again.
Lawrence Tester. He wasn't a Larry, though. Hi, I'm Lawrence. He'd had much worse.
He kept all the cards in his hand and returned to his room. What would Lawrence wear, he wondered. The man is twenty-two and from Georgia. He'd want to look stylish; he'd want to look like someone starting on an acting career.
He went to put on the black pants from the previous night. Too big. He was surprised that the waifish appearance and clothing he had used in the previous few weeks was too developed, too substantial for this new remaking. The twenty-two year old must be some kind of drug abuser to achieve this look, he thought, peering down at his own naked form. He added some pounds, through muscle, all around his body and added a few inches in length and girth to his main attribute.
Having an attractive presentation made it all the easier to find the best possible individuals who might be at this party tonight. New faces meant the possible of a new, interesting prospect. Someone to bring home for an evening and a day.
He loved that euphemism. He despised the words that accurately portrayed what he was, what he did. He'd first heard the word parasite two hundred years ago. Before that, the common term was incubus. There were many other words stretching further back in time.
He didn't consume anyone. He didn't symbiose with anyone; he didn't inhabit and take over his host. He took a single day of energy from a number of people and kept the days's energy for his feeding. He could sit inside the memory cell and lap at the energy. He had never exhausted a single cell. He ate just his fill and no more. And he had never killed a single human with his need for energy.
He hated what others of his kind did to survive. A host inhabiter could easily kill off the host in three or five years. One of them just hitched around in the host, just observing and sapping energy. The symbiotics were even worse because they seized control of the host's mind and usually killed off the host in a year or two. The ones who wanted to insubstantiate into their own permanent bodies needed blood regularly and could kill off many humans a year with their feeding.
He just needed a day's worth of stored energy. His modus operandi was a far less engaged approach to interacting with humans. It was safer, however. Lonely, true, but far less likelihood of discovery. The last symbiant he had encountered spent every day in front of other people, a puppet master living inside his doll.
He finished dressing for the evening. "Hi, I'm Lawrence," he heard himself say. It could work.