Hadrian's Rage (30 page)

Frank’s victory over General Birtwistle (he never even considered this a defeat for Devon) was so intoxicating that when he finally made his way into Devon’s room, he could barely contain himself. The lovemaking was so intense that both men reached a pinnacle of sexual pleasure neither had known was possible for the human body. Spent, but not tired, Devon lay with his head cradled in the soft alcove just beneath Frank’s shoulder.

“Man,” Devon pants, “you can kill me anytime. With you, death is orgasmic.” His fingers trace the indelible ink that marks the spot where Frank had “slit” his throat. He treats the marking as a badge of honor. Frank smiles one of his rare smiles. Devon, relishing this atypical moment, proclaims, “I wish you’d smile more often, Frank; it lights up your eyes.” As if on cue, as happens with any sort of compliment made Frank’s way, the light in his eyes dims. No longer joyful or victorious, the morose Frank Hunter reemerges. “Why is it,” Devon demands, “that every time I compliment you, you turn dour?” Frank just closes his eyes and turns his head in reply. “Come on, Frank. You can be happy. It’s allowed.”

In a rare moment of honesty, Frank reveals himself. “I don’t think I can…ever be truly happy. The guilt. The guilt is too much.”

“Frank,” Devon remonstrates, “Todd would want you to forgive yourself.”

“It doesn’t matter what he would or wouldn’t want, Devon. It just is what it is.” Frank shudders as the memory of Todd’s death begins to asphyxiate him. “It sure as fuck wasn’t orgasmic.”

Devon, a little miffed and confused, demands, “What are you talking about?”

“Todd’s death.” Shaking his head morosely, he repeats, “It wasn’t fucking orgasmic.” Staring now into Devon’s eyes with a look so chilling
Devon’s testicles recoil, he adds, “I did it coldly. We both looked at his heart monitor just before I—uh, took the patches off him and put them on me, and for a brief moment, the line went flat. That should have stopped me, but it didn’t. I think I saw fear in his eyes, but I—but I—but I did it anyway. I took his pillow out from under his head and suffocated him. You know he was strapped down so his body couldn’t move around much, but I can still feel the jerking movements. I can still feel when his body went limp. I smothered the life out of him.”

“You did it because he asked you to.” Even as he says this, Devon knows his words sound hollow.

“I did it because I loved him.” Turning now, tears swelling up from pleading, Frank rants, “I fucking loved him and I murdered him, so you can’t—you can’t fall in love with me. I won’t allow it.”

“It’s too late to warn me of that, Frank.”

“I can’t love—I can’t love—I can’t love—”

“But you can, and you do. You love me as much as I love you.”

“I’ll only end up hurting you.”

“And I’ll only end up hurting you. So what? That’s life, and beside the point. We still love each other. In the end, that’s all that really matters.”

“Don’t you get it?” Frank is only whispering, but there is fire and ice in his voice. “Nothing matters to me anymore.”

This conversation isn’t over, and even though Devon knows Frank’s slight opening up is something that needs nurturing, he persists. “Todd could never live in this world after everything that happened to him. You and I both know that.” Not even trying to tread carefully, knowing full well what he is about to say is going to remind Frank about his having been the first to rape Todd Middleton, Devon reminds him of the other horrors Frank’s best friend suffered. “I mean, everything he went through at re-ed. No one would want to live after that. Todd knew that, and so did you! You felt responsible. Fuck it, you
were
responsible! But you’ve atoned. Hadrian’s Lover, Frank, you can’t keep sentencing yourself to life over this.”

Frank’s eyes darken. “There is nothing in this world that can ever undo what I’ve done.”

“The past is the past, Frank.” Devon is pleading more than counseling at this moment. “You have to move on.”

“The past is dead,” Frank replies dryly. “I murdered it.”

At first, Devon has no idea how to respond. He lets the silence sit between
them like a knife poised and ready for blood. He knows that whatever he says next will either sever their fragile relationship or set a flame to the knife’s edge and cauterize the wound.

“Is that why you never ask about any of the people we’ve known?” Frank remains stolid. Devon persists. “Did you know T’Neal is famous? Well, almost famous.” Pretending that Frank is expressing interest, Devon continues, “Yeah, Pepper Tibbits signed him. Can you believe it? He’s gonna be a famous drag queen. And,” now elongating his vowels as if the intrigue is too much for Frank to bear, “he’s also a makeup artist for the Hadrian Broadcasting Corporation.” Devon shakes his head in mock disbelief. “I know. I couldn’t believe it either. The HBC. Pretty cool.” Behind the cynicism, Devon is seething. “For Hadrian’s sake, Frank. Open up to me.” No burst of ire is having any impact on the now encapsulated soul of Frank Hunter. Devon is relentless; he has fallen in love, but the man of his longings is completely shut off. “Okay, fine, no T’Neal. How about we talk about Roger? You know, your little brother, the man I dated for over year! Have you told him about us yet?”

Franks leaps off the bed, shoving Devon aside in the process. “
Us
? There is no fucking
US
! In order for there to be an
US
, there has to be a me, and Frank Hunter died the same day I killed Todd Middleton.”

“Then let’s talk about Crystal.”

Frank is shocked into silence. He can’t even respond because Devon has just side-swiped him.

“Surely you’d like to know what happened to Crystal? Be privy to whatever personal hell her life has turned into?” Instead of empathizing with Frank’s confused expression, Devon snorts derisively. “I mean, she’s just as guilty as you are when it comes to Todd’s death.” He harrumphs, “Maybe even more so. She fucked him and betrayed him. She’s the one who landed him into the shit in the first place.” Knowing he has touched on something deep inside Frank, Devon carries on. “I still remember that day in Sterne’s math class when the old bitch exposed him and accused him of raping Crystal, and that fucking little bitch said nothing in Todd’s defense.”

Frank turns now to face the Wall. His naked body soaks in the chill of the cement. Desperate for any kind of relief, Frank is suddenly wishing the cement were wet so it would entomb him. Without realizing it, he asks, “What happened to Crystal?”

Devon is stunned. He hadn’t expected that he would actually pull Frank
out of himself, but bringing up Crystal and the pivotal role she played in Todd Middleton’s incarceration at the Northeast Reeducation camp and his ultimate suicide (assisted suicide) has seemed to spark something in the self-condemned man. “No one knows for sure. She just disappeared. It’s like she got exiled without any of the fanfare.”

“She’d never be exiled!” Albeit, his tone is bitter, but Frank is finally engaged. He is no longer pressing his face against the cold wall. He has turned and is now looking (glaring actually) at Devon.

“No one knows for sure, but that’s the scuttle butt.”

Frank shakes his head. “No one knew.”

“No one knew what?”

“Her mama is Elena Stiles, pure founding family bloodline and Hadrian’s President.”

“No shit!” Crystal’s connection to that family, though pre Todd Middleton’s exposure and Frank’s trial, wasn’t a profound secret; it was simply little talked about. Crystal’s mothers had decided that in order for Crystal to experience a normal adolescence, the less people knew of her fortuitous connections, the better. And then after the Todd Middleton debacle, they deemed it wise that no one ever knew she was in any way related to the woman who was, at that time, running for president.

“So what? She just disappeared then?” Frank asks without really expecting a reply. “Lucky little bitch!” Suddenly, all the pent up rage, guilt, and despair Frank has been holding in for years bursts out of him. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he crumbles to his knees and begins to cry.

Devon leaps from the bed and instantly wraps his arms around his lover, cradling him, allowing him as much time as it takes until Frank is emotionally spent. When finished, Frank whispers, “I do love you, Devon. Hadrian help us both, I do love you.”

One of Hadrian's greatest mysteries is the name of Todd Middleton's young lover. When Todd Middleton's exposure first hit Hadrian's media wave, the whole of the nation was confounded. How could one of our elite be straight? Todd Middleton, son of Will Middleton, both Hadrian's finest b-ball player to date and the brilliant bio-engineer who altered the genes of the soya bean so we could grow the protein rich legume here, was exposed as a straight man, an active heterosexual. It was even intimated that Todd Middleton had raped the girl, and yet no one in Hadrian seems to know her name or even her whereabouts. I have dug deep into this mystery, Hadrian, but have yet to unveil the truth. It worries me how such a significant detail about one of the most important cases in Hadrian's history can remain veiled to the populace. Why is this woman's name so carefully hidden? Whose daughter is she? How powerful is this man or woman to be able to silence individuals who must surely be in the know?

When word of this case first hit the media wave, we learned of a videotape recording the sexual act. I inquired about this tape only to discover that it had been destroyed. Gideon Weller, then warden of the Northeast Reeducation Camp, deemed the tape's evidence no longer necessary since Todd Middleton had confessed to being straight and having been sexually active. Although Mr. Weller is no longer here to question, I was able to interview Dean Stuttgart, then Dean Hunter, dear friend and father figure to Todd Middleton. He informed me that Weller deemed the video nonessential and that it only served to hurt the young girl and her parents, thus he had it and all traces of it on the wave, destroyed. When Mr. Stuttgart told me this, I immediately inquired into the name of the young woman. He apologized for keeping it secret, but he had agreed to sign papers that would keep her identity a secret. “To reveal her name,” Mr. Stuttgart
suggested, “would have a profound impact on our country at this time.” When I questioned further, Mr. Stuttgart did admit that he had originally wanted the girl's name splattered all over the wave, but after deliberating the issue with their lawyer, Faial Raboud, he and all others with knowledge of this event had signed waivers agreeing never to speak this girl's name or mention her involvement. I was surprised to learn that key members of the radical new human equality movement actually agreed to such terms, but Mr. Stuttgart believes this will all come to light soon and their reasons for being circumspect will be understood and respected.

I have come to admire Dean Stuttgart and the efforts he has made to bring light to the abuses committed against many of Hadrian's citizens, but I must admit, my dedication to revealing truth to our nation has me uncomfortable with my current failure to unveil this mystery of who this young woman is and the real role she played in exposing our country's once beloved golden boy, Todd Middleton.

Truth, Hadrian; bringing light to the truth will always be my goal.

TRUTH!

Christine Sterne smiles grimly at her reflection. She is tall now, 6’1”. After she stopped taking heterosexual birth control, she grew another two inches, allowing her to achieve her youthful longing to be over six feet. She gives her head a slight shake to make her long mousey blond hair, which dangles in false curls around her neck, more airy. Her black eyebrows contrast in jarring juxtaposition. She muses over the irony of not being allowed hair products to hold her hair in place (in Hadrian what hair products are available are all natural since chemical gels and aerosol sprays are illegal) when she is forced to dye her hair every three weeks and do root touchups at least once a week. The natural products available in Hadrian were never effective at disguising her looks enough, so her aunt arranged for a black market supply of an Ultra Blonde Highlighting Kit that did not meet Hadrian’s environmental standards act. It sickened Christine to use it, but she conceded to the need. After what had happened in her final year of high school, it was evident that she had to present a new self to the world.

Another sacrifice Christine is forced to make for this new look is wearing her hair long with permanent curls. Again, her aunt went through the black market to obtain hair products with strong enough “illegal chemicals” to ensure long-lasting and natural-looking curls. But when Christine asked her aunt for a hair product that would help her keep her hair in place, she was met with ardent refusal.

“It is bad enough we have to participate in damaging the environment to cover up your stupidity. It is bad enough I risk every day being caught committing illegal acts to save your sorry ass. It is bad enough that I could very well be exiled. But you want more illegal products. And why? For selfish, vain purposes? Absolutely not! You can do what normal Hadrian citizens do!”

Those “normal” Hadrian citizens, like Christine, who prefer their hair well-kept, either wear their hair short or, if their hair is long, put it up in a ponytail or bun. Anyone wanting to add flare to his or her hair has to rely on natural hair oils and teasing to keep a style from falling apart. Christine hates that approach. Teasing creates knots, and the natural oil route means she has to avoid washing her hair less than once a week. She can’t stand the greasy, gritty quality that accompanies the required buildup of natural oils, so she has conceded to her conceit and wears her hair as open and free as she can make it. As she studies her form in the mirror, she mourns the loss of her natural dark brown hair, cropped short so it was always perfect.

Again, as always happens if Christine takes too long observing her reflection, her mind places her in front of the podium at Hadrian’s National Council for open debate. She never smiles at her audience. She addresses it formally with humility and reserve.

This is the speech Christine Sterne makes every time she studies her reflection in the mirror.

This is the speech Crystal Albright lacks the courage to utter.