Beach Boys (21 page)

While waiting for the elevator, I overheard two maids chatting with one another. “Oh, ’im, yah. Dem say eet murder.”

“Cha! Murder? Lor’ such badness in Spain Town. Wi Laz from di pool, Laz?”

This got my attention.

“Yah, mon, a true—wi golden Laz.”

“Eet bullbuckas or di baldheads from di Babylon?”

“Jah know. Oh, the fuckery. A ratchet to di gut, mi hear. Bled out like a pig inna sand.”

The two sighed and tsk-tsked. The elevator doors opened. I stood still. They slid shut. The two maids turned and stared at me. One of them asked, “Yuh be all right, sa?”

“Yes, thank you,” I gasped. I had to get this straight. Wading through the patois was difficult for a white Northerner like me. “Were you talking about the pool-man just now?” They looked at one another and played dumb. I reached into my pocket and gave them each an
American ten. They fell over themselves to spill the gossip. Yes, it was him! He was killed by bullies the other night on the beach. That night. Queer-bashers, no doubt. I was devastated.

Here I was, suspecting him of all sorts of “badness.” I pumped them for further information—if a funeral was being held and when. They said the next day, but the hotel manager wouldn’t let them go. I offered to go in their place to pass along their condolences. They gave me an odd look and eyed me up and down. They remained mum about the location, until I gave them twenty dollars more. I returned to my room, shook like a leaf and cried until I fell asleep.

* * * *

The funeral was held in a rickety church on the edge of Spanish Town. I got there as they were lowering the plywood casket into the ground behind the church. I held back behind a tree and watched from afar. Some of the older women weaved and wailed in grief.

After the small crowd dispersed, the grave was filled in. Then there was no one. But me. I came forward and stared at the earth which covered my golden pool-man. Someone giggled just behind me. My body twitched in fright. I quickly turned to find an old man leaning on a gnarled walking stick. Black and grizzled, he stood there, shaking his head.

“Ah, bwoy, wha yuh doin’ ’ere, all pale in Jam-down, bwoy?”

I stumbled to put some words together. “I…I’m here to pass condolences on from some co-workers of his.”

“I see, I see,” he said, pointing to one cloudy eye of his. Around his neck hung some trinkets. Some looked to be made of small animal bones. “Young Lazarus, ’im mi nephew.”

“I’m very sorry. You missed the funeral too, then?”

“Mi black sheep of fambly. Yah, mon. Ba-a-a, b-a-a-a!” Then he giggled once more. Unnerving. He pulled a small pouch from a pocket and dangled it before me. “Yuh brave soul, Mister?”

“I’m Roj—I mean, Roger.”

“I see, I see.”

He twirled the pouch. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. “But brave? Not always, to be honest. I’d like to think I am, though.”

“Den take dis, yah?” He handed me the pouch. “Yuh sprinkle now on di grave. And dis yuh bury.” He took out a tiny bone with a feather twined to it.

It dawned on me that he was an Obeah man. Had I been wearing my anthropologist’s hat, I would’ve pressed for an interview. But today I was a simple mourner. I didn’t want to disrespect the old guy and took the trinket from him, despite the thing giving me the heebie-jeebies.

“And den yuh add a ting of yer own, Ro-ger, mon.”

Self-consciously, I opened the pouch. It was filled with a dark powder. I sniffed at it. There was a sharp odor to it, and I made a face. The geezer giggled yet again. And so I obeyed and sprinkled the powder over the hallowed plot.

While the old man watched carefully, I dug a bit with my finger and placed the trinket in the shallow hole. I looked back, and he was nodding with approval.

“Now put a l’il ting fram yuh, Ro-ger.”

Something of mine, but what? I didn’t bring much of anything with me. Money didn’t seem appropriate. I fished through my pockets. My fingers touched something…a wrapped condom. It somehow seemed appropriate. With my back to the Obeah man, I pushed the
condom into the hole and covered it up, lickety-split. When I turned around, the old man was already walking away, the sound of his giggles trailing in his wake. I laughed too. Too loudly. There I was, on my knees in a Jamaican cemetery, having just performed some ritual witchcraft.

* * * *

That night in bed, I tossed every which way. I was so drowsy, but sleep refused to come. I thought I heard a thudding footfall outside my door. Then another. The handle jiggled, and the door swung open. I tried to call for help, but couldn’t. A tall dark shape shut the door and advanced towards me. Trembling, I reached for the nightstand and switched the lamp on.

It was Laz!

But it couldn’t be. He was naked, and I could see a clotted gash in his middle. I was searching for that word—not to speak it, but…zombie! The powder, the trinket, that stinking ritual. What had that old man done? I done.

The zombie looked down on me, unblinking and silent. Except for the wound, he seemed as I had known him. Was I so nurtured on Hollywood that I expected the stench of rotting flesh and a voracious appetite for living bodies? He then focused on me; this was no empty shell of a man.

And yet he wasn’t quite the same. For one thing, his cock seemed permanently erect. In spite of myself, I was so turned on. I was mesmerized by his massive organ. It was darker than in life and, amazingly, larger still. It pointed straight out at me. Its slit was gaping, perhaps wide enough to slip in the tip of one’s pinkie finger. Gouts of fluid constantly oozed out. I slowly leaned forward and lapped it up like a hungry calf.

Then as if in a trance, I lay back and raised my legs. Spread them in invitation. He fell against me, his face so close to mine. There was a smell—not of decay, but a mix of his flowery
aftershave and that strange powder. His dick, almost a separate being, wriggled and searched for entry. I was terrified, but horned beyond belief. The fluid from his cock lubed its way to some extent, but in one heaving lunge, he deeped me to the core. I screamed.

Laz lay on top of me with my legs wrapped around his torso. Beyond my dead lover’s back I thought for an instant I could make out further human shapes. I grew panicky. Then they were gone. Laz was definitely still there. He didn’t move, yet his cock thickened of its own accord, continued to lengthen and twist inside me. The walls of my ass gave way, spasming around his bloated girth. It was horrific. It was glorious.

I started to come. So did he. I could feel the volcanic gush deep inside my bowels. It started to burn. Then again. I don’t know how long it lasted: minutes, hours? He stayed hard the whole time. My eyes, which had rolled up in my head, lowered and regained focus. The shapes and shadows had returned. There were others! I scanned the room, gauging the chances for escape, but felt paralyzed.

His posse of lifeless studs lumbered towards the bed. Laz finally withdrew and stood up. He nodded to his mates. And one by one they mounted me. Their equally monstrous dicks writhed inside my guts. I became a vessel for their zombie jizz. With each of their lengthy orgasms, the burning sensation grew. I seemed on fire! This would be my end, I feared. Roasted on a spit, or several spits—had I been dragged down to hell? Yet amidst the feeling my flesh was being eaten from inside, the expression, “what a way to go” popped into my fevered brain. I laughed hysterically.

I lost count of how many times they came in me, or the times I came. And all the while, I could somehow sense the histories of my zombie masters—the hardship and the hushed desires. As well, I saw that each of them had been slain, victims of homophobia. Like my beautiful Laz.
I saw in glimmers that they had wreaked a terrible revenge on their murderers while Laz had bred me with his zombie-cock. Scenes in flashes of torn limbs and spurting blood. The screams.

I gave in to it all while in the throes of a kind of ecstasy: the pictures running through my head, the zombies’ lives, their deaths, revenge, and the sex, the sex. I was being consumed and I welcomed it all. All.

Then they were no longer there.

My last memory of that night was of this exotic being called Laz. I thought he had paused on the way out to smile down on me. I managed to smile back.

When the sun finally came up, I was alone. Had I dreamt it all? Or was it a hallucination, sparked by sniffing the Obeah man’s powder? But any doubt fell away after I finally stood up, wavering, and load after sizzling load trickled down the back of my thighs. I reached around and felt my ass; the hole was still gaping and twitched at my touch.

Jah know, it was not the end of me.

* * * *

So began my mission, some fourteen years ago. Each summer I return to Jamaica. I don’t know where the zombies hide in my absence. Perhaps the Obeah man gives them shelter, or maybe they rest in their graves. But whenever and wherever I stay, they show up in the dead of night. Their numbers grow, their numbers wane. They wreak their dreadful revenge on those that have slain.

Laz is the constant in their universe—and mine. Coupling with him is always special. I lie beneath him and his minion; they take me one by one. I am fulfilled, or should I say, filled full? Both.

And in return, I haven’t aged since that first time. I burn in wondrous pain, and like the phoenix, rise anew. I remain in all aspects a man in his mid-thirties. No Dorian Gray, I. I am on a moral mission—at least, that’s what I tell myself. And it’s fun at times to think of myself as a sort of superhero. Forever young-ish, I do my part to rid the nation of badness done against the men who desire other men. Us men.

There are tribes. And there are tribes.

Perhaps next year I’ll make it to Africa to research and, frankly, cosy up to the Nkundo, the Bala, and the Thonga. Expiating the sins of the white man’s shameful past while drowning in my tribesmen’s jizz!

Lisa Mannetti
’s debut novel,
The Gentling Box
(DarkHart Press), won the 2008 Stoker Award for best first novel, and has a story in Ravenous Romance
SEXTROLOGY
Anthology. She recently served as guest editor for the
Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry
anthology. Two stories will appear shortly in
TRAPS!
(DarkHart Press) and the
Pretty Scary Anthology
; a third,
Everybody Wins
, is being translated into a short indie film by director Paul Leyden. Lisa lives with her white cat, Huckleberry Finn, and twin black kittens, Harry and Theodora Houdini, in the house she grew up in—which her mother haunts daily in benign fashion. Huck’s deceased twin, Tom Sawyer, also deigns to visit from time to time—that is, when he’s not too busy psychically terrorizing birds who inadvertently light on his slate marker in the back yard. Miss Theo has a crush on Huck.

Brandi Woodlawn
was born and raised in an exclave of the Bible Belt. Her sexually repressed upbringing is partly to blame to for her overzealous imagination and her dominant desires. When Brandi’s not dreaming up ways to take her characters to climax, she might be conducting ”research” of her own. Let no one say she was unwilling to make sacrifices for her craft. Brandi hopes you’ll think the end result was worth it. Brandi is the author of several Ravenous Rendezvous, including
The Definition of “Is”.

Manlius Latham
is the proprietor and host of The Flesh Fantastique, New England’s second largest hedonism/fetish club. With a clientele ranging from celebrities to politicians to clergymen to bored and lonely housewives, The Flesh Fantastique caters to every form of perversion in a safe, nonjudgmental erogenous zone of pleasure. Mr. Latham resides in Lisbon Falls, Maine, with his life-partner and their many varied playthings. He also writes horror fiction under a pseudonym.  

A reformed journalist,
Maximilian Lagos
only truly felt at home when he merged his writing talents with another of his passions: sex and sexuality. Relatively new to writing professionally, many of his stories have been published on Literotica, MySpace and the Erotica Readers & Writers Association to critical approval. Max is a polyamorous, bisexual married man, the doting father of two children and lives in Toronto, Canada.

Jarrah Dale
loves to write M/M and F/F romance stories full of love, sex, struggles, and victories—in short, all the many different things that make a relationship a relationship. Her interest in the genre was awakened when she discovered a new take on an old love:
Star Trek
het/slash stories. Since she realizes not everyone can be Trekkie, she writes erotic romance geared more towards the masses. Her favorite ST universe hotties are Garak and Shran. She lives in Washington state and can often be found in front of her computer screen, typing away at another rambunctious tale.

Randal Ivey
writes gay love stories in the heart of the Bible Belt.

Eric Del Carlo
’s short fiction has appeared in numerous publications over the years. He is the coauthor, with fantasy and science fiction stalwart Robert Asprin, of the
Wartorn
novels. A
further novel with Asprin and Teresa Patterson, a murder mystery set in New Orleans’ French Quarter, is available through DarkStar Books. Eric’s solo novellas and novels can be found for download at Loose Id. Come and say hello at ericdelcarlo.com or find him on Facebook.