Hours Beyond the Pale
First appeared in Cathedral #1
Charlie Sullivan was sitting on his bed stroking Tim Gallavan’s hair. Tim’s head was limp in Charlie’s lap. This had been the most passionate, violent evening of sex Charlie had ever been through. They had bitten into each other’s skin, hit each other, kicked each other and drawn tears and blood. The violence was spontaneous, fluid, natural. Neither of them expected it. They gave in to their urge to possess, to frighten, to control. They were filled with lust and rage because they had passion and didn’t understand that passion could be subdued, conquered, lulled into sleep.
“Goddamn, I love you,” Charlie said. Charlie was awake because he was scared and because his stomach was bubbling with a gassy sickness.
Charlie ached like his entire body was becoming a sickness. He pushed Tim off his lap. Tim flopped loosely onto his side of the bed; murder and calm and calm and sickness creating calm and calm becoming the sickness becoming a calm becoming a sickness.
Tim was face-down in a pillow. One arm hung over the bed. Charlie got up and went to the bathroom to clean himself up.
In the shower, the water tapped Charlie like razorblades. He dug his hands into his chest and traced the scratches that Tim had gashed an hour earlier. Or two hours. Time sometimes click-clock’s its way from WHEN to WAS without letting you know.
Charlie got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. Steam from the scalding water had burned Charlie’s body red. The mirror on his medicine cabinet had fogged over. He had been in the shower for click-clock minutes. He knew it felt like click-clock click-clock.
Charlie opened the bathroom door and steam billowed into the hallway. He heard something like a moan coming from the master bedroom and thought that it might be his lover crying out because he was lonely. But Charlie wasn’t in so much shock that he didn’t realize that the moan couldn’t have come from Tim. Maybe it was the wind becoming violent.
His body turned icy when an absurd subconscious spasm suggested that the moan came from his mother, who had been dead for almost seven years. But this was an equally absurd idea.
Charlie walked back toward the bedroom. His towel slipped off in the middle of the hallway. He stopped cold. His nudity reminded him of click-clock hours ago when the first beads of sweat rolled off Tim’s back and onto Charlie’s tongue. His nudity reminded him that he existed.
He was aware that he existed and his new awareness left a stunning haze of vibrations in his field of vision. He was incredibly warm and incredibly cold at the same time.
He click-clocked his way to the bedroom. The shag carpet danced in vibrations. Aware. Aware that he existed.
“Shhh…” the carpet said. “Best not to wake the lover.”
Charlie had only a vague sense of who this “lover” was. Aware. Aware that he existed because he was breathing, because he could taste the air.
There was a body lying face-down on the bed in front of him. Charlie walked over to the side of the bed where the body’s arm flopped over the side as lifelessly as a doll. Charlie bent down and kissed its hand. The skin was surprisingly warm.
The corpse leaned over and the two men embraced and click-clock click-clock until being aware that faceless is falling falling falling into the abyss of heaven.
Forget me not and collect my names.