A Mutual Friend Read online

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “There. You’ll feel better soon. What’s your name?”

  “Barclay Samples.”

  I took a bottle out of his right hand so I could shake it. “I’m King Statesboro. I’m sleeping—well, in one of these offices. Come see me if you think your blood’s turning to powder.” In the meantime, what would I do with this guy?

  “Are you a Death Squadder?” He seemed hopeful. I could see he admired them.

  “Nope. Just a truck driver passing through. Are you going to sleep? I’m completely fucking exhausted.”

  As much as I could believe him, Barclay Samples claimed to be getting into his putrid sleeping bag, so I wandered down the hall and found my gang. They were laughing like goons at something on the Discord screen.

  “King!” cried Thalhammer, jerking a thumb at the computer. “What’s a Mexican’s favorite sport?”

  Great. I shrugged, knowing he’d be dying to tell me the answer.

  I was right. “Cross-country!”

  I pretended to chuckle. “Guys. Who is that Barclay Samples guy drinking blood from cats?”

  Thalhammer laughed even harder, knuckling tears from his eyes. “’Cause he’s fucking loony tunes, that’s why.”

  I frowned. “But who is he? Why is he here?”

  Flannery shrugged. He wasn’t laughing nearly as hard as his leader. “He was here when we moved in. We don’t have any say over what he does. He just marches to his own bagpipes.”

  “Yeah, but . . . there’s a fucking dead cat in the kitchen.”

  Flannery shrugged again. The London Bridge was starting to light up behind him, past the boat dock. It looked like a bridge from a Disney film with yellow and purple floodlights bathing the stone arches. I longed to walk across it, to get away from these supremacists, but I knew I needed sleep. The Oxy was finally working. “Shit happens, man. I try to take the animals away from him and chuck them in the bin behind this building, but sometimes he goes and retrieves them.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me. That guy needs help. He said he just got out of an institution.”

  “Yeah,” said Finn, pecking away at the keyboard. “It was nice while he was gone. But oh well. There’s plenty of room for everyone.”

  “He’s so weird,” said Thalhammer, “we keep saying he should go live with the Bent Zealots.”

  I sighed. “Speaking of, I’m crashing. Flannery, can you show me where I can put my gear?”

  Flannery escorted me to a corner office with windows on two walls and an excellent view of the bridge. I thought I’d leave the blinds up just to look at it. I washed up in the men’s room because it was farther away from them and would be less used. I slipped naked into my sleeping bag.

  As the medication carried me away and my spine unfurled, my mind wandered to more pleasant subjects. Thalhammer had mentioned the Zealots, so I thought about the rumble. That black beauty I’d pinned to the floor didn’t look a thing like a Zealot. For one, now that I knew they were the guys with leather cuts and rockers, he didn’t wear a vest. For another thing, he didn’t have that particularly gay vibe that’s so hard to describe. After messing around with gay-for-pay boys at truck stops, I thought I could tell the difference between authentic homosexuals and wannabes.

  I didn’t think I had that gay vibe. At least, I hoped not. I’d surprised even myself when I’d pinned that hunk with my hips, when I’d gotten a boner dry-humping him. Fuck, I hoped I never saw that guy again. My mortification would be complete. There’d be no way he could’ve mistaken the way I rotated my hard-on against his juicy ass.

  I think it was having him at my mercy that brought out that side in me, the dominant craving to fuck another guy up the ass, to make him cry out in both pain and pleasure. Rolling onto my back, I gripped my stiff dick in my fist as I thought about reaming a black stallion like that. I’d reach in front of him, and his cock would be stiff of course, because I’d be pinging his P-spot with my plump glans with every stroke. I’d jack him and we’d come together. He’d be so horny he’d squirt against the wall, and I’d make him lick it off as I finished pumping my load into his ass.

  Jesus. Since when had I become so hot for other men?

  But I didn’t want to stop the fantasy, and I fondled my balls as I stroked myself, flipping back the cover of the sleeping bag. I thought it was maybe part of the lonely long-distance life. I’d picked up hitchhikers who had offered to blow me for a twenty, but I’d never blown anyone else. That led me to believe I was a Dom, a dominant craving a beautiful, sultry submissive. He’d be the Spock to my Kirk, the Beavis to my Butthead, the Hutch to my Starsky. Was it my imagination that the swarthy stud in The Happy Hour was purposefully grinding back against me? I liked to think it really happened, that he enjoyed the intrusion of my erection against his ass crack—that he longed to be penetrated by me, too.

  It was handy for me to think that as I pumped myself higher and higher. I came unexpectedly just as I was imagining reaching between his jeans-clad thighs and grabbing a handful of his taut dong. He shot in his jeans just as I did, spewing my load so forcefully a gob landed on my throat. Panting and chuckling to myself, I fingered the jizz and licked it off my fingers, fantasizing the black-haired beauty was doing the same.

  And I passed out, no problem.

  But once again, the sunrise saw me stuck in that horrifying immobile prison, in a space somewhere between sleeping and waking. My eyes were open, and the room looked like a normal room around me. There were no creepy clowns, no spiders or snakes leaping out of the walls, so it wasn’t a dream. The office was approximately normal, my duffel bag propped against the wall.

  I couldn’t move and the louder I tried to scream, the more my voice faded to a trickle. My heart raced like crazy as I was rendered powerless by terror. The sensation of something menacing in the room with me was proven correct when a looming figure moved into my field of vision. A fucking demon.

  I’d seen these demons before while stuck in this in-between state. Once, a powerful demon taller and wider than my bedroom door was trying to break in. Light seeped through the outline of the door as the thing pounded with all its furor. Maybe it didn’t realize the door wasn’t locked, but it never came in. The next night, I was in bed with a . . . thing, a creature. This time I was more experienced, and I asked it, “What’s your name?” Acting casual would turn it harmless, that was my thought. It grinned and grated out, “Beelzebub.”

  I screamed for my sister in the next room and the thing faded away. The next day, I realized it resembled Gollum from Lord of the Rings, a movie I’d never seen. And I didn’t know what Beelzebub was until I googled it. To me, these things proved the existence of demons.

  The figure now looming in my peripheral vision seemed to be bending over me, examining me. Wasn’t this how alien abduction stories were started? Would he beam me to his spaceship? Slowly I made out features. He looked like a regular human, nothing like Gollum or the door-bashing blob. And he spoke with a fancy European accent.

  “Samples? Are you Barclay Samples?”

  What the fuck? The demon wanted to know if I was the cat-murdering psycho from the night before? That in itself was more frightening than any of my other demon visitations, and I popped awake with a sharp gasp, bolting upright in my sleeping bag.

  “Holy fuck!” I looked straight ahead at the floor-to-ceiling window. The London Bridge sparkled orange in the streams of the rising sun.

  “Are you okay?” asked the European guy with what seemed like genuine concern.

  “No!” I said emphatically, whipping my head to view the guy. “I was stuck in one of those fucking in-between waking and sleeping planes where you get assaulted by the weirdest—“

  The handsome fucker squatted by me, one wrist propped on a knee like a wrestling coach. This good-looking devil had a head of the thickest, glossiest black hair, his VanDyke goatee shaved to look four days old. He was a meticulous motherfucker with his straight nose and generous lips.

>   I was surprised he didn’t have any scratches on that flawless cheek.

  He was the guy I’d dry-humped in The Happy Hour.

  D

  T

  he gorgeously hung but deathly white man leaped from his sleeping bag and backed up to the window, holding out his hands as though to keep me away.

  I felt a pang of regret that this lanky hunk of a redhead was the crazed maniac running around bleeding cats dry. “Barclay,” I said in my best calm priest’s voice. “It’ll be okay. What you’re describing is called sleep paralysis. It feels like a supernatural assault, but you can flip them into positive experiences, like portals to other worlds, if you work on it.”

  And he looked at me as if I was the crazy one. “What? Listen, I’m—I’m not Barclay Samples. I know who he is, though. Are you from the institution? Are you taking him back?”

  I stood and dared walk closer. Was this ginger not aware that his long, thick penis was swaying in the breeze? It had been a while since I’d been this close to another naked man. I felt the way a doctor must feel getting turned on by a patient. Pleasure pooled in my balls. “Are you a Death Squadder, then?” I’d feel doubly guilty being attracted to one of those alt-right morons.

  “What? No, no! I’m not one of those fucktards either. I’m just a truck driver passing through.” As if suddenly aware of his nakedness, he broke our gaze and moved to step into his boxer briefs. This only made him look studlier, if such a thing was possible. His flat nipples were set in an almost hairless, fully-developed chest. He must do the sort of workouts I did. I suffered heavily to impress Noel. Not anymore.

  I frowned. “Were you at The Happy Hour yesterday?”

  His back to me, he yanked up his jeans. “What’s The Happy Hour? Some kind of nightclub?”

  His facial bruises told me he knew otherwise. “You were there, weren’t you? You pinned me to the ground and wouldn’t let me move.” Why embarrass him further by mentioning the delicious dry hump? He was already in denial of having been in the clubhouse.

  Shaking around a T-shirt, he turned to me. Yes, two black eyes and a greenish blob on his chin. Like a boxer, it didn’t mar his beauty. “Why would I be in the clubhouse of some gay bikers? I’m not fucking gay! Now, let me take you to Barclay.”

  I crossed my arms and grinned knowingly. “You were there. How else did you know it was a gay biker clubhouse? Come clean, Mr. Truck Driver. You were the one who got on top of me and pinned—”

  “Okay, okay!” He glanced from side to side as though someone were listening in. Coming toward me, he said confidentially, “Okay. I was there. I walked in on the fight and accidentally took the wrong side. I thought the guys in the leather vests were the bad ones. I’m actually supposed to deliver something to the Bent Zealots, but now I can’t because they saw me beating on their guys.”

  “How’d you get yourself into such a twisted predicament?”

  He made a lip fart. “Beats me. My truck was jacked by some Death Squadders up north, and they took the stuff I was supposed to deliver to the Zealots. I thought I’d make it up to them by beating up their enemies.”

  “Only you wound up on the wrong side.”

  “Yeah. Ssh. Don’t let these skinheads know. But I’m sniffing around to see if I can recover the product. Then I can come clean to the Zealots.”

  It made sense, sort of, once I assumed the “product” was drugs. But it sure did make him look like a bumbling fool. An adorable bumbling fool. I desperately wanted to discuss why, instead of beating me up, he’d wound up massaging me with his stiff penis. I dearly wanted to know why, after socking several other Zealots in the jaw, he’d spread my thighs apart with his knees and jabbed his erection into my ass crack. Why me? The other Zealots were gay. If he wanted to take out his suppressed and closeted homosexual urges on someone, why not the hunky Lock Singer? The electric and mesmerizing Prez, Turk? Muscular, commanding Bond? Mayo Snodgrass, race car driver? But no, he chose to accost a former priest who had been released from consecration.

  This guy was batting a thousand.

  For some reason, I’d brought out his inner lust. I should’ve gotten out of there the second I figured out he wasn’t Barclay Samples, the persona loca we were looking for. I didn’t realize this in time, though, because suddenly Lily Silverberry, the gender-fluid Navajo teen formerly known as Fredericka, busted into our cozy little office-bedroom.

  She took one look at my poor, half-naked ginger, and shouted, “You! You’re that fucking truck driver who ganged up on Lock with that thug from the Death Squad!”

  I turned to her. “There’s been a misunderstand—“

  “Then you teamed up with him against Harte. Antonio, you should’ve seen these two! Talk about an unfair advantage. Harte’s completely black and blue and can barely move!”

  “Listen,” said my ghostly lover, “it was a huge misunderstanding. Huge. When I first went in there, I saw you smash a guy in a leather vest with a pool rack. From that, I stupidly assumed everyone in a leather vest was the enemy. I was trying to prove myself to the Zealots, not piss them off.”

  Lily jammed her hands onto her hips. “Well, you succeeded in the second part! Didn’t you read anyone’s rocker?”

  The ginger rubbed his five o’clock shadow. “Ah, no. Nothing’s really been working well for me lately.”

  Lily slitted her eyes. “Yeah, and now you’re cozying up to this Barclay Samples who’s a fried chicken short of a church picnic! What’s up with that?”

  “Look, I just met the guy last night. He had a fucking dead cat—“

  “Hey, King, guess what I just found in my room?” chuckled some stooge as he came down the hall toward us. “Ho, ho! Who’s been running around stimulating the ladies with this fine little num—oh.”

  For it was the shirtless pendejo from the rumble, shirtless again aside from a loud, colorful windbreaker and some gold chains to match his grill. And he was carrying my long, thick, bright red silicon dildo.

  Luckily, Lily’s fury took the focus off my appliance. “You’re the guy this idiot teamed up with during the rumble!”

  “King?” said the doofus, and chuckled as he waggled my toy around. “Teamed up? We hardly teamed up. I just happened to help him out of a couple of binds. What’s a Bent Zealot doing in our office building? King, what’s up?”

  Lily wouldn’t let him change the subject. She stalked up to him and poked him right in his stupid bare chest. “Two against one! I saw you guys. You couldn’t handle Lock or Harte alone, so you came to each other’s assistance!”

  “Well, yeah!” cried the dotard. “Why the hell not? Brothers help out brothers, don’t they?”

  Lily twirled to face King. “I thought you said you weren’t a Death Squadder!”

  King held his hands up. He still hadn’t put on the T-shirt, for which I was glad. “I’m not! Tell her, Flannery!”

  Flannery sneered. “Why should I explain myself to some twisted sister? Are you even a girl? What’s under that skirt?”

  Lily threw herself at the wall of a man, fists flying. He flung his arms up. Her fists made deep thuds against Flannery’s chest, but he laughed. This was a good chance for me to snatch my dildo out of his grip. I walked with it to the window to examine it for damage, King following.

  “You seen that before?” King asked me.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “It’s mine. We got in around midnight last night. I’m in a room down the hall. This was in my duffle bag. How that loser got it is beyond me.”

  King grinned, a co-conspirator. “Pleasing the ladies, eh?”

  Ah, no. Actually, I slid the silicon cock up my own asshole while masturbating, picturing some lean wolf like King was impaling me.

  I grinned. “Of course. Always.”

  “You look like the type. Lady killer.”

  “You know it.”

  “So what’re you doing here looking for that Barclay guy? He’s as sharp as a donut. I’m telling you, he wanted to drink the cat’s blood. Sai
d his own blood was turning to powder. Oh, and something about the plates in his skull moving around.”

  I nodded. “Sounds as if he’s engaging in black arts.” My first task was to discern the difference between a negative human spirit and a dark inhuman one. Either way they could be extremely harmful. This Nichols Building looked to have been built in the 70s or 80s, and not many people died at their desks. This led me to rule out logically the idea of a spirit wandering the hallways, copying papers and faxing memos. Unless someone conjured up the ghost purposefully, by using black ways and means.

  King snorted. “I’d say drinking a cat’s blood is the black arts.”

  Flannery craned his neck to be seen around the flurry of Lily’s fists. He held her wrists still. “That’s not all. He was bragging the other night about having broken into someone’s house and taken a shit on a kid’s bed. This guy seriously needs to go back to the loony bin. Are you here to help with that?”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. You couldn’t broadcast being a demonologist—an exorcist, they called me in the church. I especially didn’t want Barclay knowing about it if he was caught in a demonic situation and was unaware of it. “I’m a psychologist,” I lied.

  “Is that your dildo?” Flannery pointed. I’d stuffed it awkwardly into my back pocket. “How the fuck did it get into the desk drawer in my bedroom?”

  “Was your door locked?” I asked.

  “Fuck yeah,” said Flannery. “Always, with this cat killer wandering around.”

  “So was mine,” I admitted. “It’s called levitation, teleportation. Light objects like this aren’t difficult for a ghostly spirit to levitate, if Barclay’s being infested by something human. The human mind has never been proven to move any object over two pounds.” I decided to start with the easiest explanation first.

  “Whoa,” said Flannery with admiration. “A fucking ghost?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying not to be emboldened by his awe. “If it was a true demonic possession, you’d see much larger objects being thrown around. I’ve seen couches flipped, refrigerators turned inside-out. Whole houses trashed.”