Where The Pretty Things Roam - 2. Chapter 2

Where The Pretty Things Roam

by Bryan Harrison

Chapter 2

Auggie on the pavilion again, Free and fleeing. Heat of escape glistens on his skin, heartbeats in his ears. Garret in his grasp, stumbles obediently behind. Confusion grows in their wake, whispers and rumors of scandal crest quickly and engulf the throng as, somewhere behind, the banshee wail of sirens bid the crowd to part.

"They are coming for us, my love," Auggie cries through battered breath. But coming too late.

The throng is blur of inconsequence beneath the level of concern. But they can see him now, can't they, those pretty things? The ones who had never seen him before, with whom he could never have roamed, for whose well-guarded cliques he was unqualified, never good enough for even a show of disdain. They see him now and wonder. Their gazes follow and linger. Auggie feels the scathing caress of their curiosity and … envy? Yes it must be envy, as he rushes escape with his perfect boytoy in tow, his perfect love, through the Rouge City thoroughfare, to elevator, to parking, then to race for deeping tunnels.

Auggie turns a shrouded corner, shoulders through unlit doorway into rusty maintenance corridor. Salvage retrieval passage. Courier shortcut. Unused for years. Garret follows unperturbed, stands where he's told to and watches patiently as Auggie shuts the door, retreads the chain he'd undone days ago and snaps closed the lock he purchased to replace the one he broke.

They are alone now. Alone in the dark, the dark where Auggie has lived since desire first awoke him to passion; the dark beyond the prying specters, those arbiters of morality and consequence whose baleful eyes had imprisoned his youth and, to this day, glare from the rank pits where his anguished fever dreams yet burn. The dark.

And he laughs; laughs like he has never laughed. The sound is maniacal, loud and free; echoes against the stairwell's cement walls and down to the docks where the future awaits.

His true love is silent, Still. Silhouetted in florescence that trickles up from their deep destination. Auggie falls quiet, captivated yet again by his loves immortal beauty. Mechanique Magnafique. As perfect as Michelangelo's David set to stone, as Alexander's Bagoas before the castrati blade; as Zeus' Ganymede cast afloat in eternal adoration.

Auggie reaches out tentatively, brushes fingers over smooth flesh simulacrum of Garrets cheek. Was that a shudder?

"I told you I'd come for you," he says. And though he has never spoken to his love before, he believes it. It is a truth that transcends the objective world. A truth of dreams and desires that cannot be limited by a thing so crude as reality.

Garret is speechless, ill-programmed for this situation… or perhaps subdued by the magnitude of sudden freedom. The latter is what Auggie would rather see. So he sees it. He would embrace his lover now, take him here, right here and now, on the rusted metal stairwell, like a common dirty prostibot, quick and filthy street fuck against the dirty walls of this damp tunnel.

But there is no time. They are coming.

He grabs Garret by the hand and they are on the move again. 'Running as fast as they can, holding on to one another's hands… trying to get away into the night…"

They have descended three flights when, from above, comes the rattle of someone trying the door. Auggie stops. Listens. The sound comes again. Then their pursuers move on.

The ruse has worked… for now.

"Come, my love," he whispers as they descend towards the aged dock where broken-hearted Orga yet make homes amid the stinking brine backwash of Rouge; where, tucked beneath the barnacle ridden posts, a stolen vessel awaits to complete their escape.

They move slower now. Quietly.

'Shh, my love, for they may hear us. And careful; for the path ahead is dangerous and full of contradictions.'

#

When does the passion awake? In the heat? The heat that seizes the flesh of lonely souls in the night, and wrestles them to a silent, hollow release; wrests from them orgasms un-sating and quickly disowned. Spilt seed on soiled sheets, hurriedly wiped away with towel dedicated to only this secret purpose. Slink on silent toes to bathroom. Snick closed gently, the door. Look away as you wash, look away in shame from zit-scarred face in the mirror, moist, bland and blushed from tending guilty masturbations.

Look away because I cannot stand to see you like this.

"Auggie?"

(She's awake? She's awake!)

"Yes, Mother?"

(Wash, wash. Quickly. Clean and repent.)

"What're you doing up so late?'

"Uh.. .nothing… I, uh, I had a stomach ache."

(Silence beyond the door. Understanding. Then unspoken disgust.)

"Go to bed now. We have church in the morning."

"Yes, Mother."

(She knows! She knows! And she'll look at you in the morning, on the bitter trek to temple; look at you with those baleful, accusing eyes, the way she looks at you when you're not supposed to be a boy, and do those filthy things she knows boys do alone in the dark… those things that make boys become the men who never really loved her and left her alone to tend a troubled, distant child with a rag-tag heart, wanking alone in the dark.)

And this was his world.

Outside, far beyond the window where he once gazed on twinkling midnight horizon, and dreamt, 'there is a place'; there was a place. He was sure. A place where there was no word for solitude, and the specters dared not gaze, where flesh embraced and filled the empty body temple with sweaty impassioned whispers, and breath hot on neck, then chest, then gentle curve of belly, unbuckle, unzip, and breach of sacred threshold, sweet taste of sex on lips, and sucking, heady wet aroma of body love, succulent engorging rhythm…. dizzy thrusting of hips into the suck-suck-suck, and oh-oh-oh, my love, my love! Cumming! Cumming!

And he'd find that place. He swore.

And he's found that place. He has.

And he'll never go home again.

#

Garrett sits now, in the thick grass; watches curiously as Auggie kicks the boat from the reedy shore, and fingers the remote. Steers it towards open waters and triggers the accelerator. Engine whirs and the small craft slithers away. Soon it's only faint buzz trickling on the night, floating empty towards his pursuers. He can see the searchlights of their boats departing the docks below Rouge, far, far across the Delaware. Amphibicopter, just a glowing insect in the distance, scans the river, zooms in tight swaths, back and forth, back and forth; edging slowly northward.

Wrong way, you fuckers! Ha-hah! Wrong way!

But they'll find the boat eventually. Check the log, which has been tampered to show it had landed at a dock fifteen miles away.

And they'll go there.

And he'll be here.

With his perfect love.

"We're safe now," he says. Sits close to admire his toy. 'How are you feeling?' he would ask, because he is genuinely concerned. But the part of him that is still in touch with 'normal' knows it's a pointless question. So he just stares for a time, in silence, anticipating what's to cum.

"It's a beautiful night, isn't it?" Auggie says finally.

Garret understands this question. Looks skyward. Doesn't comprehend what it sees, creamy coating of ancient light against infinite black canopy; but knows an appropriate response

"Yes, it is," Garret responds at last, nodding its beautifully programmed blonde head, as if it really agrees. "I like stars. They are very beautiful."

"As are you, my love," Auggie whispers.

"What should I call you?" Garret asks, eyes still set on the star coated sky.

"Auggie," he responds, "My birth name is Aaron August, but you call me Auggie."

"You like me, don't you, Auggie?" Garret says; still not looking, assuming the answer will be the usual affirmation.

"Very much," Auggie confesses, voice trembling on the humid night. "I… I love you."

Garrett looks at Auggie then, for the first time seems to really see him, and smiles the smile of a puppy assured it has performed a trick correctly… whatever it was.

"What is love?" Garret wonders aloud.

Auggie can wait no longer. He rises, engorged and hungry, takes Garrett to the ground. His perfect love does not resist. Giggles and moans, because it is sure this is what the lonely Orga wants. This too, it knows; this passionate clumsy aggression, this fumbling grope at clothing until its stripped and bare; these wet and desperate kisses on its face and mouth and throat, searching hands on its state-of-the-art physique, in its pants and up its crotch, gasping its already stiffened device, prying the tender orifice in the seat of its smooth crevasse…. And it knows, yes, it knows how to respond.

'Come to me," says the patient smile in its silicon gaze, 'come to me to cum in me, for I know your broken heart, as are the hearts of all humanity, broken and savaged, calloused from millennia of grasping for meaning; for I have seen you where you gather in your temples of fucking and repentance, to worship and lust beneath the vicious spires built to placate angry Gods and the demons they command. There is no forgiving, for you've done nothing wrong. So, fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me in this sacred garden, relic of a time before you knew the name of sin!'

Auggie has entered that garden, that a realm beyond thought, beyond restraint. There is only mmph, and ahhh, and uggghh and ohohoh as he slick spittle kisses perfect love's lips and tongue, tastes sweet patent pended simuflesh, bitter sweet kisses of unnatural, unending youth. Then he faces down between, and takes Garret on his tongue, stud thick protuberant meat-shaft in his mouth, thrusting, sucking, gazing up over naked heaving chest.

Perfect love stares down. Sees what its master truly needs. Calculates. Responds.

Auggie grunts, thrown suddenly onto his back. Garret strong and dominant, laughs and straddles him, beats hips over his face, balls heavy dangling over Auggies lusting mouth.

"Tea bag me, bitch," the doll commands in this new persona. And Auggie obeys, craning neck like hungry nestling. Fierce sex. Angry sex. Garret grips and rides his face till Auggie can take no more. Pushes Garrett off. Rises to his knees. They gaze at one another, breath heaving, like wrestlers circling the ring.

The doll taunts, giggles, smiles lasciviously, its eyes saying: Fear not to be the animal you were born. Knowing beast who created me, master what you've wrought.

Auggies jumps and pins Garret, his hands spreading legs and lips now kissing crotch. Perfect love cries, grabs his shoulders, moaning, pulls Auggies face into the splayed recess of pheromone perfumed taint. Heat scent exudes and fills Auggies mind.

"Yesss," Garret tones, "Yessss," though clenched and trembling jaws.

They are mad wrestling bodies and rhythmic muffled sighs beneath the stars, in the clutch of lust and altered nature. Auggie mounts his perfect love, presses its knees to its shoulders and thrusts into the grip. Perfect love's perfect thighs slap against his hips. Animal thrusts. Reckless lust humping. Abandon to the sweat and hot wet power sizzling at his crotch. His cock throbs joyful ecstasy. And he fucks. And he fucks. And his perfect love surrendering, gazes up enraptured, dazzled hair a blonde halo against the wild earth, dreamy eyes of pleasure pain, moaning, rhythm-flexing ass accentuates its master's rutting.

"Splitch, splitch, splitch' of fucking crescendos, nasty lurid wet amid the crickets and hum of far off cruisers. "Ahhh!" Auggies moans when release is finally nigh. "Ahhhhh" again, and he is cumming. Cumming! Perfect loves reaches down, grabs his thighs and pulls him tighter, tighter, as orgasm rises, crest and breaks.

"Ahhhhhh!"

His world erupts.

Hovers in the maddening moment, far above the realm where nothing matters any more.

Hovers above the nothing.

Then subsides.

Sweet subsistence.

Breath returns to rule the night. Hot and waning. Trembling on unwinding heartbeat current.

It is time to sigh.

Auggie dismounts. Falls spent to the grass. Sacred garden retracts and he is in the world again.

It is an Orga's time for silence. This too Garret knows. It takes this time to clean. Hair resets to default. Body secrets sanitizing chemicals. Its lover's deposit is diluted and absorbed; remnant sweat and saliva chemically collected, then all expelled into the grass, into the earth from which all life was wrought.

Garret sits and waits then, naked and innocent in the world of its creators. Waiting for its lover, captor, master, slave, to revive from his rapture dream.

Auggie recovers. Opens eyes and sees what he'd hoped to see. Garrett is still beautiful. There was a fear - no he'd never admit it, but there was a fear that he would wake from post-orgasmic trance to see guilt and self-loathing buzzing like gnats on his perfect love's visage. But he sees only purpose. At long last. Something he is sure of.

"I love you," he says, with a sincerity Garret will never comprehend.

His perfect love smiles briefly and gazes toward infinity again.

"I like stars," Garret says with programmed dreaminess. "They are very beautiful."

Its night is cool and meaningless. The stars still pointless dots. It will always be this way. For Garret is a toy.

Auggie knows this. He is not stupid. He was just alone and wanting, in a world that forgot his name.

Far away, in a life that ended just hours ago, lonely misery ran the world. It has been bested, and exiled to the pits where an icy zirconium stare now recedes into the past.

Be gone. Be gone, grasping spirit. Finally will you fuck off? For I have moved beyond your damning strictures. So take that, baleful specter. What would you expect, when the lies you foist on the innocents fail their hungry hearts?

"When are we going back?" Garrett asks, innocent, unassuming, arms propped on knees, head in hands, eyes set on nowhere.

"Never," Auggie finally replies.

His perfect love accepts this with perfect nonchalance.

END