Dead Stones [manxman] [boyxboy]

Powerless love

“Luke?”  Hao was wandering towards the foyer when he noticed the front door was ajar. He hopped madly into shoes and scrambled outside.

The night was a parade of rustling shadows and cricket chirps.  And Hao thought he saw a diffuse blob turn the corner at the driveway. 

“Luke!”

More mystified than irritated, Hao sprinted after him. A feeling of playful delight tickled him, made him sprint faster, made him thankful that he had been running and weight training lately.  The breeze, still cold for a March night, whipped against his clammy nose, and stung in his nostrils.  Houses dissolved into the powdery black heights, and the street narrowed, heightening exhilaration pickling at his nape.

It was ridiculous: an old man, no not old, a middle-aged man, chasing after a ragged young thing.  But this was nature taking over, his pulpal nature metamorphosing.  This was the view of the popcorn sky he had denied himself.  This was the new self finally treating his designs like a go game, one of will and whim.  He wanted to run after a hirsute pinecone, and so yes he would, because he could, because amongst the unlit ruminations on the lonely armchair, he liked playing go with Luke.

Hao followed him up the dirt road. Shrubbery lined one side of the road, high and black into the sky; on the other side yawned a drop into segments and sickles of rooftops and light.   Someone, Hao spotted, bending over the driver’s side of a car.

“You owe me for your lesson.” Hao’s breaths raced up his chest and through his cramped throat. 

Luke turned around hotly then searched his wallet in the abject dark.

“Pay me inside. I’m hungry.”

There was a slow deliberateness in the way Luke put away his wallet.  He stepped back into the car and faced Hao with something heavy in mind. Behind Hao was the wall of black, and up the road curved into the dark, and Luke saw in all the night enclosing on him, defeat. Hearing Hao and Yuu jabber in the kitchen had marked on him the inefficient gripes against life.  He should have died that day instead of Carly. He wished he could still spend all day in Trent’s garage, expounding his long versions to his patient ears. He was bound to ashes in an urn. And go was a distraction, drawing him to care about the world, which was only worth trashing and dumping into a wastebasket. And his chest was cold, and the spot where his heart should be beating was frozen in the tears he couldn’t shed.

Luke knew now what he wanted to say. “This will be the last of our meeting. You can tell everyone in the club, I won’t be coming anymore. I’m sorry for the grave inconvenience.” He faced the car again and began sifting through his keys, but the thought of Trent majestic at home halted him. No way he was going straight home. Perhaps Venice beach?

“You asked me for a game then you run away,” Hao said.

Luke, his fingers rubbed over the grooved hardness of his car key, paused only to mark in the plosive anger in Hao’s words. He thought, yes, it was disappointing of himself, but it was the clear truth of himself.  With that he opened the door, but something rammed at him from the behind, and suddenly Hao’s hand slapped the door shut. The door bang rang in his ears and an abhorrent idea juddered him into the possibility of having to defend himself. He dimmed, thinking his mom wouldn’t like that. Then again she hated him. No, no of course not, it was seventy percent love and thirty percent hate. She still wouldn’t like it if he raised his fists against Hao like he had done against Stanley or Carly—Carly, Carly, Carly, he should have died that day instead of her. Mom would have preferred it. The beach then? Scatter her ashes as she willed, and take one last surf?

Death was raging through Luke’s spirit, and so he did not feel it when Hao took a hold of his shoulders and bellowed just above his ear, “I won’t accept your laziness!”  The voice was life. His ear felt hot, his head was swallowed in the heat of death shattering, his neck, his arms, soul and bone were aflame. And next to his face was Hao’s face blind in the shadows; he felt his soul warm and aglow in the dark, and he gripped the taut nape and pulled the head towards himself, and they kissed in an apoplectic moment