The Wicked: A Love Story

“Here is the kitchen, and here is the living room I never use. And there is the bathroom.”

“Ha!” Seth declares, “I love a man who keeps candles in his bathroom.”

“The bathroom’s one of the most important rooms in the house.”

“I love this kitchen.”

“And I love your enthusiasm,” says Jim.

“And there is the bedroom.”

“I can turn on this light,” Jim offers.

“Don’t worry about it,” Seth tells him. “Light is overrated.”

“It is,” James Strauss agrees.

Jim plops down on the huge bed, watching his new friend look around. Watching him almost look lost in such a small place before, at last, Seth joins him and they lay down looking at the ceiling.

“I feel so at home here,” Seth says.

“Me too,” Jim says, and they both laugh.

“I don’t know,” Seth says. “It’s just… I feel at home with you. I don’t feel that way with that many people.”

“The darkness is good,” Jim says. But now Seth watches him get up.

“I want the moon,” he says and opens the curtains.

Back on the bed again, Jim feels the weight of it as Seth turns over and looks at the white disk in the cobalt sky.

“I think,” Jim says, “the reason we love the moon is because it’s the only way we have of staring into the sun.”

“I used to be afraid of the night,” Seth said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose it’s natural.”

“In a way,” Seth agreed. “But until recently I couldn’t even sleep, just sat up through the night. Too many visions. To many things came.”

“You’re very beautiful you know,” Jim said.

“At the moment I do,” Seth said. “When you look at me like that. It’s… Isn’t it something how you feel beautiful when the right person looks at you?”

Jim gave a grin and shyly touched Seth’s hip.

“I’d like to look at more of you.”

“What kind of underwear do you have on?” Seth says just as simply.

And like this, Jim pulls down his trousers, and Seth runs his hand over them feeling Jimrise under his hand.

“You’re soft you know? In a good way. So soft,” Seth breathes, pressing himself against Jim.

Fairly swiftly Seth takes of his dress trousers, and then they pull off their dress shirts and ties and tee shirts and lay together in their underwear. They lay side by side in the light of the room until, at last, Seth’s hands slip through the soft waistband of Jim’s briefs and Jim begins to stroke and massage Seth at the same time Seth touches him. They don’t look at each other, just at the ceiling, then at the blackness of their eyelids, and, at last, Seth rolls over to kiss him and, at last, the underwear is gone and their limbs link.

Oh, he is soft, Seth thinks, oh his kiss is just what I wanted, oh I could gather him up and be in his arms and feel his body, these thighs, this soft, sweet skin, this warmth, oh God, his thick hair is like, like a mane, these cheeks not shaved for a couple of days, those eyelids and the mouth, the generous mouth, oh, those hands up and down me.

And oh, the hair on his legs! So gentle, the perfect length of legs, the firmness of his ass, the dent in the small of his back, oh his back, Jim gathers as much of him as possible between his thighs, pulls his face down to kiss him in the dark, to luxuriate in his kiss, in his kiss, in his firm kiss, in his tongue thrust into his mouth, in the tangling curls of his hair.

“I love you.”

It slips out of his mouth like a surrender. He never tells it to a lover and has never believed it from lovers in the past. But they don’t know each other. But, they have always known each other. But they have been the stuff of each other’s dreams.

How tender it sounds when Seth says it too.

“Be inside me,” Jim says.

The whole apartment is quiet and dark. The only sounds are small, the small creaking and giving way of the bed, of small moans and gasps. There they are in the big bed, burrowed into the corner of the it, Seth, white assed, on hands and knees. Jim’s legs loop around them, feet hooking together, Jim’s hands clasp his back, caress demand. All of Seth is burning, burning, burning to his stiffness to the tip of his cock where he has to has to has to be inside of Jim, has got to go to oh my God got to fuck him. The rock and move together, thrust and drive in and out like a holy engine.

“I’m about to come,” Seth gasps, desperately while Jim’s hands are hooked around his neck. “James, I’m about to come.”

“Come inside of me.”

Jim is pulling him in, and Seth has not stopped and he cannot stop, and his body freezes, and then jerks. and Jim feels him pumping, pulsing, feels the slick semen coming between his thighs, cradles Seth’s damp head to his, kissing his face, feeling his own hardness, knowing he will do the same to Seth before the night is over. Seth, gasping, separates from him, and they held each other, lying face to face, unable to speak.

Red eyed, but unable to sleep, thinking of Jason McCord more than she probably should, refraining from calling him, Marabeth turns to the journal and continues reading.

The Book of Pamela Strauss

James B Strauss, the first of that name, was a thin boy who grew from wasted away to sinewy. Strength came to him, and his hair was honey colored. He looked more like the Dashbachs than any Strauss I had ever seen, and he did not speak.

“What is wrong with him?” Freiderich demanded. “Is his brain slow?”

“He is a quiet child,” Katherine said. “He is quiet, like my father was quiet.”

“He is sickly, as your father was sickly,” Friederich said.

I feel that my father’s accent became thicker, and as the years continued, I cannot pretend that he was not a crueler man. There was little love between him and Katherine, and I often wondered if there was much love that Friederich had for any of his children by her. I cannot deny the shadow that lived in this house spread from Friederich, and his threatening presence filled the place, crushing my sisters and terrifying my brother.

In those days the children were friends with the Kellers. Peter had two sons. He had three daughters as well, and the middle one was golden haired and fair. She reminded me of Ada, and of Ada’s mother, for there was a steel in her and in her grey eyes, and I had an admiration for her. As Jimmy grew I began to think she would make him a good girlfriend, a good wife, a good replacement to the weak Katherine Strauss, a new Mrs. Strauss. This was how I began to think of Natalie Keller.

But James had his own friends, and wasn’t much interested in the Kellers. Very early he had come to be friends with the children of our old friends, the Frye family, and he had become close friends with their youngest child, Steiger. The Freys had born three children, and the last of them was fifteen when Steiger came, the child of their old age. There were no children in his household, and so I suggested to Freiderich that he come and stay with us. Friederich grunted assent, but by now he was old and mean and it was best to ignore him.

Hagano still came, and his presence was stronger and stronger, but I was afraid to let him see my aging body, for his never aged at all.

“What are you?” I demanded, as we lay together.

“I am the first of you.”

“But what does that mean?”

“I will always be here. I am the spirit of you.”

“Nothing, and you still tell me nothing. Well, then,” I decided, “I will not care about this old body if you do not.”

“Pamela,” he said, holding one heavy breast in his hand with deep love, “Your body is not old. It is beautiful.”

And life went on in its normal course until Jimmy turned thirteen. He and Steiger had been at play when, suddenly, the boy came running into the living room screaming, and before I could ask what was wrong, a wolf came snapping into the hall.

“Pamela! Pamela!” Steiger shouted, “That’s Jimmy.”

I sent Steiger out of the house.

“I can’t leave you,” he said, but I told him I would be fine, and he obeyed when I shouted for him to go.

As the wolf, I tried to speak to my wolf turned brother, but there was nothing there where his mind should have been. There was no communication with him as I would with another wolf, and certainly not as I would communicate with Hagano. His mind was gone. He was something else. I had to threaten him my growls and bites, bites that he returned, down into the basement. I could only lock him down and change long enough to let Steiger see I was safe, and then depart, transform and rejoin him. By then Friederich‘s attention was drawn, and it was as I transformed I realized that he had never known I was a wolf, and as he looked on the snarling dog in the basement we were trying to restrain, I told him, “This is Jimmy This is your son.”

There was no time for Friederich to question me about all of the things he wanted to know. How long had I been able to transform? Why had I not told him? He knew nothing about Hagano, and I saw no need to tell him. It was during this time that we showed the wolf to Katherine, and the girls saw him as well.

“Look, look well,” Friederich commanded them. The wife and her daughters nearly fainted away at seeing Friederich change. He commanded me to do the same, and I refused. He attempted to slap me, I restrained his hand.

“Calm yourself, old man,” I said, and went out of the house, taking my little sisters with me. They were nearing an age to court, and both of them were fond of the Keller boys. I brought them to the old house on William Street, a little sad that Ada, who would have understood, was gone. But Peter understood enough, and when I brought him to our house, when I showed him the basement, and he looked down and saw the snarling wolf, he said, “But I had thought these were tales that Mama told. I had thought they were tales. Nevermind, Pamela,” he said, “I will do something.”

This madness, this Change, lasted the three nights of the full moon, and then the next night it was done. For days the women of the house walked about Jimmy warily, and there was a look on Friederich’s face I could not discern. Perhaps it was disapproval, for he always preferred Steiger to Jimmy and thought, “There is a boy who will be man. If only we could give some of what he has to that sickly Jimmy.”

Only Steiger did not change in his love for best friend, and meanwhile, in the basement of the house, Peter Keller set to work. His work took nearly to the next full moon, and when he was done, he showed me a system of rooms, each with a bolted door, that led to one final metal door, and in that room, with the windows high up to let in the light, was a harness hanging from a great iron peg bolted to the wall. And so, at the evening of the full moon, when he was thirteen almost fourteen, when he began to tremble and rave and shake his head until his blondish brown hair fell in his face, we took him down, down into this darkness beneath the house, and bound him, like Jesus in the tomb, three nights, bringing him up, drained and ashamed in the day. This was the beginning of the Strauss werewolves as they are now. I do not know what happened to us, but I had my own reasons for believing it was Katherine Dashbach’s weak blood. From then on I was determined to have my siblings marry the Kellers, and from then on there were no servants on the third floor. Strauss House and all that took place in it would have to remain strictly a Strauss affair.

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