The riots lasted into the Halloween night; difficult to know whether there were insurgents marching into the inner city to support a political campaign or cause mischief of a different kind. Authorities were confused and TV reporters wagged their cameras everywhere not knowing what to capture. Media was busy threading a thousand stories. Ghouls and street entrenched protesters, in a carnival of colors blurred in the suspended fog, well-cooked in the debris, the chassis of hybrid cars, the Gucci and Fendi mannequins, plastic smell of Louis Vuitton melting into fetid goop, many signs that would have once made all nouveaux riches petite tourists run scared for their lives now seemed to attract them, moths to a flame.

Hugh and Terry had moved away to the city by the lakes and mountains to escape the global explosion, the influx of ingrate immigrants, unlike the immigrants of their ancestry, Europeans, first generation, who had come to work hard. Settled in a gated neighborhood away from the downtown core, across the bridge, where the Winter Olympic Games would take place soon. SUVs were the mandatory vehicles as public transportation was at the very bottom of the small city council priority list in favour of “enhanced vigilance”—that is to say private—and other exclusive services. No question they deserved it; they had crawled hard from the backwaters of Winnipeg to Toronto and then up the map all the way to L.A. and now here.

A low stream of trick-o-treaters accompanied by their watchful parents that loved the idea of having “an extended family” in the neighborhood; the queer eye of the TV screen had batted its cheesy eyelash into their living rooms with comforting slogans and decorating glances. Hugh and Terry took turns to open the door and receive a handful of miniature Disney characters and Joan Bennet Ramsey look-alikes; they would dismount their parental H3s and SUVs in lovely little hops, carrying pink wicker baskets, and shyly warning naughtiness. There was also a pageant of Batmans, Robins, Frankensteins and other out-a-bag dollar store renditions of 1950s cartoons and movies never seen—endowed by the nostalgia of their fathers. The cutest one had been a bunch of three, two of them twins, looking like Dr. Marios and giggling nervously, threatening mischief in minute voices.

Terry thought that one or two groups of trick-o-treaters were too old to be doing this, probably over twelve, looking like a catfight between Lara Croft and yesterday’s pop sensation Christina Aguilera at her skankiest. He marched back upstairs straddling the stairs in twos and threes adding that once they were teenagers, “should join the throngs of transvestites making their rambunctious way out of the gated community and into town to get high and drunk”. His voice got lost in the winding steps and into his atelier at the end of the distribution hall. No fireworks, undue noise, parties or other excesses are allowed in this family oriented community under the purchase agreement currently in place. By the time the last two trick-o-treaters knocked at the door, Hugh was busying around the huge kitchen, circling the island, whistling a Bruce Springsteen old song, preparing succulent appetizers of all kinds for the next evening, Saturday evening, when their adult friends would come celebrate panic and mayhem as seen on the screens. The trick-o-treaters might have thought Hugh was in drag, he was wearing flashy shorts, a tank top and a floral cooking apron completed by gym sandals. He smiled at the two boys, and noticed the carved pumpkin lanterns almost extinguishing to give the porch a rather somber and appropriate amber glow. He didn’t see any headlights of an SUV waiting for these trick-o-treaters. These two looked like they might have been given permission to collect candy by themselves.

Hugh turned quickly to reach behind the double doors for the leftover candy in a lovely Rosenthal bowl. Terry called from the expansive upstairs, “Who’s it, Hon?” “Late kids,” Hugh was about to reply when he saw the taller one, the one dressed like a Japanese action character—or was it Edward Scissorhands?—big mane of hair in spikes, piercings everywhere in his nose, eyebrow, lips and ears—they looked real!—standing right inside the threshold by the door, inside the house. How fresh! The second one sauntered onto the kitchen.

When Terry came downstairs, annoyed at Hugh not answering his yelps, or the phone intercom beeps, he found the solid main doors slightly ajar to let a draft of cool air seep into the house, the last breath of the carved pumpkin porch lamps. He kicked the door shut with impatience and swaggered to the brightly lit kitchen at the very end of a long corridor. A faint smell of charred something was flowing out from in there. On entering the kitchen, he immediately noticed the two young men and in a second take Hugh, tied like a benign giant in Lilliput on the heated ceramic tile floor, looking at him with bovine eyes.

“Hey there. You the husband—or the bitch?” Greeted the short skinhead kid with gleaming blue eyes; eyebrows arched inward like an emoticon. A red and yellow toxic waste sign tattooed in his neck.

Terry ran; he ran fast to one of the doors with the alarm system panels but the boy with the great mane of hair, the piercings, the rags, the half-drooped-down-the-ass black street guerrilla outfit stuck out a worn out construction boot, the steel toe showing through—his lame foot. Thump. Terry thudded face down on the floor and slid almost all the way to the front door. Agile, trained, he quickly turned around to face the spike of a sharp blade pointing between his eyes.

They rummaged through the house while Hugh and Terry were left hogtied. The invaders had the civility of shutting down all cooking in the kitchen—a cheese soufflé saddened in the convection oven—but when Terry tried to begin to yell, one lunge of the skinhead’s white-laced boot to his mouth left him gargling in blood and with a loosened front tooth. Stomps and hollering rose upstairs in bedlam. The kids were having fun, going through stuff, talking with each other, calling others on the cell phones they found.

“Everything will be all right.” Terry’s voice was comforting. Hugh remained silent. “Seriously, don’t look so forlorn. It’ll be okay, babe.”

“Reminds me of the time in Winnipeg when we got bashed almost.” Said Hugh.

“I got us out of that, remember?” Terry added with confidence.

Hugh blinked twice.

Soon the two young men rummaging upstairs got hungry and came back downstairs to the kitchen, came barreling at Terry and Hugh like bullies, grabbed them harshly, kicking in the groin a couple of times—Wham! Wham! Ah, that’s got to hurt—so they wouldn’t escape when shuffling them to the dining room to bound them by hands and feet and chest with electric tape to two robust head armchairs.

“So, who’s the bitch?” The skinhead had taken off several layers of frayed and greasy t-shirts poked with holes to expose a thin and pale flat chest and stomach and chewed violently on flax and sun dried tomatoes bread and prosciutto.

“The bitch?” Gnarled again. Hugh wormed on his chair.

“That’s archaic. Not done.” Terry muttered angrily.

“Betcha the thin bitch plays man—Got the balls to speak up, he did. And uses pretty words too.” Then louder to the kitchen, where it was raining smithereens, cutlery and crystal thrown about. “Hey. Found out who wears the pants in the house—Get yer’ ass over here, man.”

The taller French Canadian street kid appeared, reeking of stale sweat, chest and biceps strangled in grubby tank top.

“Told you, dude, this one’s the bitch.” And with a smirk to Hugh. “Get it often bitch?”

“I wish.” Hugh used to speaking to himself. A grunt audible enough to get Terry to give him a prickly stare.

“Oh-oh the missus doesn’t get it much—bitch doesn’t get her dog much eh?—tabarnak!” They left the dining room and could be heard foraging through the house, in the basement, on the second floor.

“Told you to keep those knives in a safe place!” Blurted Terry spitting some blood.

“You pay for all this security. What’s the point?”

“Don’t start all this back-to-basics; you enjoy the lifestyle as much as I do. They’ll take what they want and go. I’ll have a talk with the management company.”

“I told them to take anything they want and leave.”

“Of course they can’t take everything they want, so don’t give them hints; they’ll take what they can sell. Can’t you see? They’re homeless junkies.”

“They look too good to be street junkies.”

“Too good? Well? This is hardly the time and place for fantasies Hugh.”

“The kid’s sharp; give it to him.” Whispered Hugh.

“Are you off your fucking rocker?” Terry’s voice hiked a couple of octaves. “Of course you would, you’re in heat half of the time?”

Hugh blinked twice.

And then there was no more conversation. To his right, Terry stared himself in the huge beveled dinging room mirror with the gilded rococo frame. In the dim light of the chandelier he saw the two of them bound and sweaty, his chiseled jaw looked intact. His fitted Nike sport outfit (to lounge around home) was soiled with some blood sputters, a swelling upper lip, as if collagen had been injected, his salt and pepper hair and eyebrows trimmed, the intense cobalt eyes. A slight grimace in Hugh’s countenance betrayed his bloated feelings.

Close to 1 AM, the two kids materialized again. The skinhead modeling a TAG on his thin wrist, fancy, the other was cinched in a Schott NYC Perfecto 618, leather chaps, thick harness, and a cap with menacing chains and badges. They sniggered à la Marlon Brando in “The Wild One”. Smoking out of the corner of their lips. Draw. Pose. Blow.

“Nice shit.” Admiring himself. “Yup. Found it in the basement—Yours?” He pointed his chin at Terry and spat on the hardwood floor next to his chair, a shot of phlegm landed at the tip of his Steve Madden sneakers.

“No.”

“Well, well, go figure, shit belongs to the pussy-whipped wife. She’s into kink, you was into kink, right hon?” He faked an effete mannerism.

The skinhead dragged long on a makeshift joint then stepped up quickly to Hugh and slapped him across the face and in one brutal yank he tore a rip on Hugh’s silly apron and T-shirt. Something caught his iridescent eyes. With a quick boot, he poked on Hugh’s overgrown nipples with scars of old piercings.

“Fuck, man. Those like utters!” The skinhead booted his bulging stomach, as if wanting to guess the contents of such heavy luggage. Hugh’s privates buried deeper into the folds of his flesh as he doubled in pain.

“Speak up bitch!” When standing next to beefy Hugh’s, the skinhead age blurred between fifteen and twenty-three.

“I used to…wear that stuff.”

“Now, you’re too fuckin’ a porker—What happened? Made a hefty pussy out of ya, eh?” Asked the French Canadian who was now wearing the leather.

Hugh looked at Terry momentarily like a wounded sea lion hauling a voluminous baggage away from the waters of the sea. A conk to the side of the head left Hugh partially deaf for a while.

“What the fuck happened bitch?”

“I guess marriage happened.” The answer was spoken at the floor, mutedly. “What? The cat got your tongue?”

Louder, shyly, Hugh said, “Le marriage, c'est c'qui est arrivé!”

Amused. “Uh-Uh, there’s trouble in paradise, bitch” and the French Canadian kid in full leather regalia released a slow and long waft at a joint. Hugh’s face momentarily disappeared in a stinking nimbus. They hipped-hopped around the living room before Hugh and Terry’s astonished eyes.

Chorusing, “Trouble in paradise, trouble in paradise, la, la, la, la” they played air guitar and bobbed their heads.

“Nice crank you got here.” He said producing a small plastic bag from his front pocket. “I put only a bit in this joint and wow, dude! Hmm. Better than shakers.”

“Told you to quit that shit.” Blurted Hugh without facing his husband.

“There’s trouble in paradise, oh yup, trouble in paradise.”

And thus caroling, they left the room.

“You and your fucking addiction, Terry. Now, they’re high and dangerous.”

“Addiction? How the fuck do you think I manage to work all the long hours I work to live like this?”

“I could work.”

Silence

“I’m a chef.”

“You were a chef, darling. Anyway, this is not really the time and place, Hugh.” Terry’s words whispered without losing the uppity tenor his employees were accustomed to. In his Martha Stewart wannabe decoration company the “love for the work and detail” were primary values. “I told you to chuck out all those sleazy leather garments. I knew they would one day embarrass us—worse, they are giving them ideas.”

“They mean something to me.”

“Spare me Hugh. Not that soap about how S&M helped you reclaim your dignity and self-image after being at the gates of hell.”

“That’s how I met you!”

“Yup. A one night fantasy in a dungeon full of trolls and old gizzards.”

“I could’ve been a…”

“You could have nothing. It was I, not that old Johnny Strabler outfit, who helped you.” Silence imposed its cumbersome reign.

By the time the jovial invaders pranced back into the dining room, the elfin skinhead’s eyes were bewildered and his nimble body traveled fast, hands fidgeting with sparkling glass knobs and the orderly contents of the drawers. Ah. Finders, keepers. He produced a radiant filet knife in his hand and a new joint in the other. The one in leather gear followed with firm slower steps—the biker boots might have felt a slight tight on his large feet, on his one lame foot. In his hand, he held a fan of withered black and white Polaroids. “Wow buddy, ya used to be quite the hunk.” Black and white photos with Hugh at the centre of a group of formidable grinning men in dark bars. “Coke fucked you up, eh?”

“I don’t do that.” Hugh’s voice bruised with resentment.

The knife pointed in the air, far from Terry, but menacing. “Ahhh—this is the cokehead. Good stuff you got there, buddy boy.” Not waiting for an answer, really, they left.

The skinhead wiped the island free of casseroles, plates, glasses and cooking utensils with one sweep of his limber arm. The clanking and smashing of stuff echoed through the quiet estate. Main lights were killed and spotlights over the island dimmed. They applied the breaks to the casters so it would not move an inch even when Terry tried hard to pull on the leather ankle restraints, the handcuffs, and the collar. Hugh was in the other room breathing heavily and his chair was dragged with effort from the dining room to the kitchen entrance so he could have a balcony view of the proceedings. The door bell knelled.

When he strutted back into the poorly lit kitchen, the French Canadian kid was tightening the straps and buckles of his newly found costume. He felt cool in it.

“Pas brillant trop trop, le garde de sécurité: j'lui ai fait avaler une histoire de party d'Halloween gai and he ate it line, sink and hooker." He quickly peeled the electrical tape away from Hugh’s thick goatee, pulling hairs. The skinhead monkey sprinted out from the darkness, filet blade at the ready, and began to slit Terry’s Nike garments, inch by inch, without touching skin and slowly exposing Terry’s perfect frame, joints, the tensed and arched wonderful ligaments of his constitution.

“What happened?” Asked the French Canadian kid in leather insignia sitting frankly and open legged in a stool next to Hugh’s massive body—he whispered it in his ear. Something was inviting in the tone of the question. Hugh held his breath.

“Qu'est-ce qui t'arrive, mon chum?”

The blade slowly incised the compact skin around Terry’s nipple; it circled and carved but not digging its heel in too deep. There was a grisly synchronicity between his carvings and the answers that parted Hugh’s lips in duress.

“On venait just de commencer une relation… It has been ten years—on s'en fiche pas mal!"

The kid calmly said, “Les Canadiens… Les Québécois—t'sé veux dire, ces histoires-là des deux solitudes qu'on entend toujours...” Terry’s chest heaved as the skinhead began to taunt his genitals with the blade, some pubic hair cleanly split apart. “Continu, man.” Demanded the burly French Canadian bending almost in confidence down to Hugh’s ear.

After a pause imposed by the blade gleaming like a hood ornament traveling the latitude of the island, Hugh spoke some more. “Y m’a dit de changer, de l’suivre.” Terry was silent splayed over the table like a ceremonial offering.

“Dis-lui, envoye, dis-lui!” The rubber gloved hand grabbed the nape of Hugh’s neck and jerked it up to face Terry up there hoisted upon the butcher’s table.

“Pis comment t’es devenu si vache? Esti!”

“You made me. He told me to change; to follow you.” Hugh pronounced into the blue rare air and stifled a sob from his trembling maw. “Je travaillais comme chef dans un restaurant au centre-ville, après mon shift, j’allais prendre une bierre au sauna hard du coin. C’était l’bon temps.” His eyes welled up. A blunt hit to his head made him speak English, a stubborn Wurlitzer switching records so Terry could hear the music play.

“I changed my life to be with you. I loved you.”

The kids laughed their bellies off and caroused around the kitchen once and out and down the basement stairs. Terry left on the limelight of the spotlights with Hugh as his weary spectator.

Despite his awkward posture, Terry uttered with the exactitude of a scalpel.

“You ingrate pig, shut up—look at me, look at yourself!” He milled each word.

“You made me think it was the best thing to do.” Hugh talked to the tiles at his feet. “You made me think that… you loved it—me.”

“Should’ve never taken you in—”

“‘Taken me in’? Tabarnak. You wanted to be fucked like a whore, when you got tired of it, you changed me—”

“I didn’t do this to you.”

“You never see. I tried to get us to where we started.”

“You mean those bad three-ways.”

“I tried other times.”

“We didn’t even know where to start by then.’

“It was like a joke—you ‘had to be there’.”

In sotto voce he added, “Lesbian deathbed.”

“No, Terry. You lost interest the day I got that doctor’s notice. You never see what you do to others—”

“Wow, wow, motherfuckers! That’s shit is too much too fucking deep, man.” The wiry skinhead was insolently leaning against the frame of the kitchen door to the basement. Aside. “I hate that fucking—whatchamakalit?—anger management therapy.” Words spoken like he has been there, done that. It became a mantra both kids repeated joyfully. “Anger management, anger management.”

Coming really close to Hugh’s face the kid in leather growled, “Ostie, c'tait 'a même maudite affair avec mon vieux pi sa plotte, c'pou' ça qu'j'ai crissé mon camps.” “Hey puppies, it ain’t therapy night at the crib tonight.” The pumped kid in leather added these words as he limped past the skinhead holding some newly picked out restrains from the basement. They had fun tying Terry’s legs up stretching them up and over his head until his ankles almost touched his forehead. He would be securely propped up and not roll over to his sides and doused generously with balsamic white vinegar from France to wash away some of the blood. A pinch here, a dollop of that, add water and mix. Before leaving the kitchen again the kids used a turkey baster to squirt a maniacal mix into the strapped bird in the island.

Sheltered in the darkness, they could hear each other’s expectant breathing. No lights came from outside, not a car passing by the lane far down the promontory in which the massive house sat, no service person driving towards the house.

“It’s uncanny how much that French Canadian bastard looks like you when I met you.” Terry’s faint voice seeped through the relative darkness, he could see naked Hugh if he strained his neck to that side and alerted his retina. It suddenly seemed easier to do this now.

“They’re going to kill us.”

“They’re too high, just playing.”

Sarcastically. “Yeah. You’re one to tell—they are high on your shit. I saw they squirted some in you.”

Terry was almost coy. “Mayyyybeee.” Then, his voice turned almost melancholic. “I used to be so horned up by your brawn, your accent, the lifestyle. It was all ‘make believe’.” Nothing was said. “Ha! You busted out of my ‘make believe’.”

“Is all you cared about? You made me stop cooking for living and start working out for you… and I went on the juice, for you.”

“You wanted big Hugh, darling. You got it.”

“Didn’t want to get infected.” Hugh spat daggers across the space that separated them. “You wanted a trophy, you—” He did not sound disparaging but simply seemed to be assessing the years that had gone by, like a passenger in a shipwreck, taking stock.

“Fuck all this ‘you made me this, you made me that’—I didn’t make you infectious, fat, or unhappy. I made this future for us.” Mocking Terry jiggled slightly, as much as he could in his complicated body arrangement. Terry toyed with the notion of an ice sculpture centerpiece carved for the lavish parties thrown to attract clients and associates, not a bad design idea for a risqué wedding arrangement, now that gay weddings are all the rage. He saw a gorgeous ice sculpture placed in his kitchen island and surrounded by fresh oysters, giant prawns, and those delicate, raw and expensive mollusks being wallowed by a pageant of envious smirks and salivating smiles.

“You’re tripping. We’re not coming out of this alive.”

“You’ll have to eat your words. I’ll get these fucking scars healed, maybe have another little nip-and-tuck in the process.” He sounded like Siegfried & Roy after the tiger bite incident in Las Vegas in 2003, it sounded like he was really considering it.

The syrup of coagulated blood made their tongues silent. Where had they gone? What were those kids doing? When would this end? Hugh could hear Terry’s pain augmenting, his body writhing to liberate his bones and tendons from the firmly fastened straps and buckles.

“Can’t you just see they can’t hide how much they want me? They’ll have their way and go.”

“Tu peux être si vulgaire. We’re not coming out of this alive.” Hugh nodded his heavy head from side to side in tired disbelief.

“Oh eat your words, sweetheart.” Said Terry.

As if on cue, the skinhead entered the scene. The other one must have come limping around the living room to stand behind Hugh.

A bashful grin came to overlap Hugh’s grimace and as a slight surprise to him and to all other three in the room. His handsome unibrow lifted as he glanced from under it rather wickedly. Terry's body twisted in sheer delight, the mouth opening gaping, the eyes rolling into the back of the eyelids as the skinhead slobbered his hands in butter.

“Hey bro’.” The kid in leather had sneaked up from behind Hugh’s temporary throne and spoke to his ear.

“I’ t’a tout fucké, hein? On a vu tes photos, tes letters pis toute. T’as vendus ton âme au diable, man. T’étais correct, comme…”

“Tu connais rien, esti! You know shit.” But Hugh’s wasn’t a protest as much as reconsideration. A pair of hands dug into the butter like children playing in the mud. Terry’s eyes winced into slits as he looked at the ghostly hands.

“Oh we know. You live in your head upstairs too much bro. It’s long since you gave the other head some work out, eh?” The hands played on the island as if it was Christmas and there was plentiful stuffing, significant others on their way and merriment all around. Terry could have gasped and screamed but he chose to dilate instead. Maybe to lessen the harsh introduction. “What?—What’s he talking about?” Terry had the wherewithal to telegraph words. Hugh didn’t answer.

“Ha-Ha. As usual, this bitch gets all the action while you’re stuck on the kitchen. Ya’ ‘software widow’.” The French Canadian guy’s words came from shadows behind to ignite an instant of recognition. “Tu l'savais-tu, ça? Have you seen his e-mail tricking? We just did.”

“He has turned you into a ‘software widow’ Added the skinhead, playing with a toothpick and spitting the findings.

Terry had begun to groan slowly and a trickle of defiant words overflowed his lips through impeccable teeth.

The thin cruel smirk of the skinhead almost touched Terry’s lips. He gagged Terry with a handsome leather, metal and rubber gag, the kind that keeps the mandible open and an orifice for feeding. He praises Hugh’s hidden treasures in the basement. “Amazing shit you got in the closet down there bitch.”

The fleeting moment of awkward intimacy was interrupted by a disdainful skinhead’s snigger. “Check it out, dude, miss-loose-lips here gets it often.” The skinhead kid joy was palpable; so was Terry’s enjoyment much to his own chagrin. Drooling saliva spewed down to merge with a streak of blood and fluid flowing from Terry’s stretched hole.

“It was easy at first. Terry said that the infection wasn’t a big deal, mais les choses ont changé. Il m'a forcé à me battre tout le temps, à me mettre en forme, à me développer…” Hugh sounded out his words with an accent but clearly as the light of the day that will come after. It was four in the morning.

“He fattened you up when he had his share, and then he went to eat somewhere else leaving you in the lurch, t'es devenu comme sa nounou. That's what happened, pig Hugh?”

Hugh sighed. “My name is Hugo.”

“I know.”

“It was easier to fuck at first, we were so happy. But we—I got scared. Instead of getting more careless when fucking, he became more scared of me; I was scared of infecting him. Peut-être qu'il est répugné par ces changements. I stopped the leather thing, the stuff you’re wearing, ça faisait longtemps que j'avais pas vu tout ça. Lui, il en détestait tout.” Hugo was whimpering.

“He made you…sort of…”

“Awkward. Embarrassant. Ça te servira à quoi de savoir tout ça?" It was as if the skinhead had been listening to the murmured conversation under the threshold between the kitchen and the large dining room. Something began to slither up Terry’s back, slow, and slow, tenderly.

“He made me awkward.”

“Snap out of it bitch.” Commanded the skinhead—to whom? Hands busy in slow motion. “Look! Even on her way out this bitch is having a good time.” He cleared his throat, collected the phlegm, aimed and dunked right into the mouth gag with a feeder hole. “And you, pussy? Still willing to suffer for your man? Oh. That’s touching.”

Terry’s disdain overflowed. He could hardly make himself understood with the gag on his mouth, but his scorn was somehow clearly formulated. “Eat shit.”

A skinheads’ earsplitting chuckle shattered a Lalique vase into a million teardrops. He jumped on the island, like a lynx, boots side by side to Terry’s ribs, turned around to face his naked feet, lowered his pants and took a runny dump on his orifice.

“Eat shit. Yeah! Eat shit.” A geyser of fetid waste raised from Terry’s gagging woofs. The island had its own volcano eruption, a Petit Prince’s little world explosion. The kid in leather belly-ache laughter roared so close to Hugo's back shoulders he felt the rasping of a thick black goatee. There was only the dimmed light that made the blood cozily match the Sherwood Williams cashmere paint carefully selected for the kitchen walls, designed to make candlelight magical. Terry moaned and shot high nearly splattering the ceiling, contorting with pain, the pleasure had finally stopped.

The skinhead grinned and twirled the filet knife between his thumb and his index—a jailbird trick, surely. He carved a capital H in Terry’s heaving massive chest.

Hugo’s huge body tied in the chair began to rise from his slouching, not whimpering anymore. Sitting now upright, the folds of his belly down there revealed a huge hard on, bigger, thicker and harder than anything in a long time, no pills involved. Somewhere behind, in the shadows his young counterpart was, panting — Hugh felt two ample palms slither around his trachea. The island was bathed in reddish luminescence. The palms swayed and shook until Hugo’s irises almost faded. “We’re thinking of going to do business together. He is a good inkworker and I’m a fucking great piercer.” The burly hands grabbed and pulled Hugo’s nipples one at a time and in one big swoosh—Hugo’s head twirled around the room. Whoopee! –Thick stainless steel rings had been swiftly jabbed back where they had been years ago. Two rapid flashbulbs of memories that had been buried deep in Hugh’s corneas. First, a smile came upon his tired lips. And then Hugh sprinkled hard a stream of balmy Milky Way into the warm air like a fountain cherub.

At the break of dawn when blood and sperm began to gel amongst the debris and the grime on the floors, Hugo bobbed his head like shy kid, contented with something simple but joyful. The invaders finished packing, dressed in good clothes, cleaned, and armed with SUV car keys, and expensive leather travel bags, they came to say goodbye. Terry’s body laid spread eagle over the kitchen island with his limbs strewn about like a bird carcass—asleep. Hugh would doze off exhausted and come back again but there was no fear in his eyes when the two carefully stepped not to drag blood in their new found shoes and wardrobe.

"J't'en souhaite une bonne, prend soin d'toé, là.” And with the strong palm of his had lifted Hugo’s chin. “Get that goatee back sweetheart, you looked good. Use the stuff you got closeted down there.”

The skinhead looked like a preppie kid after taking off the piercings, washing, and shaving himself. Terry’s clothes were a bit big on him but not noticeably so. He made a gesture like he was going to punch Hugh hard in the face or the stomach but stopped in mid air.

“No more punches out of the blue from that bitch, not for nothing. Fucking weird way of doing S&M fag, that’ll change now. Right?” Hugo did not move or say a thing.

“Right?”

“It will.” Said Hugo with strange new confidence. “Er—”

“What?”

“Ah, rien, y'a rien.” The kids turned to leave through the back deck to the garage.

“Attend!” And Hugh spoke up clearly looking their way.—Thanks.”

In the modest awakening of this morning, the French Canadian big kid seemed larger than life. He self assuredly turned to the skinhead costumed in Terry’s preppy clothes and kissed him hard on the lips, tongues swayed and locked inside, and nodded at him with his chin that they should be leaving now. They left.

 

© 2007 Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco - Contributor's Bio