(For a variation story on the first two paragraphs and the topic of a suicide attempt, see the Sabb story "Finding Heaven.")
*
I will always remember the barn. How could I ever forget it? It was a big, corrugated iron one, dull with age and with no windows on the lower level and just one at each end high up in the gable. Tall narrow windows that let light into the loft, while below the barn was dark and silent, cluttered and filled with dust. But I didn't know that when I first saw it.
I came upon it slowly as I emerged onto the top of the mountain after a climb up through untouched forest from the bay below. And I came at it from the rear, seeing the high window lit with the full afternoon sun, and I saw him there caught in the sun, naked and golden, like some lost angel. Perched up there on the window sill looking down at me. And he is the reason I remember the barn so well.
By the time I looked up, I wasn't surprised to see him there. I had tracked him here, by the ruts the motorbike he'd left the clearing on—the marks that the wheels, spinning in his anxiety to escape the clearing, had made in the track up the side of the mountain in earth softened by the rain the previous evening. The motorbike itself was down on its side in front of the yawning door into the dark interior of the barn.
I wasn't even all that surprised to see him leaning precariously against the window frame, more outside the barn than in, looking so confused and sober—and forlorn. But, God was he beautiful. A young god, perfectly formed, curly golden locks framing his head, pale blue eyes brimming with moist tears. All he lacked was wings. But even without the wings, he appeared ready to take flight at any moment, whenever courage overtook confusion and indecision. Below the window the mountainside tumbled down toward the bay in a cascade of jagged-edge stone outcroppings.
A precarious moment when he saw me looking at him. Surprise swimming into embarrassment and a moment of indecision as he first leaned out over the abyss and then withdrew into the darkness beyond the window. If he thought to wait until I had hiked on by along the mountain ridge, he had another thought coming.
* * *
I had first spied him down in the clearing in a fold in the mountains where the hiking trail dipped down into the quiet forest before rising again to the ridgeline.
And I first heard him—or, rather, heard the other one, the young god had been silent throughout—before I saw him. He was naked then too.
I heard the unmistakable sound of lovemaking as I neared the clearing. So, I slowed down and stealthily approached, interested, not wanting to disturb before I had taken in the scene. The woods were dense here all around the clearing except for the track leading into the cleared area, so I could get very close without being detected.
The first thing I saw was an expensive sports car, a sleek Jaguar sedan, I think, although I hardly am an expert in flashy, fast sports cars. And propped up on a stand beside the car was a motorbike that perhaps was flashier than the car, although not in a refined way. It was painted some psychedelic metallic color and had skull and bones-type stickers plastered all over its fenders and gas tank. The seat was some sort of fuzzy black carpeting material.
The presumed owners of the vehicles were on a blanket a bit away from their rides and near the sun-dappled center of the clearing. It wasn't all that hard to match vehicle with owner. The elegant blond god surely belonged to the Jaguar. His legs were hooked on the hips of the other kneeling figure, his feet suspended in air and dangling, with his torso bent back toward the ground, his shoulder blades and a cheek touching the blanket. His face was turned toward me and his eyes had a vacant look. His cheek was tear stained.
Knelt under the suspended pelvis of the blond angel was the dark one. The blond's legs spread and hooked on his hips and his dimpled butt cheeks rested on the thighs of the kneeling dark one, whose naked body was a veritable showcase of punk body piercings and tattoos. A total contrast in the angel's clean-cut blondness and the other one's swarthy darkness. Undoubtedly the owner of the in-your-face motorbike.
The dark one's body rings jangled and his tattoos undulated as his long, thin cock, revealed also to have a ring through the glans when he withdrew completely before plunging back in, fucked inside the blond one's channel in long, sweeping strokes.
The dark one clearly was excited and was having a good time; the blond angel seemed barely there at all mentally and emotionally. A pall of pot smoke hung over the clearing, and my guess was that the blond god was well ahead of the dark punk in drags of that. There were a couple of empty bottles of wine lying around at the edge of the blanket to. Yellowtail Shiraz. I recognized the familiar lable. I liked that too; smooth but cheap.
I stood in the shadows of the bush and unzipped myself and shared in the rhythm of the dark one's thrusts inside the blond as well as his stick play with the blond one's cock.
The blond gave a little shudder and twitch and his cock head bubbled up in whitish cum. The dark one took longer at his pleasure, increasing the pace and intensity of his thrusts as he climaxed in three long strokes that moved the blond's torso up the blanket several inches.
When done, not withdrawing his cock, the dark one gathered the blond up against his chest and began murmuring in his ear. I couldn't hear what they said, but obviously the dark one was trying to cajole his lover into agreement on some important issue. The blond had his face buried in the dark one's shoulder and seemed to be crying softly. At first he whispered back and shook his head several times, but at length he stopped talking back and nodded a few times.
Having apparently won his point, the dark one turned the blond onto his hands and knees, rose up behind him, crouched over the angel's hips, encircled his thin waist with a dusky, heavily muscled forearm, and dog-fucked his complaisant, nearly comatose lover again in long, hard strokes.
Jeans and T-shirts for both of them were scattered beside the blanket. I saw the dark one whisper something in the blond's ear after he'd finished fucking him a second time—or at least the second time I had viewed the action. The blond answered him and the dark one leaned over and went through the pockets of one of the pair of jeans. He came up with the keys to the Jaguar. Then he grabbed up one of the bottles of Yellowtail, which apparently hadn't been empty and left the blond, who curled up into something close to the fetal position on the blanket and went over to the motorbike. He took a long swig of the wine bottle and threw it to the side on the ground. Then he rummaged around in a pack hanging on the back of the motorbike and came up with a long length of hosing.
I watched, fascinated, as the dark one went over to the Jaguar and placed and end of the hosing over the exhaust pipe and then ran the hose up to the back window on the other side of the car from where I was hidden. He opened the car door and rolled the window down a bit and pushed the other end of the hose into the opening. Then he rolled the window back up as far as it would go. He closed the door and opened the driver's seat door and got behind the wheel long enough to turn the engine on. Then he got out of the car and shut that door.
He walked back around to the blanket and leaned down and whispered something in the blond's ear. The blond must have heard him, but he said nothing. The dark one tried to lift the blond, but then the blond became animated enough to indicate that he wasn't going to get up just then. I saw him rummage around at the edge of the blanket and come up with a packet of cigarettes. He lit one with a match from a matchbook that had been lodged underneath the cellophane wrapping of the packet. He took a long pull on the cigarette and spoke softly to the dark one, but not so softly that I couldn't hear him.
"Just give me a few minutes. I'll be there."
"We agreed. You'll do it, won't you?" the dark one asked. "Together. We wanted to be together." His voice came out in cajoling velvet, but I could sense the steel behind them too. I could sense that he had some sort of control over the blond angel.
"Yes, yes. Just need to smoke some courage."
With that, the dark one stood over the blond for a few seconds, looking down at him, giving him a stern, searching look. Then he went back to the Jag, opened the back door facing me, climbed in, and closed the door.
I could see him in there, his head reclined back on the seat. And I could hear the car's motor running, and I fancied I could smell the exhaust gas being hosed from the tail pipe directly into the passenger compartment.
I heard something of a sob from the blond one. I looked over at him. He had finished his cigarette. After a moment of stony silence, he uncoiled from the bunched-up position he'd taken on the blanket, stood, and slowly walked over to the Jag. Even in distress, he moved beautifully. He opened the back door and joined the dark one on the back seat.
They were fucking again. The blond was straddling the dark one now, facing him, and, I'm sure, although I couldn't see the point of contact in the closed car, rising and falling on the dark one's cock. The dark one just remained laying back in the seat, his eyes closed, his eyebrow and lip rings glittering in the streaks of sunlight stabbing at the Jaguar through the gaps in the rustling leaves overhead.
It took me several minutes to work my way around the perimeter of the clearing to get behind the car on the other side, but I moved as quickly as I dared. When I got there, I crouched down and slithered as best I could over to the rear end of the car and quietly pulled the end of the hose off the tailpipe.
Then I sat back and watched.
It didn't take all that long after that for the blond to have a change of mind or to decide this wasn't working for him, or maybe that it wasn't working fast enough. The back door of the Jag opened and he stumbled out. Leaving the door ajar, he hobbled over to the blanket, pulled a pair of the jeans on while rummaging around in the pockets of the other pair. I heard the jangle of keys, and the blond, walking a little more steadily now, went over to the motorbike, mounted the bike, revved up the motor, and clumsily rode out of the clearing. The bike turned, its wheels spinning out in his anxiety to leave the clearing, on the uphill track toward the summit of the mountain.
I waited for a few minutes. The dark one wasn't moving, but I thought I was able to detect some sign of breath, a small twitch or something.
I stripped off my clothes, opened the back door of the Jag, and climbed in.
* * *
After I had seen the angel withdraw from the barn window, I entered into the dark maw of the corrugated iron building and stood just inside the door for a minute or more, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was a good 10 degrees hotter in here than outside, no doubt a result of the sun beating on the barn's metal skin. I could smell the hay, and as my eyes reset to the dim light, the atmosphere clouded with swirling dust, I could see that the barn was being used to store bales and bales of it.
A great candidate for an internal combustion fire, I thought. A natural place for the angel to have escaped to—ascend in fiery launch rather than drifting off in a snuff of noxious fumes. That was precisely the impression I'd gotten back in the clearing of his condition—ready to blow at any moment from internal combustion.
