This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This story also deals with love and consensual sexual activities between men. If you are not of legal age, reside in an area where viewing such material is illegal, or are offended by such themes, do not read further and leave this site now.
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Two Lives - Two Loves
Chapter 9
The rain kept on. And on. And on some more.
I sighed as we pulled into the rear yard and saw that the pool was starting to get a little junked up with flotsam tossed around by the wind driven rains. I hoped Ron was right about the weather clearing off a little tomorrow, but I also hoped it would give us enough time to clean the pool first...one of our assigned duties as housesitters.
We unloaded the freshly filled tanks from the truck and set them in the carriage house out of the weather and ambled back into the house.
"Well, looks like today's shot," Jon said, tossing the keys on the kitchen counter. "Wanna watch one of the flicks?"
"Later, I think," I said, setting down the bags with the DVD's and Jon's new dive toy. "I was thinking we should maybe get a little exercise," I said softly, moving closely into Jon's personal sphere, running my fingers around the inside of his waistband.
I saw that smile I loved and I felt Jon's hands lightly rest on my hips. I reached up and pulled a few strands of his fine blond hair down over his eyes in that sexy position that I also loved. For a long moment we couldn't, wouldn't, keep from staring deeply into each other's eyes, letting our hands be our guides as we lightly, barely touching, let them follow each other's hard curves, ever so subtly feeling the steeliness scant microns beneath their fingertips. Slowly, gently, they rested where they felt comfortable and gradually pulled us together, our mouths then breaking free of the gate and unleashing fervor as with two halves made whole after years of unbearable separation.
"C'mon," I said, nodding towards the stairs, tugging on Jon's waistband.
"Oh, what would the rest of the frat think if they knew?" Jon said with sarcastic whimsy.
"Fuck 'em."
The rest of that afternoon was pure heaven as Jon and I slowly, sometimes not so slowly, came to be more acutely aware of each other's rhythms. We became better acquainted with each other's feel, our smell, our taste, our mutual likes and dislikes, of which there were many more of the former than the latter.
I know that I've said it before but, and I don't care if I sound repetitive, I fucking love Jon Shepard. I love every strand of his hair. I love every fleck of blue in his eyes. I love every ridge and valley of his fingertips. I love the gentle soul that chose to take up an earthbound form again as a young jock with a coiled steel spring for a body. It felt as though we'd known each other for a thousand years and I hoped that we could make this moment, this glowing moment, last another thousand.
The luxuriant peace of my thoughts was shattered by the clattering ring of the phone next to the bed. I think it was the first time I'd heard it ring the entire time we'd been there and it had one of those odd old-timey double rings like you'd expect to hear in Europe.
"Great," I muttered. "You'd better get it."
Jon crawled over me to the phone as I slid under him to his side of the bed. He glanced at the Caller ID display.
"Who is it?" I asked as the ringing continued.
"I don't know. It doesn't say," he said. "It doesn't even say 'Unavailable'."
"Probably some pain in the ass telemarketer. Get rid of him."
Jon picked up the handset, "Hello?"
I watched as Jon got that puzzled look on his face.
"Hello?" he repeated as he looked again at the blank ID display. He appeared to listen again for a few seconds before hanging up. "That was odd."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know. All I heard was like a, I don't know, a whining static that just kind of faded in and out, then it went quiet and I hung up," Jon reported.
"That's weird," I said. "Say, does this phone have programmable ringtones?"
"Maybe, I dunno, why?" Jon hadn't even noticed the double ring.
"Well, didn't you notice...," I started to point out the Euro- ring thing when the phone rang yet again; this time, however, with the more familiar American ring.
Still sitting next to the phone, Jon glanced again at the ID display and quickly cautioned me to be quiet.
"Hello?" he answered. "Oh, hi Mom! How's things?...That's cool; hey, did you just try calling here a few minutes ago?" he asked.
"Mom, huh? This could be fun," I thought as I slid my hand over to massage the inside of Jon's thigh just to fuck with him a little. He was starting to 'come alive' again as he slapped my hand away, waving at me to mind my manners while he was on the phone with his mother. I chuckled to myself, quietly putting my hands up in surrender position, begging forgiveness. For his part, Jon flipped me the bird as he continued his conversation and I almost lost it. It was everything I could do to contain my laughter.
"Uh huh," he continued. "No, Brad and I're making out just fine."
"If she only knew," I muttered, laughing as Jon shushed me again, punching me in the thigh.
"...Uncle Jon left us pretty well set for food, so that's not a problem....Yeeeeees, Mother, we're eating like regular people."
I couldn't keep from chuckling a little, imagining my own version of his mother's side of the conversation. This was going on a bit longer, and was a little more boring, than I thought so I laid back, stretched out and just closed my eyes, listening, letting my hand rest on Jon's knee as he sat on the edge of the bed talking. He didn't push it away this time.
"...Love you, too...Bye, mom," he said, replacing the handset in the base.
"Mom checking up on her little lamb?" I asked genially.
"Yeah," he drawled, "She just wanted to make sure no wolves were taking advantage of her little boy."
"Heaven forbid."
"Oh, and thanks for giving me wood while I'm talking to my mom, dick," He smirked but faded into a smile.
"Hey, it's entirely my pleasure," I said, trying not to laugh.
"Hey, by the way," Jon began, "...she said she wasn't the one who called just before I picked up the phone the second time."
"See, I knew it!" I exclaimed as I sat up. "I'm tellin' you, there's something not right with this house. I mean, the bottle thing last night, now the phone thing...oh...and let us not forget that feeling I get now and then like I'm being watched!"
"Dude, calm down," he whispered, pulling himself into me as we sat there, wrapping his legs around my waist, pulling my own behind his. "It was probably a wrong number or a glitch in the phone; who knows."
"Maybe, but you're pretty nonchalant about this for someone who likes horror movies like you do," I said.
"I'm not nonchalant," he said, "I'm just trying to think it through. Besides, my uncle's lived here for years and, yeah, he's heard things and he's seen things now and then, but that's it. No one's ever been hurt. In fact, I think, and this is just my humble opinion..."
"Oh, here we go. Just shut up and hold me," I thought to myself.
"...that you're more liable to hurt yourself reacting to a situation than you are getting hurt by it. Why don't we all just chill and enjoy the show?"
"Thank you, Dr. Shepard," I said with a wry grin as I hugged him. Holding Jon was an excellent tonic. He had a soothing demeanor about him that was hard to explain, it was just there. "But if the good Doctor wants to help his patient out, he could demonstrate his massage technique," I said, smiling as I rolled over onto my stomach, resting my head on my crossed arms.
I could almost feel Jon's smile as I felt him straddle my waist, felt his hands begin working my tense neck.
"Mmmmmm," I mumbled.
"You like?"
"Yeah, that feels awesome," I slurred, feeling myself begin to drift off as Jon soothingly continued. "Great hands," I thought, dreamily, "Great h...."
"....ands."
"...oh, God."
"...where am I now?" I thought as I looked down at my hands at my arms, my body. I jumped, startled, as I saw that the monk's habit was back. I could feel the perspiration start to bead. I could almost literally feel the sweat working its way up through every pore in my body until it peeked out on the surface. My arms fell to my side, my chin pointed upwards in frustration. Not again. Please?
"People of the Otherworld, I have returned," I thought to myself in my best, yet facetious, MacArthuresque impersonation. Except that, unlike MacArthur who was returning to that land as a conquering liberator, I was returning to this one like a clueless, puzzled, and, yeah, I'll admit it...terrified child.
I did not like being controlled by events, particularly when I, to my understanding, was supposed to be asleep. I did not understand this at all; I did not like it at all, and I particularly did not like the fact that I appeared to be encased in a cube of walls made of concrete blocks about eight feet on a side! The floor, the ceiling, all of the same gray blocks. There was light, but no visible source. There were no coves, no nooks, no crannies where a light source could hide, but there was light nevertheless, and as before, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me somehow.
Futilely, I went to each wall and pressed against it, hoping against hope that some hidden door would reveal itself. I don't have to tell you that it didn't. In blind frustration, I pounded the walls with my fists but, oddly, it didn't hurt. The rough hard surfaces should have grated the skin off of the butt of my fists but it didn't. I felt like a caged animal and I suddenly had the greatest of sympathy for those animals, knowing now how they must feel. They, however, at least had bars to look out from. My scenery ended eight feet in front of my nose and I felt overwhelmingly crushed, so much so that I sat on the hard floor and curled my legs up, clasping my hands around them, burying my face in my knees. I sat there for what seemed like an eternity wondering what my fate was or was this all there was, just sitting in this cube waiting to expire. I could not remember ever having felt so low in my entire life. It was then, in the stillness of that cube, that I heard my quiet inner thoughts think to me once again.
"You don't get what you're not ready for," my thoughts said to me.
"Gee...thanks," my conscious thoughts thought. "That's a big fucking help."
I really had to learn not to smart off to my inner voice, because as soon as I'd finished mentally mouthing off, my hands began to itch. Well, not itch exactly...it was more like a subtle electrical tingling, starting in the center of my palms and building, spreading outwards to my fingertips. The energy I was feeling kept growing and growing, increasing in intensity until I didn't think I could contain it anymore. My body was beginning to shake involuntarily from the massing flood that was building in me. Somehow...and I have no idea how...I knew to get up and place my hands flat against one of the walls imprisoning me. As soon as I had, I could feel the energy begin to flood from every point of contact with my hands into the wall itself. I could see small waves of energy begin to permeate the wall. At first it was like dropping a small pebble into water, then it began to swell, the waves becoming larger and larger until the blocks themselves seemed to be rippling. I somehow instinctively knew to press harder and keep pressing as if I'd done this before, as if I was privy to some knowledge that I couldn't remember, but I listened to my voice and kept pressing.
And as I pressed harder against the wall, the waves continued to spread, the undulations gaining in intensity, slowly spreading over every surface of the cube. Gradually, every block began to quiver. One after the other, block after block, joint after joint, it all began to distort, emulsifying into the waves of energy emanating from my hands, becoming part of the waves. I should have been afraid that the structure would collapse on my head but I wasn't. Quite the contrary, I pressed harder against the wall, putting my back and legs into it and pushing in fevered lunges. I pressed and pressed until every muscle in my body ached.
It was then that I heard the pronounced hissing sound. No, hissing isn't right...it was more of a whispering sigh I heard as every inch of the cube evaporated under my touch. Like ether evaporating into the ether, it was all completely gone. Nothing. Not one scrap of it remained. And then I saw where I was.
Back at the house. Not Jon's house...THE house. And there on the balcony from where Jon and I had thrown our clothes to the ground below, stood my old friend from the Study. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, just staring. Expressionless at first, he cracked a faint half smile, then unfolded his arms and slowly, almost patronizingly, applauded. After a moment, he stopped applauding and went back into the house...that cold house...God, it felt like death. Standing there in the wind and dripping rain as from before, I had no idea of what to do. It was then that the phone rang.
From deep in the house I heard it. That odd double ring. That annoyingly insistently odd double ring. Like Pavlov's loyally predictable dog, I felt the urgent need to answer it if for no other reason than to shut it up. It was prompting the same sort of generally annoyed anger in me like when someone's car alarm goes off in the middle of the night and no one comes to shut it off...where you just want to throw open your window and shout S H U T U P!! I had to find it first but I had a fairly good idea of where to start.
Summoning up resolution that I'd almost forgotten that I had, I strode towards the house, towards that annoying ringing. It almost felt like it was taunting me. I entered the front hall and the ringing seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. I winced at the cacophonous din as it echoed from every wall of, seemingly, every room, and I clasped my hands over my ears. One thing the good Lord saw fit to bless me with was very acute hearing and I had no idea how long I was going to take this noise before I had to cut and run just to preserve my own sanity. Turning towards the front parlor, I dashed in and found the door to the study closed and locked tight. I yanked at it with everything I had but it was no use and I was certain now that this was the source of the noise.
I leaned against the door, almost exhausted, as the damned ringing persisted. You'd think that even on whatever plane of existence this was that the caller would figure out that no one was home and give it a rest! Well, no such luck, here. I figured, with caustic whimsy, that this was a plane where persistence and patience was key. It hit me like a left hook.
Turning back to face the door directly, I stood erect, closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, trying as best I could to calm myself under the circumstances. With eyes closed still, I reached out with my right hand, which seemed to unerringly find that large brass lockset that was barring my entrance to the room. I rested the balance of my weight against the door, steadying myself, with my left as I opened myself, seeing the lock in my mind, feeling it under my touch. A brief moment passed and I again felt the now familiar welling of energy in my hands. Somehow, and I don't know how I knew to do it, I channeled the building energy forming in my left hand totally into my right, concentrating everything on that damned unyielding lock. Slowly, I began to visualize it disappearing, evaporating as had happened with my block cage in the front yard.
Ring-ring, it continued, becoming louder as if trying to break my concentration.
Ring-RING....
RING-RING....
My eyes flew open with a start as I felt my flow of energy stop. I thought the incessant ringing had succeeded in breaking my concentration, but I looked down to see that my hand was floating over a hole in the door where the lock had once been. I shook my head; I must have somehow known when enough was enough.
RING-RING....
Enough was enough, all right, I thought as I flung the door open and dashed into the study. Snatching up the middle of the three candlestick phones, I pulled the earpiece from its cradle. The ringing, thankfully, stopped.
"Hello?" I said with more than a hint of annoyance in my voice. My greeting, if you could call it that, was returned by static.
"Hello?" I said again, thumbing the cradle a couple of times like I'd seen people do in old movies. God only knows why they did it but it felt like the thing to do. As I listened for any sign of anything within the static, I thought I could faintly hear the sound of someone talking. It was so faint that I had to concentrate very intently on it. It was definitely the sound of someone talking.
"I can't understand you!" I shouted in the mouthpiece. "Can you speak up?" As if that would do any good over the static. "Damned old things," I thought, "...why couldn't this be a digital cell phone?!"
For several minutes, I tried making out what the voice, if it was a voice and not just some trick of the mind, was saying. It was no use, and I think the incessant caller realized that it was no use. The static stopped. The line went deathly quiet.
"Hello?" I said one more time, just in case the caller was still there. Nothing. Just that unearthly quiet. There was no use hanging on so I replaced the earpiece and set the phone back between its companions. As my awareness slowly expanded away from the phone on which I'd been concentrating, I noticed that the whole house seemed quiet. The wind had stopped. There was no noise whatsoever.
Catching movement in the corner of my eye, I looked up to again see the man from the balcony, my friend from the Study, standing in the doorway, staring at me. In his crossed arms was nestled the same small book as from before. We stared at each other for a very long moment, but they were very different stares. His was one of appraisal, as if sizing me up, looking me up and down, not that there was anything to see being dressed in a monk's habit. My stare was one of tense expectation. It was one of those feelings you get like that split second after the professor calls on you in class and you are in no way prepared to answer, wondering what form your chastisement would take.
But he didn't say anything and made no gestures.
He just turned and walked away, out of sight into the Parlor.
I followed him into the front room and saw him sitting on an old, yet new, overstuffed love seat near the window. He was just sitting with his legs crossed, reading that book. He knew I was there, watching him, but did not acknowledge me right away. He just read a while longer, turned the page and read a little bit more before he removed his reading glasses and looked up at me, a half hearted half smile trying to mask his forlorn expression. He said nothing; he didn't try to say anything. He just looked back down in the book and tapped at it with an index finger, then slowly looking back up at me and extending his hand palm up, as if offering something.
What was it about that book? I had to find out what was in that book.that book that taunted me every time I saw it. I wanted to move to accept the book, to see if I could at least steal a peek at it and, as before, I could not move a muscle. Frozen, immobilized. This was really starting to wear on my nerves. Then, before I could even think of what to do next, the man...evaporated...like smoke...and took the book with him.
I was a little amazed that this all seemed so totally normal to me. I know I say that a lot, but it's true. It's as though there are two me's experiencing this: Brad the fratboy, who is constantly amazed and more than a little tense from all of these odd experiences. And then there's the other Brad, if it is indeed Brad. That's the Brad to whom all of this seems incredibly normal, bordering on the commonplace. But right now, Brad the fratboy was more interested in finding a way out, assuming there was one.
After a moment, I was able to move again. The wind was picking up and the front door, still standing wide from when I'd come in, creaked on its hinges. My instincts told me to go back outside.
I stood on the veranda and looked around. Nothing. Nothing unusual, all things considered, that is, nothing out of place. The wind was increasing and blew the hood back off of my habit. The sky was a muddy gray. It had that look where the weather could go either way, either turning into a cloudburst or clearing off to a sunny day.
I felt the wind to be a little annoying, though, and I started walking back for the door. As I did, I saw that it was beginning to close...slowly...inch by gut wrenching inch and I had the awful feeling that if I didn't make it in time, if I didn't get to that door before it completed its arc, I wasn't getting back. I really hoped that I was wrong, that it was all just old innate fears playing with me.
The thought that I was probably worried about nothing didn't stop me from worrying and quickening my pace, nearly sprinting for the door.... I slammed into it as it slammed loudly against the oak jambs, rattling the frame and surrounding windows, almost crushing my nose as I hit it.
"NooooOOO!" I yelled in a rising wail, bordering on the frantic. I pulled and twisted the knob to no effect. I pounded at the door with my fists, again to no effect.
"NooooOOOO....."
".....OOOOO!" I shouted, started, waking myself almost violently and quickly pushing myself up on my arms, drenched in sweat but realizing that I was back with Jon.... home. I realized that Jon was still sitting across my butt as I allowed myself to fall back into the damp sheets.
"Oooohhhh, man," I whispered shallowly.
"Dude!" Jon started; I could almost feel his tension. "What's wrong, man? You're sweating like a horse! Was I massaging too hard?"
"Oooohhhh, man," I whispered shallowly, again. "No, you didn't do anything," I said, trying to reassure him that he hadn't offended in any way. I reached back and rubbed his thigh. "What happened?" I asked.
"I dunno," Jon said, that little note of empathic concern still in his voice. "I was just massaging your back and then you kind of nodded off," he began. "I kept on working on you and the next thing I knew you started sweating like hell and then jumped up yelling. Man, I'm telling you; you scared the hell out of me!"
"How long was I asleep?" I asked, still trying to calm down.
"I dunno...a few minutes maybe, no more than that," he explained. "What...you have another nightmare?"
"Yeah, you could say that," I said. A few minutes. It had felt like a few hours...a few very long hours. I wasn't really ready to talk about it but I knew what I was ready for.
Pushing myself around, I twisted underneath of Jon, facing him, pulling him down on top of me by the back of his neck. It felt so good to feel him again, his pecs meeting mine, his mouth meeting mine and locking as we began to twist in the sheets, as he helped make my tensions evaporate bit by bit. I sighed as I tucked my face into the nape of his neck and just held him, tightly, feeling his beauty, sensing it with every breath. After a few minutes, Jon whispered in my ear.
"While you were asleep, I had an idea for something that ought to get your mind off of your bad dreams," he said, picking his face up enough so that I could see his wry smile, that lilting eyebrow.
It was that look he got when mischievous Jon was getting ready to come out to play and I was almost afraid to ask.
"Oh, this sounds like trouble...What?" I said dumbly and finding myself unable to hold back the strange smile that I was catching from him.
"Well..." he started slowly, then edged closer to whisper in my ear, as if there was anyone else to hear. Of course, in this house, that might be a distinct possibility.
It didn't sink in right away. I had to ponder it for a quick second or so.
"You little perv!" I said, looking at him with a twisted smile. "And you have the nerve to call ME twisted?" I laughed.
I looked back at him, at his smiling face, breaking into one of my own, asking..."Where is it?"
(To Be Continued)