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Checks Cashed by Marc DeBose
start with Part 1
Part 3
Much later, Nick and Raul were sitting at Nick's dining room table, though his dining "room" was just an open area beyond the equally open kitchen, taking up a fraction of the space of the studio that lay beyond. At this end of the building a few narrow windows stretched from floor to ceiling, and it was possible to sit at the table and look directly down at the deserted streets. It hardly mattered, in that isolated area, whether the men were dressed or not, but Raul was wearing the jeans and t-shirt that he had arrived in, and Nick was as dressed as he ever was at home, wearing fatigue pants with no shirt. They were also barefoot, and they had Drake under the table, naked and gagged, his wrists tied to the table legs, and they were tickling him with their feet.
Drake couldn't remember the last time he'd been tickled by feet. The table top was glass, so the men could see more or less what they were doing; but for this kind of work feet were more inexact than hands, and in a way it was like being tickled by animals that didn't quite know what they were doing. This clumsiness was very effective, made the tickling seem more random, and Drake grew hysterical as the four feet slipped and skidded and bumped all over his torso, toes stubbing against his ribs, digging into his navel.
Drake had always liked men's feet, and excruciating as the tickling was, making him scream against the gag, he was also getting a hard-on from getting worked over by four strong specimens. Never mind that the feet were somewhat funky, smelling of sweat, cum and piss, in that order; or that Raul desperately needed to trim his toenails, their sharpness gave an added edge to his torture of Drake's navel.
He was gagged because Nick and Raul, in addition to tickling him, were trying to have a conversation. Raul had an obsession that would not quit: when was he going to get Drake all to himself, and for how long? "I want him for at least a fucking week," he said.
"Hmmm," Nick said, "I bet Pedro will want him for even longer than that."
It was true, the tongue-cleaning session with Pedro had been a disaster. It had begun with his refusal to cooperate, and his demand that Drake be kept away from him. Nick, ever the cordial host, had complied by locking Drake in a big wire cage in a corner of the Torture Chamber. It was a cage meant for an animal, perhaps a large dog, and its space cramped Drake, who had to lie on his side with his knees drawn up. Still he had a good view of what happened next.
"I'm not doing a fucking thing, man," Pedro said, backing away from the other two. "I'm getting the fuck out of here."
"Okay," Nick said, "since we've been doing so well with the democratic process, let's take a vote."
Raul, grinning, raised his hand. "I vote we tie him spread-eagled to that exam table over there."
Nick raised his hand too. "Majority rules."
"Oh, no," Pedro said. "You fuckers will never get me on that table…"
Pedro was strong but his opponents were stronger, very soon wrestling the naked young man to the floor, where Raul straddled him while Nick pinned his arms straight back. Pedro's screams were unearthly as his brother gleefully tormented his ribs and armpits.
"NO! NO! YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TICKLE ME!"
In between screams, his torturers told him that they would relent if Pedro would agree to get up on the table; otherwise they would tickle him to death immediately.
Pedro had nothing to fall back on but the logic of a man in agony: anything that would stop them, even for a few seconds, would be a godsend. "All right, all right!" he shrieked. "I'll do it, I'll do whatever you fucking want, just stop tickling me!"
Set free, Pedro could barely get to his feet without help. His eyes rolled wildly, seeking escape, but even if he had somewhere to go he had already lost all energy to get there, he was limp as Raul and Nick manhandled him onto the table and fastened down his wrists and feet. He said to his brother, "Hey, man, you don't want to do this."
"Hmmm," Raul said. "I think I remember a certain motherfuck who didn't care if I got tickled out of my mind."
"Come on, man! I didn't mean anything!"
"That's not what you said when you turned my asshole over to the fucking slave!"
"All right, all right, you guys," Nick said. "Less talking, more screaming." His hands hovered over Pedro's taut brown belly. "I think I might start right here."
"NO! YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TICKLE ME! IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE A TONGUE-CLEANING, THAT'S ALL!"
"Christ, another yeller," Nick said.
"You get the belly, I'll get his feet." Raul said.
"No sooner said."
"AAAAAHHH NO NO NO NO DON'T DO THIS TO ME YOU FUCKING BASTARDS! AAAAHHH HELP ME, GOD HELP ME!"
Nick had no mercy on Pedro as he worked from his belly to his groin and then up to his neck. Raul broke a fresh sweat as he labored over his brother's soles. Drake could only stare, fascinated, while Pedro strained and thrust against his bonds so hard that the table actually moved a fraction of an inch. In his own worst agonies Drake hadn't budged the table at all.
When the ticklers stopped for a few seconds the sound of Pedro's heaving breath filled the room.
"I should explain," Nick said. "You're right, it was supposed to be a tongue bath, by my slave, and if he tickled you then he would be punished. But then, damned if the slave didn't change the rules. Remember?" Nick bent over and began blowing razzberries against Pedro's stomach, with devastating results.
Pedro raised his head as far as he could, searched the room till his wild eyes found Drake. "YOU FUCKING SLAVE I'LL KILL YOU, I'LL KILL YOU BEFORE I KILL THESE FUCKS, I'LL GRIND YOU UP AND FEED YOU TO THEM…"
Scared as he was, Drake had to acknowledge that Nick was a shrewd bastard. He had initiated the savage tickling of Pedro and succeeded in blaming Drake for it. As a result Raul and Pedro, when they noticed him at all, both glared at him as if they couldn't wait to tickle him to death, then back to life, and then to death again.
While Nick began to pry at Pedro's ribs, driving him to wordless, high-pitched screams, Raul retreated to a corner of the Torture Chamber and returned with something held behind his back.
"Hey little bro, I've got something for you."
Nick relented enough for Pedro to at least form words again. "YOU SOFT PRICK OF A BROTHER, YOU BASTARD, MAKE HIM STOP! DON'T JUST STAND THERE WHILE HE'S KILLING ME!"
"You ain't seen nothin' yet," Raul said. "Get a load of this." He held up a stiff white feather.
"AAAAHHH! NO! NO! YOU SAID YOU'D NEVER DO THAT!"
There followed something unlike anything Drake, or even Nick, had ever seen. As Raul approached with the feather, Pedro totally lost his mind. He screamed, mouth stretched wide, tongue protruding, eyes popping out of his head. Nick was so startled he jumped back. Here was a man who was not only in terror of being tickled, he was in paralyzing fear of losing his immortal soul.
"Wait a minute," Nick said. "There's something else going on here."
"He's always been like this with feathers," Raul said.
"So that's it! Pteronophobia, fear of being tickled with feathers. I've read about it, but never actually saw it."
"Watch what happens when I get even closer."
Pedro squirmed, wallowing in sweat. The sound he made now was an eerie, high keening, an inhuman sound, a ghost sound. His bladder let go, piss trickling to the floor.
"Jesus Christ!" Nick said. "So this is what you did to Juan? Does he have that phobia too?"
"No, man," Raul said, "just this little fucker right here." He began his approach again, slowly. "And when… I touch him… with this featherM… he's going to… die!"
Pedro strained, every fiber of his being struggling against his bonds, and from his throat came another inhuman sound, an internal strangling, fear choking the life out of him. His body went limp.
No one moved. Raul stared at his brother, panic starting to show in his own eyes. "He ain't breathing. He ain't breathing, Nick!"
"Shut up." Nick checked Pedro's breath and pulse, lifted one eyelid. "He's breathing, he's just passed out. Christ, you guys are unbelievable. How have you managed to live around each other all these years and still survive?"
"Shit!" Raul let the feather drop and ground it with his heel. "I ought to slap the shit out of him when he wakes up, just for scaring me like that!"
So that's how it came to be that Nick and Raul were sitting at the table by themselves, tickling Drake with their feet. Pedro was spending time in the Recovery Room, then the shower. When he finally appeared, wearing the sweatpants and t-shirt he had arrived in, he was so pale his face was almost luminous. Seeing Drake on the floor, he exploded. "Why, you…!" Nick and Raul both had to restrain him as he kept yelling at Drake, "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
"Shut the fuck up," Nick said. "You're giving me a headache."
"I want him, Nick," Pedro said. "I want him so bad. Tied up. In my basement. For two weeks, or until he gives out, whichever comes first!"
"Here, sit down over here and we'll talk. You can get his feet."
Pedro positioned a chair where he could sit and raise up Drake's feet to rest in his lap. "Oh, yeah, I want these feet all right." He was able to trap Drake's ankles in the grip of one strong hand while the tortured the soles with the other.
Delirious, writhing under the table so far as he was able, Drake realized at some level that this was the story of his life: the men with dirty feet were tickling him with them, and the man who had just taken a shower was using his hands. Even so the funky feet and wild sensations were driving him into a frenzy of desperation and lust. It didn't help that Pedro was getting a boner, Drake's feet squirmed against it as Pedro held them pinned more and more tightly in his lap.
"I say he's mine," Raul said.
Nick mumbled something.
"If my piece of shit brother gets him for two weeks, then I get him for two weeks!"
"The fuck you do! And hell no, you don't get visiting rights!"
Drake drifted in and out of reality as the brothers argued about who would get to tickle him to death. Meanwhile Nick and Raul were having a shoving match with their feet against Drake's ribcage, and Pedro was practicing his dexterity in tickling between the slave's toes. Drake twisted desperately in his bonds, trying for some contact between his raging erection and the floor.
Sometime later Nick untied his wrists. "Come on, dickhead, I've got a plan."
The words filled Drake with dread. His legs were shaking and it took him a few tries to get to his feet.
"You can sit at the table with us," Nick said.
How long had it been since Drake had sat in a chair, a real chair with no restraints attached? It placed him at eye level with his tormentors, and for a moment it was almost like a normal scene, four guys sitting around a table, except that he was naked and the others were not. In front of him a silver cigarette case lay open, revealing several fat joints. Raul already had one lit and was passing it to Pedro, who took a few deep hits and offered it to Nick. Nick took a couple of shallow tokes and then, to Drake's surprise, pinched the rapidly diminishing joint in the center and held it out to him.
"For this next game," he said, "even the slave gets high."
Somewhere in the past there was a different Drake, one who earned a good living from a major corporation, confidently strode the streets of Manhattan, and would not hesitate to say, in any situation, Hey, I never agreed to any drug use. But that Drake was gone. He took the joint, full of who-knew-what kind of weed, and sucked on it greedily. He hadn't got stoned in years and he was ready for it now, anything to relieve his anxiety. The effects were almost immediate, blooming in his lungs, sweeping through his brain. When he finally expelled smoke his anxieties went too--some of them, anyway.
Raul grabbed the joint. "Jesus Christ, I'm already so fucking stoned I can't see." Which didn't stop him from taking another deep hit.
"Ah, shit," Pedro said, "I'm feeling no pain, man."
"We don't want to get so fucking stoned we can't move," Nick said. He still took only shallow puffs, letting the smoke go quickly as if he were only holding a cigarette. "That would spoil the race."
Race?
Soon all four of them were standing in the middle of the kitchen. Nick was explaining the rules. They had shared another joint, with Drake getting the lion's share of it, and now Raul and Pedro were laughing as they tossed Drake back and forth between them, casually tickling him. He could barely stand up.
"We're going to let him run," Nick said.
Run?
"You're gonna let a slave run?" Raul asked. "Where's he gonna run to?"
"Oh, he can't really go anywhere. The loft is locked from the inside, I'm the only one who can open the door. The whole point is the chase. You two are going to chase him, and the first one who catches him gets to keep him for a week."
"How's he gonna run, man? He's so stoned he can't stand up, not to mention we've tickled him fucking silly."
It was true. As he was passed back and forth between the brothers Drake's giggling became shamelessly high-pitched, he sounded like a little girl about to wet her pants.
"That just makes the race a little more interesting," Nick said. "'Course, you guys are wrecked too."
Raul and Pedro were beyond noticing that Nick had managed not to smoke much dope at all. They were muttering things to Drake as they passed him back and forth.
"When I get you alone, bitch, I'm gonna tickle you like you've never been tickled before," Raul said, "but I'm gonna go real slow, so it takes all seven days to fucking kill you."
"When I get you alone," Pedro said, "The first thing I'm going to do is fuck the living shit out of you. Then I'll tickle you, but only till I feel like fucking you again." He still had a hard-on, clearly outlined down the right leg of his sweatpants.
Drake wondered if these guys knew how funny they sounded, like cartoon versions of themselves. It made him giggle even more breathlessly as one groping pair of hands passed him off to the other. He made up a little song: fuck me tickle me fuck me tickle me… was it just a song in his head, or was he singing out loud?
"You guys are fucking pathetic," Nick said. "Come on, let's get started before you all pass out." He had them line up at the edge of the dining area, Drake in the middle. "I've closed and locked the Torture Chamber and my bedroom, so he'll have to stick to the studio."
Pedro rubbed his bloodshot eyes and frowned at the huge, mostly bare room. "How many laps?"
"Only as many as it takes for one of you to catch him. But to be fair, we have to give him a head start. Five seconds."
"Okay, let's get this fucking shit started, man." Raul rubbed his brow, shook his head. "What it is we're doing, now?"
"When I say Go, the slave takes off. When I say Go again, you guys take off after him."
"This won't take long," Pedro said.
"The hell it won't," Nick said. "The shape you guys are in, a hundred yard dash would take you an hour."
"This won't take long," Pedro said.
"You just said that."
Drake tried to keep track of the business at hand, with varying success from moment to moment. Somewhere something serious was going on, and he'd goddamn well better pay attention. At the same time a little film strip was playing in his mind: Raul and Pedro were tickling and fucking him, fucking and tickling him, and the speed was all out of sync like in a silent movie, and it was funny.
"When I say Go, slave."
Drake closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he saw the studio before him, as if he had just been transported there. The huge room was bare except for an easel in the far corner and those huge torsos hanging on the wall. A few of them could have been his--perhaps the unfinished one on the easel was his. Confronting those vivid images of male agony was a sobering experience; for a moment he thought clearly, realized he might stand a chance of survival with Nick, but if either of the brothers got hold of him it would be the end for sure.
He had to run. He had to make sure they didn't catch him. But how?
"Go."
Drake lurched forward onto the waxed hardwood floor. He had to run, but his feet weren't working right; as soon as he lifted them they fell at odd angles, as if he had never learned to walk, let alone run.
"Go!"
That was the signal for Raul and Pedro to take off after him. The sound of their bare feet hitting the wood was a great incentive, it got Drake moving again, not looking down but straight ahead this time as he tried to run. He seemed to be doing it, the walls were moving on either side of him. He tried not to think about how fast he was running or how close the two men behind him were.
"Hey, slave!"
"You're mine, you ticklish bastard!"
Raul was going to tickle him, Pedro was going to fuck him… wait, maybe it was the other way around…hell, it didn't matter, they were going to do whatever they wanted, there was no stopping either of them. Drake reached the end of the room and, with a shriek, veered off to his right.
"Okay, you fuck!" It was Raul's voice. "I've… got… you… now!"
Drake braced himself to be tackled, hurled to the floor. Instead there was a crash behind him, and a moment later Nick was cursing a blue streak.
"Fucking… shit-for-brains greaser…!"
"What the fuck happened?" Raul stood by the corner where the easel now lay like a pile of kindling and the canvas leaned beside it, torn through the center. "I thought it was him, man!"
When Pedro saw that Raul had tackled a painting instead of his prey, he started laughing and couldn't stop.
Drake saw his chance. While the others were preoccupied, he took off.
He never doubted that Nick was right-there was nowhere he could go. But he would try the outside door anyway. Before he knew it he had reached the shallow alcove that served as a foyer, and sure enough the door would not budge. It had at least three locks on it, each one needing a key.
But there was another door, at right angles to the exit. Drake tried it; it opened into darkness. He stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him. With a growing sense of panic he felt for a light switch. A bare overhead bulb came on and he was relieved to find himself in a large storage room. Along three walls metal utility shelves held sketch pads, rolls of canvas, lengths of wood, new and partially used tubes of paint. There were pots and jars and cans filled with brushes of all types; cans of gesso, the gluey, chalky stuff used to prepare canvases; palettes and palette knives; and all varieties of cleaning supplies. For a moment it was as if he had stepped into someone else's life, a life filled with purpose, the love of tools and work, powered by a spiritual need to create. Was all of that part of Nick?
Nick! Any second he would be here. There was no lock on the door. But there was a straight chair set against the wall, and without even thinking Drake grabbed it and jammed it underneath the doorknob.
Almost immediately he heard voices.
"Hey, slave master, it looks like your slave's disappeared."
"He hasn't gone far," Nick growled.
Drake stood in the center of the room, hardly daring to breathe, his eyes on the doorknob. When it turned, he jumped. The door held fast.
"Son of a bitch."
"Hey, slave master…!"
"Shut the fuck up!"
Nick tried to force the door, threw his weight against it, but it wouldn't budge.
Drake didn't want to laugh, but he couldn't help it. He took his hand from his mouth and let out a haw haw kind of horselaugh.
"You had better get the fuck out of there right now, you piece of shit, before I double the punishment I'm planning for you!"
Drake backed farther away from the door. He hugged himself with delight, danced in small circles to his right, then left. They can't touch me. The thought was delicious. He had to say it out loud, he just had to. "You can't touch me!"
"We'll do more than touch you…!"
"Hey, slave!" It was Pedro. "You're mine! My brother tore up the studio, so he lost the game. Hee hee hee! You know what that means! You're mine till the end of your life!"
"Fuck you!" Raul said to his brother. "This ain't been settled yet!"
"I'm thinking of a time sharing arrangement," Nick said, slowly enough for Drake to hear every word. "We'll all three get to work on him for certain hours of the day. After a week there'll be nothing left of him."
Drake laughed again, he couldn't help it. "Ooooh, I'm so scared of you guys!"
Furious pounding on the door.
"I'm so thankful you can't touch me," Drake called. "I'm feeling soooooooo ticklish right now!"
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"I think I'd just scream if anybody touched me!"
"Enough of this shit," Nick said. "I'm going to get some tools."
"Hey, slave." Raul spoke with his mouth very close to the door, as if he were sharing a secret. "If there's any poison in there you better drink it now, 'cause anything would be better than what we're gonna do to you."
"Oh, please… don't frighten me like that. I might have a heart attack or something!" Giggling wildly, Drake dropped to the floor where he sat Indian style, rocking back and forth in amusement.
For a while he didn't hear anything. It was hard to calm down, his excitement was so great. He had won, though he could not concentrate to figure out exactly what he had won or how long it would last. He sat still, listening for the voices in the alcove, but there were none. Was it a trick? He had to be very, very quiet…
He noticed his bare feet. What strange things they were, feet. These particular ones--not the cleanest feet in the world--now, where had they come from? Could he even be sure they were his? They looked more like funeral feet, corpse feet. So immobile and white.
The right foot lay on the floor, on its side, just in front of his left knee. Slowly he reached down to touch it with his left index finger. The finger had barely touched flesh when he felt the spark.
It tickled.
Now, he had always been told, had always believed, that it was impossible for a person to tickle himself, and his own experiments in that direction had been failures. So he was not ready to believe, even in his altered state of consciousness, that it was possible now.
He stared at the foot for what seemed like minutes on end. It was its own entity, separate from him. It was not him. When the left hand appeared again, the threatening index finger flexing, flexing, it was not part of him either. He was watching images on a screen, within a frame, and he was well removed from them. He only kept watching because--well, just because.
When the finger attacked, stroking up and down the sole, it skewed the picture, the projector fell from its stand. Drake closed his eyes and there was laughter in the room.
He shifted a bit, and now the left foot lay on its side in front of his right knee. He waited to see what would happen, and there it was, the right hand this time. All of its fingers were flexing, not just the one. The foot, suddenly alive, flexed also. It was like one of those time-lapse nature films where a flower blooms in a second.
This time all of the fingers attacked, and did not stop. Drake rocked back and forth on the floor. Someone was laughing.
"…fuck is going on in there…?"
Oh God, I'm laughing.
Sound of a hammer, and then: "So much paint on these frigging hinges…"
Just to see if they could, the right hand and the left hand began working simultaneously, tickling both feet. Drake rocked and laughed, twisted side to side, trying to get away from those hands.
"Shut the fuck up in there!"
That was Raul, who couldn't stand the thought that Drake was getting tickled and he couldn't watch. It was just the kind of thing that would make him furious.
Drake lay back on the floor, under the bare overhead bulb. It reminded him of a locker room. Where was Carter? He had just seen him recently, he was sure of it. "Carter? Are you there? Look at this." He raised his hands, held them between his face and the light. The fingers bloomed, they flexed, they threatened: they would be all over him, any second now.
The bulb seemed to swing from its cord as Drake rolled his head from side to side, over and over, breathless with laughter.
When Nick had finally removed the hinges and pulled the door away, he and the brothers charged into the storeroom, but they didn't get far. They stopped, several yards away from Drake, not knowing what to make of what they saw.
Drake was sitting up. He seemed to be hugging himself, but no, his fingers were busily digging into his ribs. Tears ran down his face as he gasped with laughter. He tried to speak, but his voice was nearly gone and they could not hear him.
"Jesus Christ," Nick said.
The brothers cursed softly in Spanish.
Nick moved slowly, warily toward Drake, like a hunter approaching a trapped animal. Drake was tickling his armpits now, his head thrown back, mouth stretched wide as air rushed from his lungs. He tried to speak again, mouthing the same words over and over as Nick grew closer, straining to hear him. When he finally did hear him, he couldn't believe his ears.
"Help me please help me!" Drake was saying. "I'm tickling myself, and I can't stop!"
Drake was in the Recovery Room. He woke with a start, not knowing how he had got there, though that was not unusual. The effects of the dope he'd smoked were gone, he felt tired but his head was clear--until he heard the voices. They were the same voices he had heard before, voices of his past tormentors. How rude of them to talk, to hold conversations when he couldn't even see them. His own voice was long gone, maybe for good this time, but fortunately he didn't have to speak, they could hear his thoughts. He asked the darkness, Where the hell are you?
"Easy, Drake, easy." It was Emmett again. He looked a little more real, more solid than before. But you never knew, ghosts could fade in and out. "Just take it easy, okay?"
Drake looked around. There was snickering Rodney Cole, off to the left along with his soccer player buddies. There was Marshall Carter, pre-cum leaking from his beautiful big dick, and Coach Doyle. Emmett seemed to be the leader of the group, gathering them around.
Why do you guys keep bothering me?
"Take it easy," Emmett said again. "The thing is, Drake… we're going to tickle you. All of us. We're real enough now."
Drake had grown used to these voices, these spirits. They were just hallucinations, not to be taken too seriously. But what he saw next made him sit straight up on the cot.
Nick and Pedro and Raul were coming toward him.
"Hey you guys," Drake said, "I'm not alone in here. There are ghosts around. You'd better beat it."
Nick laughed. "We know all about ghosts," he said. "We see them too."
"What?" Drake wagged his head in confusion. "Does that mean… you're ghosts?"
"Listen, Drake." Nick sat on the edge of the cot. His voice was almost kind. "I'm really sorry, man. You've been a good slave. I'm sorry it has to end this way. But you see, I can start all over again, in another city. I've done it many times. Somewhere I'll find a loft, in an otherwise empty part of town, and lure some desperate ticklish stud there. And he'll never come out."
Drake looked to Pedro and Raul. "Sorry, man," they both said together, and they seemed to mean it. "But you know," Raul added, "Pedro and me, we still want our revenge, and this is the only way to get it."
"But what are you doing here?" Drake asked. "You guys aren't from the past. You're right here, in the next room."
"Yeah," Nick said, "we're in the next room. But we're also right here… with these other guys… colleagues, you might say."
Rodney Cole snickered. "More like partners in crime."
"Emmett," Drake called, "where did you go? You're probably the only guy who could make sense of this for me."
Emmett stepped forward again. "I wish I could," he said. "But nothing's made any sense to me, Drake, ever since I left you."
Drake sat up, swung his legs over the side of his cot. "Do you really mean that?"
"Oh, don't get me wrong," Emmett said. He sat beside Drake, took his right hand and held it--the first sign that the spirits really could touch him now. "I'm having a great career. I could become the youngest CEO my company's ever had. But my personal life has been a disaster. You see, leaving you was the biggest mistake of my life."
"Really?" For the first time in… well, a long time, there were tears in Drake's eyes that had not been tickled out of him. "Then why did you do it, really, Emmett? Why?"
"Because I was afraid. Afraid of commitment--we've all heard that one before, right? Plus I was bothered by all the kinky stuff we were into. I had to get away, start over, try to find a 'normal' sex life, whatever that is. But I haven't found anything at all, or anyone at all who could take your place." Emmett raised a knuckle to his eye, a tear slid down his finger. He squeezed Drake's hand tightly. "I love you, Drake. I always have."
One tear rolled down Drake's cheek. "Thanks, bud. I love you too. It just about killed me when you left."
Over in the corner, Rodney Cole rolled his eyes. "Jeez, I didn't know I was gonna have to watch fag love scenes."
Emmett pointed a warning finger. "You watch your mouth. We're going to have to work together, remember that."
The dark, hairy soccer player stepped up to Rodney. "Yeah, watch your mouth. As a matter of fact I'm gay, too. I came out fifteen years ago, I live in San Francisco, and I'm fucking my brains out even as we speak."
Coach Doyle's response to this was automatic. He called out, "Hey, son, that's no way to talk to a younger kid."
"I'm not a kid," Rodney grumbled. "I'm 32 years old, and I'm in jail in Tuscaloosa for holding up a 7-Eleven. Okay?"
Emmett stood up. "I guess we have to get to work."
Drake kept his hold on Emmett's hand. "Before I let you go, I have to know this: if you loved me, why didn't you ever come back?"
Emmett sighed. He couldn't meet Drake's eyes now. "I was too proud, Drake. Too damn proud to come back looking for you… until recently."
"What are you talking about?"
"You might as well know everything. I did come back looking for you, very recently. But you had already left to come here, and nobody knew where you were." He had shed more tears, his face was glistening.
Drake covered his face. "Oh, my God. Oh Jesus."
"So I had to give up. Imagine my surprise when I was summoned here," Emmett said. "I was even more surprised to find out--I don't even know how--what I'm supposed to do. What we're all supposed to do."
There was a stir in another corner of the room. Carter raised his hand and cleared his throat rather loudly. "Uh, excuse me," he said, "but can we kind of get started? I like this spirit stuff, and there's a lot more guys I want to go see."
Emmett ignored him. He could only watch Drake--for Drake was crying.
He had whimpered and shed tears in front of Nick many times, but now he broke down completely, heaving sobs that seemed to come from the pit of his stomach, tears filling his cupped hands like an offering. He cried for losing Emmett, and for losing his only chance to get him back; he cried for the years of emptiness, the nights spent in bathhouses and back rooms, the mornings of lonely solitude. And he cried for himself, for the senseless waste of his young life.
And yet, and yet…
"Look at it this way, Drake," Emmett said, kneeling down before his friend. "You've lived the only possible life you could, and this is the only possible end."
And yet… he thought not only of Emmett but also the others in the room--Rodney Cole and the soccer players, Marshall Carter and Coach Doyle, and Nick and Raul and Pedro. They had given him the most thrilling, terrifying, erotic moments of his life. Did it all add up to a life that had been worth it?
He had to believe it did.
As abruptly as he had started crying, he stopped. He shook tears from his face, took a deep breath, turned and confronted the whole group. "No," he said. "I'm not going to cry. Not anymore. And you know what? I'm not going to beg, either, no matter what you do to me."
Nick wore his famous tight-lipped smile. "You can't take all the fun out of it, Drake."
Drake lay back on the cot, spread his arms and legs wide. What irony, getting tickled to death in the Recovery Room.
The last thing he said before they fell on him was, "Nobody can say I never got what I wanted."
And so it was that Drake was finally tickled to death, in a room where he lay completely alone in the darkness. Only in his mind had they come back--the boys and men who had craved his ticklishness, who had strained to hear his hysterical laughter long after it had faded to croaks and whispers. They tickled him, these ten boys and men, with apologies but without restraint, the lust in their fingertips carving out Drake's very core.
He lasted several hours, only because he was able, for part of the time, to retreat to the dark lake, and the harmless nibbling fish who reminded him to breathe. Then that part of his mind shut down, and his soul began to seek a way out.
If you were on a plane that day, heading toward that same city, you might have seen the usual towers and highways, anonymous-looking, insignificant from so high up. If you were sitting on the right side of the plane, you might even have glimpsed the old warehouse district, and a flash of light just above it, as bright and brief as if the sun had thrown off a spark. That spark was Drake's soul, ascending toward its next life, hoping to find a gay male body that would be just as ticklish as the one it had left behind. Just as ticklish, and--if such a thing were possible--just as brave.
Wayne Courtois lives in Kansas City, Missouri. He holds an M.F.A. from the Writing Program of the University of North Carolina—Greensboro.
email Wayne Courtois
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Ten Apologies © 2001 Wayne Courtois
Checks Cashed © 2001 Marc DeBose
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