Crash: M/M Straight to Gay First Time Romance (2 page)

I didn’t know. So I turned my feet to a well-worn path just inside the tree line that led back to the field where my car was parked. I made it a whole ten feet before strong hands grabbed my arms and an arm circled my neck, bringing me down silently. I stayed surprisingly calm at first; it wasn’t until they pulled a bag over my head that I began to hyperventilate.

“Get his pants,” said a voice I couldn’t identify.

“Calm down, man. You are going to give yourself a heart attack,” giggled the only voice I knew. Brooke’s voice.

“Wha-? Wha-? Wha-?” I panted.

“You’re the virgin sacrifice, little dude,” a third voice informed me.

The evening air chilled my skin as my pants and underwear were wrenched off of my body by phantom hands.

“Aw, so sweet,” giggled Brooke.

Tears filled my eyes as I struggled against my attackers. My arms flailed, grasping at clothing and hair, pulling and wrenching as I strained to get free.

“Hurry up before people see,” hissed a voice just over my ear. I balled my fist and launched it backward. A strong arm wrapped around my arm at the elbow, pinning my outstretched arm to the side of my head.

Terror crawled through my veins, and I let the tears fall freely. I panicked, screaming and kicking, my back arched in the dirt as my heels pounded the ground.

“Is he epileptic?”

“Nah, he’s just scared,” Brooke assured her assistant.

“Just stop fighting. It will all be over soon,” said the voice behind me.

That didn’t sound reassuring to me. I struggled to breathe and the world began to spin as I fought harder. The cold kiss of metal against my belly made me stop instantly. I could hear the material of my outlet store ad shirt give way as they cut it away from my body. My mind registered the fact that they were stripping me naked. I was naked in front of strangers.

I let my limbs go limp as I sobbed hot, humiliated tears. People know that pain hurts. What most people don’t understand is that humiliation also hurts. It’s a bone-crushing pain that wraps itself around your rib cage and squeezes until you are willing to die to make it stop.

“That’s better,” cooed Brooke.

“Fuck, dude, he was starting to freak me out,” said the first voice.

Shirt, shoes, everything, was pulled off of my body, and four pairs of hands lifted me roughly up from the ground and set me back down on a wooden slab. Despite being chilled to the bone, sweat covered my body as I struggled to catch my breath. Rough ropes bit into the sensitive skin around my wrists, ankles and across my chest. I pulled against the constraints blindly.

“Don’t start that again,” Brooke said as she pressed her scantily clad body against mine. She passed an unnaturally cold hand over my chest and between my thighs. If I had been another guy, her touch may have been enough to calm me. She pressed her sticky lips against my chest and wrapped her arms around my shivering body, trying to seduce me into compliance.

“GET OFF!” I screamed over and over, my body jerking away from the sickening sensation of the unwanted touch.

Brooke snorted impatiently and abandoned her efforts.

“Is it time?” she asked impatiently.

“We’re ready. Let's go.”

The sensation of weightlessness shocked me into awareness. Instead of struggling against the inevitable I tried to focus on survival. I blinked hard, shaking my head, hoping to shift the bag on my head and get a sense of where they were taking me. The sound of the raging party began to fill my ears and relief washed over me. They weren’t dragging me into the woods and this wouldn’t be a ritualistic homicide. The heat of the bonfire warmed my skin and then steadily increased as I was carried closer and closer to the flames. A whole new wave of terror washed over me as I understood that whatever they had in mind, it was going to take place in front of every senior present.

Jeering voices assaulted me as more and more of my former classmates noticed my naked body being carried out in the open. The rude comments descended into a crescendo of hoots and whistles as everybody realized that the “show” was about to start.

The bag left my head with a sudden jerk, and I found myself suspended from a wooden cross in front of all of those people.

“Was he crying? He was crying!” laughed a buck-toothed boy. Laughter followed. I didn’t even attempt to hide my fear or my tears. I cried openly, bawling like a small child. Hands reached out and touched me; cruel mouths turned up in delighted smiles as they laughed at me. The sounds became warped and monstrous. A shirtless boy ran out of the crowd and shouted something indiscernible, brandishing a large machete. The crowd turned into a sea of ravenous eyes, and gleeful shouts as the boy did a mock “native” dance around the virgin sacrifice…me. His blade passed ominously close to my body, and I screamed, wetting myself and him in the process. The crowd went wild.

Out of desperation, my eyes searched the crowd for Reid but couldn’t find him. Reid would never let something like this happen. He was my friend at the very least. I searched but couldn’t find him. My heart sunk as I realized there was no hope of being rescued. I couldn’t breathe. The heat and the fear combined to create the ultimate storm, and I passed out without ever discovering why they needed a virgin sacrifice.

A week later I would find out it was a prank every senior class pulled for the last twenty years. Nobody talked about it openly, but everybody knew about it. I suppose if I had any friends back then I would have known as well. Unlike me, all of the previous “virgins” had been willing participants, laughing along good-naturedly as they were “abducted”, stripped, hung up for the world to see, and “worshiped.” Somebody said the sacrifice usually got laid that night. I was the only one that fought and screamed and peed himself.

A decade later I would find out that I was the last sacrifice. When Reid found out what happened to me, he went on a one-man crusade to put an end to “hazing.” The Parks and Planning Commission refused to allow any bonfires at campsites during the month of June to put an end to “tragic and unintended consequences.”  By then, neither Reid nor the events of that night mattered anymore. Not to me, at least.

Liam

I am going to die.

              It’s funny how that little piece of obvious crashes through your consciousness at the same moment that your skull crashes through the windshield of your eco-friendly, German engineered vehicle. I am going to die, but not before all of the bones in my body threaten to shatter like porcelain. I will tell you a secret. When you are plummeting to your death, and your body crashes into multiple rocks, trees and what I think is a moose (but I may be wrong, I didn’t get a good look at it) you can hear all of your internal organs screaming and the soft crunch of bones breaking. It sounds like the noise fresh snow makes as you walk across it with your boots.

              The world spins. Stars, dirt, stars, dirt, stars, dirt...until it stops and so do I. For a moment I look around and realize I am in a bush. I moan, scaring the shit out of some raccoons. At least I hope those were raccoons. Please, please, let those have been raccoons. And then the pain slams into me so hard I think death can’t be worse than this. Too broken to move or even scream, my last coherent thought is that this is not the shittiest moment of my brief life, and that is saying something

              There is a bright light at the end of the tunnel. That part is true. They don’t tell you about the gale force winds and the noise, though. Frightening. Hands grab me and hoist me up gently. I open my eyes briefly to see exactly what the angel of death looks like, and I am shocked to see the face of some asshole I used to know staring down at me. It figures; all of this trouble just to find out the Grim Reaper is an old classmate of mine. As I feel my body hoisted up higher and higher, closer to the source of all the noise and light, I feel a little bit of regret. If that guy had shown me half as much compassion in life as he did in death, things could have been different between us. I could have been different. No use crying over it now, though. The great unknown awaits.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Dying sucks ass. It’s like a waiting room in a doctor’s office. People here mumble a lot. I am not sure why. And it’s never really warm. The food is non-existent, but so is hunger. The music is non-stop classic rock, which is funny because Grandma Hasker was sure that all of those guys were going to hell.

Anyway, I will write more later. There is some guy who keeps poking me. I miss you both so much.

Love Always,

Liam

“I think he is coming around,” says a deep voice very close to my head. Somebody is holding my hand tightly, and I think it’s Mr. Excitable who keeps whisper-yelling for a nurse to come and see.

“Sir, I need you to back up and let us see him,” says a very matronly female voice. Her voice tells me that this is not the first time she has had to say that to Mr. Excitable.

My eyelids peel back, and a blinding light flashes across my face.

“Call the doctor,” says Matronly Nurse.

By this point, I realize two things. First, I am not dead. I should be, but apparently I am too much of a stubborn bastard to die before I finish my screenplay. Second, I have a huge tube down my throat. It feels like I am being forced to fellate a blow-up doll. And if you ask me how I know what that feels like, I have one word for you. Tequila.

I open my eyes, and I am surrounded by a very aloof looking doctor, two nurses and a man I can only assume is Mr. Excitable because he is standing in a corner with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking very nervous.

“Mr. Cummings?” Who?

“You have been in an accident on the mountain.” No shit Sherlock. Your powers of observation are stunning. Are you sure you went to med school?

“Your husband…” Yeah, I stopped listening then.
Husband? What in the holy fucking shit makes him think this guy is my husband?

My eyes dart back and forth between the doctor and the guy in the corner. Of course, he is nervous. He told these fucktards that I am his husband. Just wait until they take this tube out of my throat, buddy. Then your ass is mine.

“...going to take this tube out in a little while. Please be patient,” the doctor finishes. I nod, my eyes never leaving my “husband’s” face. The two nurses look at him, look at me and smile knowingly at each other.

The more I look at Mr. Excitable, the more I feel like I know him from somewhere.

“We will leave you two alone for a minute,” says the doctor and then all three of them clear out. Now it’s just me and my “husband”.

“Listen, my name is Reid Cummings, and I am the one who found you. I am sorry about all of this, but you were messed up, and nobody was sure you would make it. I didn’t want you to die alone, so I had to make something up. If I tried to say you were my brother or something they would know right away that I was lying. I panicked. I figure people won’t ask too many questions about two married men,” says Mr. Excitable in a rushed whisper.

The name ricochets through my skull like a rubber ball, hitting all of my sensitive spots and making my heart rate speed up. Reid Cummings is the last person on earth I want to hold my hand in my hour of need. He is the last person on earth I want to owe a debt of gratitude. And he is the last person on earth I thought would ever lift a finger to help anybody, especially me. Reflexively, I try to talk and end up choking on the latex pipe shoved down my throat. I reach for the tube and find my right hand tightly bandaged and immovable up to the forearm.

“Don’t try to talk now; they are coming to pull that out,” he says, looking upset by my sputtering.

              I glare at him.

              The bastard doesn’t seem to notice.

              “Just go along with it for now, please,” he says as the doctor returns with a tray of instruments that look scarier than the thought of life with a tube down my throat. Two minutes later my throat is free, but I am told that my voice will not return for a while. After nearly a week in a coma with a feeding tube shoved down my esophagus, things like talking and coughing and swallowing won’t be quite so easy.

              “You are a lucky man. Your husband hasn’t left your side since you arrived. It was touch and go for a while, but he kept the faith,” says the nurse. Reid smiles sheepishly. I say nothing. I am in hell. This is my personal hell. One where I owe my life to
Reid Cummings
!

              Once she leaves, I look at Reid carefully. Not much has changed about him. He is still tall and athletic. His hazel eyes and dark hair give the former all-state baseball MVP a look of sophistication he didn’t have when I knew him. Back then he dyed his hair a new color every month and was one of the few boys who dared to pierce both of his ears. He has a five o’clock shadow now, which he would have killed for back when I knew him. His greasy hair and bloodshot eyes tell me the nurse isn’t lying. He really has been camped out in my hospital room for a week. I don’t know what to say, and even if I did, I couldn’t say it no matter how hard I tried. I only have one question. I hold my hand up, asking for a pen and paper. Reid pulls a pen and some hospital stationary out of a drawer next to the bed.

              Everything I want to say can be summed up into one word. Which, is ironic considering that I am a writer. The muscles in my left hand feel weak as I scrawl out my message in large letters and then show him the most important word in my life thus far.

             
WHY?