The usual stuff applies, you know - all that legal jargon and stuff. Don't read this if you're a homophobe, yada yada yada. This was the hardest chapter to write so far. I hope you like it. Please don't hurt me. Someone dies in this chapter, but I promise things will start looking up in the romance department in a few more chapters. You all have been patient with me so far...hang in there.
NOTE: In order for the storyline to flow smoother, Killian's father, who was the chief of police in chapter 1, has now been promoted to State's Attorney for the county they live in. Grin Hope this doesn't cause any confusion.
Chapter 5
The week seemed to drag by. I was so distracted. I knew my grades were probably plummeting. Oh well, it was still only the second week. I would catch up.
Finally, Friday arrived, but by the time the day was over I wished it never had. It was bad day from the beginning when my alarm clock failed to go off and I had to run around like a crazy person to avoid being late. Then all the teachers seemed to be in a bad mood, and I got yelled at several times for not paying attention. Geez, were they just noticing now? I mean I hadn't been paying attention all week. Why was today so important?
A girl who had been after me since last year cornered me in the hall and demanded to know why I wouldn't go out with her. I came so close to telling her it was because she didn't have the right equipment. Instead, I bit my tongue and managed to slip away when a friend of hers who was running down the hall calling her name distracted her.
And then, as if my day hadn't already been crappy enough, I got into a huge fight with Zack, Asher and Jesse, once again in the parking lot. This time they were waiting by my car when I came out. I eyed them suspiciously as I approached. This didn't look like it would be something I would enjoy. I was starting to dread getting my car from the lot. Maybe I would start riding the bus.
"What's with the welcome wagon?" I asked when I got close enough, "Did our dear old school elect you guys to the parking lot hospitality committee?"
"Funny, Killian," Zack said, "We need to talk to you."
"About what?" I asked.
"About Seth," Zack answered.
My eyes immediately went to Asher and he looked away, obviously uncomfortable.
"What about Seth?" I asked warily.
"We think you are spending too much time with him."
"Too much time? I haven't spent any time with him."
"Asher told us about the other day." Jesse threw in smugly, as if that proved my guilt of some gross crime.
"Oh did he?" I once again looked at Asher and he still wasn't looking at me. He seemed to have suddenly found his Airwalks quite fascinating.
"Yeah, he did," Zack confirmed, "And we're worried that Seth is messing with your mind, turning you against us. You've not done anything with us since school started and you met this fag."
"Seth is turning me against you?" I repeated. I could feel my blood pressure rising, "You don't need Seth to turn me against you. You guys are doing a damn good job for yourselves!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Asher spoke up for the first time.
"It's supposed to mean that I'm always the tag along. Nobody ever calls me unless nobody else is available. It means that I'm not really a part of your little group, and I'm being constantly reminded of that fact. It means that nobody ever cared what I was doing or how I was doing until it started looking like I might have my own mind. It means that if I don't do exactly as you say and perform exactly as you expect me to perform, I get check-ups and lectures. I'm not your friend. I'm your mascot. At least Seth treats me like a person."
"You're a fag too, aren't you?" Zack said in the sudden silence left after my heated outburst.
"Go to hell, Zack!" I said between clenched teeth. "And get away from my car while you're at it or I'll run over you!"
"You're gonna be sorry, Killian," Zack warned as he, Asher and Jesse started walking away. "You and your boyfriend."
That threat echoed through my head all the way home. What did that mean, and how much did they know? I sure hoped Seth would be a good friend, because I had just alienated the only three friends I'd ever had.
I went home and did all my homework for the weekend, and it was still only 4:30. I still had 2 and a half hours to wait before I went to meet Seth at the park. Calling Asher was out. I never called Zack or Jesse anyway. And I didn't have any other friends. So, I signed onto the net.
None of my net friends were on. I usually talked to them later at night, so I decided to look up some articles on being gay. I went to my favorite search engine and typed in "gay". I was shocked when it came back with thousands and thousands of hits. Then I realized that 99% of them were porno sites. I was very curious, but I decided not to check them out. Well, maybe just one. I clicked on a link and waited. I almost fell off my chair when the site finally finished loading. I had never seen anything even close to this. I was hard in seconds; I didn't even know you could get hard that fast. My eyes bulged out of my head and this was just the title page. After I caught my breath again I tried clicking on the enter button. A form came up asking me to join, so I exited the whole site. No way were they getting my name, and besides, I didn't have a credit card. I sat in front of my computer with an aching hard-on trying to decide if I should try another site. I finally decided against it. I could see how that could get addicting and I didn't want to tempt fate.
I signed off, stood up, and was immediately reminded of my state of arousal. Well, I thought. I guess this settles the whole gay thing. I snickered at the tent in my pants and decided to do something about it. After checking to make sure my door was locked, I stripped, lay down on my bed, and jerked off. This wasn't the first time I'd ever done it by a long shot, but it was the first time I'd ever allowed myself to think of guys while I did. Not that my mind hadn't tried to go there before, but I'd always felt guilty and made myself think of girls from school. Talk about frustrating! I now found my mind wandering from the guys on the porno site, to Seth, and to my surprise, Asher. I quickly pushed Asher out of my thoughts since he hated me now and definitely wasn't gay anyway.
I finished and got cleaned up just as Mom called me down to dinner. I was surprised to find that it was just Mom when I got downstairs.
"Where's Dad?" I asked.
"He called and said he had a meeting, so it's just us," she said and smiled. My mom was very pretty in a held back kind of way. She had me when she young, only 18, so that made her 34 now. I looked at her closely as if seeing her for the first time. She wore her straight blonde hair shoulder length and tucked behind her ears. She didn't have any wrinkles yet. Her soft blue eyes were very seldom enhanced by makeup, but they were pretty even without any. In fact, she hardly ever wore makeup at all. Suddenly, I wondered why. Dad was always asking her to. The way she did everything else he wanted. The fact that she didn't do this small thing suddenly took me by surprise. Then I thought about the whole church thing. That was another place she stood up to my father. Maybe I had been underestimating her all this time.
"Why don't you wear makeup?" I asked her.
She looked at me in surprise, "What an odd question!"
"Not really. Dad is always asking you to."
She smiled a funny little smile, "Then maybe that's why."
"What?" I was suddenly very confused. Could the chief priest at the shrine of my father really not be as devoted as she seemed?
Her smile broadened. "You've never expressed much interest in my personal appearance before. What brought this on?"
I shook my head silently and she laughed. She blessed the food and we began to eat and make small talk, but my mind was busy trying to find other instances of my mother's rebellion. They were there. I'd just never noticed them before. I think they call it passive aggressive behavior. I suddenly had a new respect for my mother.
"You don't like him very much do you," I interrupted her in mid-sentence. I hadn't been paying attention, but I think she was talking about church.
"Pastor Mason?" she asked in a shocked voice.
"No, Dad."
"Oh," she said simply and sat there for a few seconds, fork still suspended half way between her plate and her mouth. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, so that I had to almost strain to hear her. "You're father is a very difficult man, Killian. So was his father. I've never told you this, but I think you are old enough to handle it. We weren't married when I became pregnant with you. I wouldn't even consider an abortion, so his father, your grandfather, practically forced us to get married."
She let the fork slowly drop to her plate and folded her hands in her lap before continuing. "You're right. I don't like him very much. My mother told me I'd grow to love him," she paused and I could see the pain in her eyes, "but it hasn't happened yet. I see the way he treats you, and it makes my heart ache. I've always tried to make sure you've had everything you needed, everything you wanted; the car, the computer." She shook her head as if to say it wasn't enough.
"Then why don't you leave him?" I asked equally quietly.
"It doesn't work that way, Killian baby," she said, "Your father's a very powerful man in this area. He'd take you away, and I'd never be able to get a job. I never finished college because I was pregnant, and your father never let me go back, so I have no marketable skills. I'm stuck. And I'm afraid that means you are too, at least for a few more years. Maybe once you're in college, I'll have the nerve to make a break for it, but I don't want you to get caught in the crossfire. It would be ugly, trust me."
"I do," I told her sincerely.
She nodded and we went back to eating. The rest of the meal was somewhat solemn. I had a new image of my mother now and my respect for her had gone up considerably. All these years she had stayed in an unhappy relationship because she didn't want to lose me. I was almost in tears. When she stood up to clear the table, I gave her a hug and insisted she let me do it.
By the time I got the dishes finished it was almost time to meet Seth at the park. I figured that by the time I walked there, it would be just about right. I could have driven, but I didn't want to get there too early and have to sit around waiting. It was almost dusk, and it was a little creepy by the pond at night.
I told Mom that I was going for a walk and left. I had plenty of time on the 15-minute walk to think about things. And I had a lot to think about. So much had happened in the last two weeks. I'd realized I was gay and admitted it to myself. I'd come out to one of the pastors at my church and a new friend who was also gay. Then I'd alienated all my old friends, maybe for good. I had been kissed for the first time, and it was by a guy. (I wondered briefly if it counted if you hit them afterwards, but decided it did.) Then to top it all off, I'd found out that my mother was a real person after all. And I liked her.
I wondered what Seth would add to my list tonight. Would he kiss me again? I wondered if I wanted him to. I wasn't sure. Part of me did, but part of me was scared too. I finally decided that if he did, I wouldn't stop him this time.
I was so lost in thought that I almost walked past the trail to the pond. The pond was a man-made pond that sat back in a copse of trees. The forest was small but thick with lots of undergrowth and high weeds on either side of the narrow trail that circled around the pond. The pond itself was a green, nasty looking thing that was fed by drainage ditches. They had built cutesy little arched bridges over the ditches, but it still all looked kind of seedy and creepy, even in the middle of the day. At night, it was downright scary.
It was just at the edge of dusk, the time when it's hardest to see because everything is like a black and white movie with bad contrast. I couldn't see anybody around the pond, but I couldn't be sure, so I started to walk around it. Maybe I'd gotten here before Seth.
Then I thought I saw some movement on the far side of the pond. I started towards it at a faster pace as I called out in a hushed voice, "Seth?" If it was Seth, I thought, he would never recognize my voice. I wasn't sure why I wasn't louder, but I was feeling very terrified all of a sudden. I had goose bumps all over my arms and the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. I almost turned and ran, but I told myself I was being stupid and kept walking toward the area where I'd last seen the movement. "Seth?" I called again in my new raspy voice.
Still no one had answered me, so I wasn't sure if I'd even seen anything. When I got closer to the spot where I thought I had seen the motion, I saw something lying on the ground, so I headed in that direction. Before I could get close enough to see what it was, something suddenly flew out of the undergrowth at me with a fierce howl.
Before I could even scream, they slammed into me, and the impact sent us both rolling across the ground. It was a person, I was sure of that much, as I grappled with them trying to get away. I thought maybe it was Seth playing a sick joke, but I couldn't get turned around to see, since they had me from behind in a tight grip.
They let go abruptly with one hand, but before I could take advantage of that, they raised their arm and quickly brought it down. In that spilt second of motion, I saw a flash in the moonlight. It was a knife! Everything seemed to go in slow motion. I felt the impact of the knife in my stomach, and the air rushed out of me with an audible 'oof'. Almost instantly, searing pain spread through my entire body as I felt my own warm blood gush out.
I'd been stabbed.
The person let go of me with their other arm and yanked the knife out. I fell back onto the ground as they sat up over me. I tried to see them, but the pain had blinded me. They didn't seem to have any facial features. They raised their arm again, but then stopped. I lay there looking helplessly up at the faceless monster above me, but I couldn't do anything but whimper.
"Shit," they hissed, then lurched to their feet and took off running.
I didn't move for a few seconds. They pain was all I could think about and I seemed to be having difficulty breathing. Each breath felt like a whole new stab. I struggled to sit up, but the pain flashed through my body again, and I felt myself blacking out. "I don't want to die," I thought, as the darkness surrounded me. I fought back and managed to get myself onto my hands and knees. I put pressure on the stab wound with one hand and tried to stand up, but my head was spinning too much.
I wanted to scream, but still couldn't seem to get enough air. I was also afraid that the person with the knife would come back and finish me if he realized I was still alive. I looked around for help, but I couldn't see over the weeds. I could see the lights of nearby houses faintly through the trees, but I knew my chances of getting through the underbrush in my condition were next to none. I had better chances of getting found here on the trail. Sometimes, people walked their dogs out here. Then I saw the figure lying on the ground again. I realized it was a person. Maybe I had interrupted a mugging and they were just unconscious. Maybe I could wake them up and they could get help.
I painfully crawled over to them, every movement bringing a wave of intense agony. I felt like I was going to get sick. As long as I didn't pass out, I didn't care. My shirt was soaked with my blood by this time. I knew I was losing a lot and that was why I was getting so light headed.
Finally, I was at the person's side. They were lying on their side facing away from me, so I grabbed their shoulder and rolled them towards me. As soon as they fell flat on their back, I knew they weren't alive. Their throat had been slashed open, the gash angry and raw. Its amazing the little things you notice in a moment like that. I saw the leaves and small pebbles stuck in the drying blood around the wound, and I wanted to brush them off. They looked obscene, as if the gaping slit wasn't obscene enough.
I felt the blackness swirling around me again and I didn't think I'd fight it this time. In the last second before I allowed the darkness to overwhelm me I looked at the face. My last thought before succumbing to the void was, "Oh God, not Seth."