THE MONSTERS

In my words, I hope you'll find
an airtight argument
sealed against that rot which binds
to corners that relent

and if by chance you need them not,
or wish them to begone,
then I at once, may fair assume
that your soul never spawned

"Go away, with fair debate!
You're making too much sense!
We only wish to have our fun,
in sickly sacrament!"

That's the rub, I'm 'fraid to say
with humans fitting in
in order to divert, you must
reveal you aren't our kin

let your rampage, bear your harm,
should we, we could die
and all bear witness to your strength
as blood from children flies

so reveal you, we all must,
as monster more than man
and cast you to the caves below
where you'll find only sand

Games of twisted cards and phrase,
constant search for weakness,
leverage that would earn you praise
from those who seek our meekness

find you once, a nail to bend,
that lets you our domain,
surely you would stop yourself
if I'm to hear your claim

and then what stops you, beast so kind?
From taking as you please?
Am I to hear correctly what you've
hidden under fleece?

So no, I think, you won't be bound
by any word that's your own
maybe you've forgotten that
your life is lived on loan

bolted doors, and argued clear,
your kind is not to enter
for we cannot afford what's dear
to fall into your center

strike the page, wipe off my ink,
but I'll still stain your hands
and bring you fears upon your mind
of karmic reprimand.

* * *

Though I was terrified of The Oaf, and dreaded that he might corner me and force himself, he never did. I was grateful for that, because I had a knife under my pillow I didn't want to dull on his wits.
The Knight teased that I "protest too much". This from someone who'd been assaulted by three other men at the barracks, and cried for a week. I'd held The Knight's back as he wept, and kept watch for the trees as he tried in vain to bathe off their scents. I was no longer able, in good conscience, to keep lifting weights with them, which I thought would cost me – but it gave me time to rest, and I felt better for it. I used that vigor to help my wounded friend. It took him another week to stop feeling sick, and start eating my cooking again. He was starving, but his stomach rejected the first three bowls of soup I fed to him. And it was such a cave, by then, that I feared he was going to die.
A year later, not only was he recovered, he was threatened.
He jabbed, "If I read between the lines of your journals, I bet I can find proof that you really did it – that you let him have you. It's all in code, isn't it? You Egyptians are always crafty and nasty like that. Thayans too, all whores." He poked my chest hard, with two fingers. He was stronger than I was, and it was a bit of a tiny punch. He went on, "This reads just like one of those smut plays they show in the bar alley, after dark. The ones everyone wanks to under their cloaks."
The Knight had apparently described my situation to his remaining friends, and they'd already come up with a story that mirrored mine... and it ended exactly how I didn't want mine to go.
I shrunk, queasy of the thought. I shook my head. "There's no way."
He laughed, glaring at my chest. "You wanna bet? Come with me, I'll show you. It's a hell of a production – one of those where boys can get pregnant to men."
I turned my head away, sick to my stomach. These beggars were whoring my life story to the public for coin, like grim impostors. Grimpostors? It sounded about right to me. Then I turned back, ready to hurl obscenities. Eyes furious, I stared him down... feeling shocked and betrayed.
That was the worst thing anyone could possibly do, without laying hands: construction of an effigy, and violation of your name for a crowd. While it was true that many writers of, let's say unpopular sorts, tended to tell their stories with encryption, I was not one of them. I was not telling the story of the New World hunter and the Whale Farmer, sharing a hotel. If I was going to love another boy, it was going to be so plainly-spoken you'd think it was the origin of man. And as for those bar-alley theatre wank sessions, I knew it was women as well as men who attended those, and thought themselves clever for putting sex and strife into moments that needed them not. No situation was sacred to them, regardless of gender, pre-interest, or age. Girls of gruesome fascinations often crooned and squealed over grizzled clefts touching naked ones, stained in blood. Boys of the same kind took signs of knife-cut abuse in other, classical plays as the inspiration for a more disparaging work of fanfic; wherein the hero would be utterly dismayed, and ruined with his enemy's chains wrapped around his neck. It was a sign of mental illness, as far as I was concerned; to me, sportful domination was not the same thing as gory oppression, at all. Things like chains and whips were only supposed to be used as roleplay between lovers of consent and trust, not meant to actually hurt them the way these gawk-eyes made it seem. It was one thing for two hunks to claim one another in bonds, but it was another entirely for a monster to fuck the gruesome remains of a fair maiden's crushed skull. That, for many who'd seen it real, was too much to bear. That mattered not to the wankers. They wanked for their siblings by calling them "step"; they wanked for the animals by sneaking into barns; and they wanked even their own elders, by putting white wigs onto actors. It was as if they craved that pain, that disparity, and that awfulness, more than love itself. I knew fully that many of them reading my story would think to themselves, 'oh, this is hot!'; despite my words clearly stating a situation of serious domestic abuse. If their loins burnt any hotter, they'd put an eye out – and it was mine they were trying to pike, until it was coal. But I lamented the grimy sods, of agonized, briquette-smoked crotches. The poor, skull-scrubbed degenerates. It made of me a scornful officer, cursing out the filth of his own home in disgust.
"Ye make me ssssyick," one might rattle between his brush-stache and gritted teeth. Knowing his patrol kept them safe, but not from themselves.
But still, I felt for them, my impostors and wankers therefore, knowing their brains must have been spooned free a long time ago. Or fevered by nature, as it strikes upon us, and fed the worst medicine... at lowest opposition.
This is sounding rather evangelical, isn't it? To be quite honest, I've always been partial to softer drawings where women kissed, and then some. Or sometimes men of gentler temperament (appropriate for the age of their partner), with someone they cared for, sharing a nude moment. Both sexes appealed to me, and I didn't mind how they mixed – though femininity took my focus more often. Even a few partners at a time seemed fine to me, though I'd no real-life moments with which to compare. I was no prude, but I did find the work of my contemporaries to lack a certain empathy... or tact. Or an awareness for the situations of those who might see their work, and think, "well, that comes close to home". You wanted your writings, however lustful or gratuitous, to meet them well, and go hand-in-hand with their reasons for escaping fact in the first place. The last thing I wanted, with my writing, was encourage the sort of thing that would have made me, in this very moment, feel powerless. The work of artists was much like that of The Gods – it called out from fantasy into reality, and made tangible what could only be imagined. To dream something so wretched and fabricate it, for the sheer sake of turning guts, was a sort of brutality in which I didn't often engage, except as a joke. At least, not knowingly, and there was a fine line between a joke for the world and a stab at your private life. This was my real-life struggle, not one of those softer drawings I liked, nor the more horrid ones I didn't, that the others saw fit to spread over my life like a bannered curtain... and call it an improvement. They were much like starved wolves, those harsher artists and fanatics, to any subject they could find, straggling about in the woods. Waiting to gnaw at its legs and tear apart its intestines. They called it therapeutic, but not all forms of relief are civil, or humane. Pissing in the well did not turn the pebbles gold. And no, drawing a terrible thing soft or brightly DID NOT make it any more cute – that was just callous deception. It fed mad horses with sugar, and accomplished none else. They'd obviously never been forced to spend time as slaves, or they'd have found the material reminded them too much of a nightmare they always had... a vision of their past, with which they'd rather discuss to no one. I was not a slave, but lately, I'd begun to feel very much like one, indeed. So what kind of swamp-shit reject has a stage-play for the rubbing of parts, where a grandfather by law has his way with a CHILD? Had they known who they were really cheering for, their loins might have shriveled into ash.
I straightened my back. "I can't beLIEVE you'd TELL everyone my woes as if they were a JOKE, or that you'd take HIS side over MINE!" I cried. "And just what the FUCK does my HERITAGE have to do with ANYTHING?!"
He scoffed, looking disinterested. As if my being upset was the proof in his curdled little pudding. "Yeah, whatever, hussie. I see where you've made your bed... I see it all as daylight sees the mountain. Honestly, Reaper, how could you?" He squinted at me, with scorn. Hurt in his eyes.
It was the exact reason I couldn't confront The Oaf in front of his family – none of them would ever believe me. He could argue and manipulate his way out of practically anything, by dumb debate and sheer refusal of facts. I'd seen him do it just to avoid sharing his money to pay bills, which was the entire reason he brought the damn coins home – or so he said.
That, and to avoid cleaning his nail clippings off the couch, to which he'd shout: "I PAY FOR THIS HOUSE, IT'S MINE! AND I'LL DO WHATEVER I WANT!!"
But his earlier refusal to pay defeated his own point. It was like he was living in a world that changed every time he spoke differently of it. Like he himself was God, and his word made the land.
And, if all else failed, the old dust-ball would cry, and act like he was at the lowest point in his life... and start whining about how 'suicidal' he'd been as a young man. That family meant everything to him, and that he'd kill himself if we left him out to dry. It was the lowest form of ploy I could imagine, at the time. That The Knight would fall for the same tricks, without even meeting his deceptive eyes... it made me angry, and feel hopeless. I imagined that my friend was upset that he couldn't have me himself, and was taking it out on me by bothering me about someone who was threatening my safety. Someone, I guess, whom he saw as the bigger dog, and thought that brute force was what earned love. He may have even found The Oaf attractive himself, and was mixed grossly with jealousy for all sides. And he trusted me so little, he thought I'd given in – or perhaps he was mad as well, gone paranoid with worry for me. But not worried enough he'd try to rescue me, I suppose. I was beginning to think that, for a partner, I'd dodged a bullet by not believing his affections. The Knight was growing insensitive, but I still cared for my friend, and in looking back I see now what he was really afraid of: he knew he was to leave soon, from the place he'd never come back from. He thought while he was gone, I'd be someone else's... and that weighed on his heart.
"How could I?" I laughed. I took The Knight by the shoulders, and said as sternly as I could, "I couldn't. Not for all the gold in the world. I wish naught but doom for the ugly, old son of a bitch."
"You mean that?"
"I mean it."
"You'd rather have me?"
I blinked, and stopped. A breath left me, and I had to find another. Then I told the truth. "Every day."
And, to my own surprise, I leaned in for The Knight's face and kissed him. It was the very first time, and last time, we'd ever share such a moment. We dared at each other under our clothes, and I finally learned what it felt like to be loved back, completely. It gave my heart a glow I could barely describe.
After that, The Knight calmed down, but he was still agitated by my situation... and honestly, so was I. We sipped on tea, with soy milk that The Potionist had freshly strained. He, over in the castle town, knew of my strife, but had nothing to offer me except shipments for a discount. Neither of us could find a place for me to escape to, and the barracks wouldn't take me – my limp would slow down their march.
This made The Knight miserable, and I joked, "Imagine how I feel."
I think for men who loved men, it was different: many of them would have gone for The Oaf immediately, or with some hesitation, as a relief for their lusts and from the pressures of the world. It was better, to them, than nothing at all – but I preferred nothing, because it accustomed me. That, or a friend my age. Or they'd been taken by force once, and simply accepted it as a fact of life, looking for someone else to transpose their pain onto... that same criminal deed, repeated in echo for infinite time thereafter. Like barbed steel-wire in twine for miles through the ages. I felt no such pressure or barbs from the world, not without a fight – whom I loved was my business, and I loved The Knight. My friend, and almost my bedfellow sooner, if not for my own lack of self-confidence. And by the time I'd realized it, he was nearly gone.
The Oaf was no such friend of mine, incapable of swearing to the oaths he'd already made to his wife, and his promise as a host to uphold my safety. That's a big deal, for us Celts; your house is your second heart. What did his second heart say? It said: "run". His infidelity, next to my word stronger, suddenly made him look small. I was surprised to find that, since my intimacy with The Knight, I was better defensed against The Oaf. Forming a bond with someone else was exactly what I needed to ward him off – The Oaf must have known I was empty-hearted before, and tried to surround me on all sides so I'd have no choice but him. Now that I had another choice, I felt gallant, and he seemed just a little bit weaker.