Destiny 2

“It’s just skin,” Troy said, breaking through my thoughts with his raspy voice. “Nothin’ to be all scared about.”

“How did you get there?” I asked. “In those woods.”

Troy looked straight ahead, not blinking. “I don’t know.”

“How long were you there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were there others -”

Troy turned and glared at me. “I don’t know. Stop askin’ me questions. I don’t know the answer to every goddamn thing.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t apologize. I fuckin’ hate apologies.”

I remembered that old wooden house that I had passed on the way towards going to the woods. It was the house where Troy lived. It was the place we were going to right now. Wasn’t it? Where else were we going? I didn’t want to go inside of that house. That house didn’t seem like the kind of place made for people to stay in. 

“What day is it?” Troy asked.

“Sunday.”

“What date?”

“January Fifteenth.”

“What year?”

“2004.” 

“Oh,” Troy responded.

“It’s your birthday,” I told him.

He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “What’s that mean, ‘birthday’?”

I didn’t know why he asked me that question. I sneaked glimpses of his big dick as it dangled and moved freely from side to side as he walked. 

We were approaching that house. I looked up into the sky and saw a few clouds, large dark clouds that seemed to have come out of nowhere. They were quickly moving toward the sun. I shivered. Troy didn’t. The closer we got to the house, the colder it became and the more clouds seemed to have just materialized. My hands felt numb after a few minutes. Troy walked comfortably toward the house as though he were walking along the shoreline of a secluded beach on a summer morning in June. 

“How old am I supposed to be?” Troy questioned.

“Twenty...”

Troy scoffed at the sound of the word ‘twenty’. “Such a fucked-up number,” he said. “How old are you supposed to be?”
“Eighteen.”

“That’s a shitty-ass number too.”

I wanted to ask what number wasn’t shitty or fucked up, but I didn’t. Troy was walker even quicker toward the house, while I walked slower. I really didn’t want to go inside of there. It was waiting for us, with its hazy windows, splintered wood steps, peeled paint, and ugly weeds growing out of the yard like snakes crawling out of hell. 

“It’s just a house,” Troy said out of the blue. 

I wanted to tell him that I was afraid to go inside of there, but I couldn’t find the words to express how I felt without sounding dumb and feeling embarrassed. More clouds gathered in the sky. Soon, the blue sky would be violently replaced by dark gray, a color gray twice as dark as Troy’s eyes. “Do you live here alone?” I asked.

“Sometimes...”

“What do you mean by -”

“Give me my key.”

“Huh?”

“The key you took from my shoes,” Troy said, opening his large hand toward me. “Give it here.” 

I dug into my pocket and pulled out the silver key. Troy took it from me and walked up the old stairs. I watched his sexy ass shift gracefully as he moved up the stairs. My dick, which hadn’t been all that soft the whole time we were walking, twitched in my shorts. 

“Are you comin’ in, or are you gonna run home scared?” Troy asked, inserting the key into the lock. I was still standing at the base of the stairs, hesitating as to whether or not I should go in with him or not. When he saw that I was reluctant, he questioned, “You don’t gotta come inside if you don’t want to. Just go home and come back when you’re ready.”

It was weird that he assumed that I would be coming back to see him, even though when I thought about it, I had already assumed that I would see him again. “My parents are probably wonderin’ where I am. I was supposed to be home long time ago.”

“You’re eighteen, not twelve. It doesn’t matter,” Troy said. He unlocked the door and opened it. He pulled open the screen door and stepped inside. 

“I don’t know if I should be here,” I said. “Especially after what just happened back there...”
“Nothin’ can hurt you here,” Troy said. “`Sides, it’s gonna rain soon. You don’t wanna have to be walkin’ in the rain if you don’t got to.”

I took a step toward the stairs, still unsure, but very curious, both to be with him, and to see inside of that house. Although I reminded myself that my stupid-ass curiosity had gotten me in trouble the first time, I still made my way up the stairs anyhow. “You don’t gotta stay all day,” Troy told me, “just a little while.”

I felt really nervous as I opened the screen door and entered into the dark house. Inside, it was a lot warmer than I expected it would be. I closed the door behind me, and as I did so, I felt like I was sealing my unknown fate. We were standing in a small living room with barely any furniture, just a dilapidated couch and a small round table in the center of the room. 

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Since before I was born,” was Troy’s answer. 

He walked somewhere deeper into the house, mixing in well with the shadows. I walked carefully across the thick wooden floor, trying not to make any creaking sounds. Gazing up at the ceiling, I saw dense spider webs clinging to some of the beams. 

“Come in here,” Troy said. His voice sounded far away.

“Where are you?”

Troy appeared in one of the doorways, his hip brushing up against the jamb of the door. He was holding something in his hand. It took me a few moments to realize he was holding a soda. “All that fuckin’ runnin’ you must be thirsty as hell.”

I was thirsty and hungry too. “Do you got water?” I asked.

“You don’t wanna drink the water from this house,” Troy responded, going back into the kitchen again. Instead of going inside with him, I waited for him to come back. There were small creaking noises coming from everywhere I around me. I kept looking all around, looking through the darkness, not really able to move. Troy came back with another can of Coke. He tossed it over to me. It felt really cold in my hands; maybe because the house felt so warm. I opened it and guzzled it down in less than twelve seconds. I burped loudly when I finished. Troy just watched me, blankly. His grayish-silver eyes seemed to glow in the shadows. 

“Want another?” Troy asked, a bit of amusement in his deep voice.

I did, but I felt too embarrassed to say so. “No, that’s okay.”

Troy laughed and took the can away from me, crushing in it in the palm of his hand, as if it were made from old paper. “I’m about to take a bath,” he said suddenly, walking right past me. I felt a rush of heat when he passed right by me, much hotter than the air around me. It made my knees wobble and my dick twitch again. “Come with me,” he said.

He didn’t wait for me to answer. He walked off toward a long dark hallway, toward the bathroom, I guess. I could’ve just walked out of the front door as easily I walked in and just ran home. I could’ve done a lot of things. But I didn’t. I didn’t leave the house, partly because I didn’t want to, and partly because I was afraid of what would happen if I left. Even though I was a bit intimidated by this guy, a big part of me still wanted to be around him. 

There was a loud booming sound that shook the house. Seconds later, there was the rapid sound of rain falling on the tin roof, like rice falling from heaven. I heard Troy’s voice coming from the other room. He said triumphantly, “Told you it was gonna rain soon.”

* * *

I watched him take a bath. He had one of those old-fashioned bathtubs, obviously too small for him, because most of legs were dangling over the edge of the tub. I sat next to him, on the bare white floor, watching him like a child would watch his father shave, as though I were seeing something I should learn how to do. It was still raining hard and it didn’t seem like it was going to end soon. My parents were probably definitely worrying where the hell I was right now. I didn’t know what time I would get home or if I would even get back home. “I told you before, Jeremy. You don’t gotta stay here,” Troy explained.

“I want to,” I whispered.

“Why? So you can just ask me more questions?”

“No…”

“I don’t remember what happened back there. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“The less you know, the better off you are.”

“You still never told me how you knew my name.”

Troy shrugged. “You knew my name before I told you. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s just a whole lot of shit going on that I don’t understand.”

Troy gathered some water with his hands and splashed his face with it. “You believe in monsters and shit like that?”

It was a stupid question, but it still made me nervous to answer. “No…”

“Maybe you should…”

“Was that thing that was in the woods what you would call a monster?” I asked.

“Depends on your definition,” Troy responded simply.

“Whatever that person – whatever the fuck that thing was…it wasn’t normal.”

“Do you think I’m normal?” Troy asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then why are you still here?”

I didn’t know how to answer.

“After your little mornin’ run, what did you plan on doin’ for the rest of the day?” Troy asked.

“I don’t know. Go back to bed I guess.”

Troy leaned forward in the bathtub, his stony, handsome face only inches away from mine. “Do you think you’re dreamin’ right now?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just do.”

Troy laughed. “Bullshit.” He leaned back against the tub. He propped his foot up on the lip of the tub so that it almost grazed my chin. “Do you got a boyfriend?” he asked randomly. 

“What?” 

“Don’t look so surprised. Just answer the question before this water gets cold.”

There was a guy I was kinda seeing at school. His name was Abe Westland. He was on the basketball team. Good-looking in a classic kind of way: tall, about six-four and nearly two hundred pounds. His hair was jet black and he had he had long sideburns. He was muscular and fit the stereotype of the typical jock, except he was intelligent. Abe wasn’t my boyfriend. In the four weeks that he we had been ‘talking’ we haven’t fucked yet. We’ve done a lot of kissing and touching, but nothing that involved us being naked or licking each other’s parts. We were both too uncomfortable to touch each other that way, for our own different reasons. I wished he would touch me the way I wanted to be touched. But I didn’t know if he ever would – or if he ever could. “No,” I answered.

“Took you a long time to say somethin’,” Troy commented. I wanted to lick his foot. It sounded gross to think that in my head, especially since he hadn’t been wearing shoes all day. But with his foot only inches away from my mouth, the thought just kept re-running itself over and over again in my head. Even though I was right next to him, I was afraid to be around Troy. I was afraid to touch him, even though I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t mind if I did. I wanted to take off my clothes and join him in that pot-sized bathtub. I remembered what some girl in my Geography class said to her friend about a boy named Justin Thorne that she thought he was so sexy that if she could, she would drink his bathwater. I felt the same way at that moment. And Troy knew it.

“It’ll stop rainin’ in a little while. And then you can go home,” Troy said. “If you want.”

“There’s nothing waiting for me at home,” I said. “Not really.”

I don’t think he was expecting for me to say that. He stared at me for a few moments, studying me, trying to figure me out, just as much as I was trying to figure him out. “I knew you would come,” he said after a while.

“You knew I would come here?” I asked.

Troy shook his head. He leaned forward and pulled the stopper out of the drain. The water gurgled and started to disappear quickly down the black hole. Troy stood up slowly. Drops of water slid down his firm, muscular skin, down his chest, over his tight six-pack, over his navel, collecting in his pubes, dropping from the thick head of his dick and the thin hairs of his balls, down his muscular thighs. I couldn’t help but to stare at him. Troy stared down at me as I stared up at him. He reached out his hand, and I took it. I felt a wave rush inside of me, like something had shifted my whole insides really quickly and then put them right back where they should’ve been. Troy pulled me up to my feet, so that we were at direct eye contact with each other. His eyes were so intriguing, so mysterious, so beautiful, so…I don’t know…real, I guess I want to say. It was something that I couldn’t explain. Once again I had that feeling that I had seen him somewhere before, not recently, but some other time, in a whole different place…

“Maybe,” Troy said. He didn’t grab a towel, even though there was one nearby, on a rack hanging on the wall. He just strode out of the bathroom, naked and wet, leaving watery footprints on the clean white floor. I stared at those footprints until they dried, which lasted less than half a minute. I looked back at the bathtub. All the water had been drained and a thick ring of dirt lined the tub. At least he wasn’t dirty anymore. For some reason, I dried my hands on the soft red towel hanging on the wall, even though my hands weren’t wet. 

“Come here,” Troy called out.

What am I doing here? I wondered to myself. And why haven’t I left yet? What was I expecting to happen? What did I want to happen?

I walked out quietly, closing the bathroom door behind me.