Courted

“Look Mr. Abrams,” the youthful but silvered headed seventy-three-year-old black man spoke in his deep native Louisiana accent. “I, for one, can honestly respect that you’re here doing your job, but I must inform you the only reason why they summoned your services all the way from Baton Rouge is because of their own selfish motives.”

“Who are they, Mr. Conrad?”

“Junior, of course,” Wilbur Conrad Senior simpered against the hard pelting of rain outside, reaching behind his white blazer to retrieve an expensive and aromatic cigar from the silver case and its complementary lighter. “He’s my greatest failure in life, you know. Every able-bodied man yearns for a son to carry out the family name. My son happened go above and beyond that, wildly ploughing his pedigreed seeds into the whorish fields. And he has failed miserably to support the offspring he has brought into the world and bringing in some more at every turn.”

“What does that have to do with my visit, Mr. Conrad?”

“Everything, you see.” Wilbur Conrad Senior said puffing on his fifty-dollar cigar stick. “Thus far, my name alone has spared him the fate of the commoners, being that I am a former magistrate and all. He knows this. He is also aware that I am disinclined to call in due favors or personally catch him up on any of his arrearages. As you can obviously see by my lovely estate, I am in no dire straights to do so. He is obviously aware of this fact, too.”

“So why am I here in Lake Charles?”

“The short answer to that is my junior wouldn’t dare play with fire in these parts. Not even as far as in New Orleans. Neither would your superiors, obviously, which is why they sent such a lowly man on the totem pole. The thinking is if he’s right, then they came out doing their job. If their wrong, what is another you?”

Abram sat silent, sitting totally upright from his prior position of his lanky arms resting in his lap presenting the pen and pad more defined there.

“I don’t mean to scare you, son.” Mr. Conrad continued in his meaty voice. “I know that this is not of your doing. And again, I applaud you for taking your job so seriously. The worthless bastard of mine needs you to give him the green light to cast me as incompetent. If that is done, Junior can put me in the worst home that even vile roaches can’t live so that as executor of my estate, the proceeds from this grand home he is looking to unload can possibly correct his debts with possibly enough left over to provide him with a comfortable lifestyle.”

Linus Abrams kept his poker face, failing to reveal that those were his suspicions all along. If he was a free man in another role he would have happily confirmed it for Mr. Conrad, if nothing more that to stay on his good side. He knew he was a powerful man. Perhaps, he was one of the most powerful in the entire Gulf region. In this task, the one he was in now, it was neither his business to confirm or deny his agreement. Interfering with family matters were outside of his professional jurisdiction.

“What makes you so sure of that? Don’t you have three other children, daughters, I believe?”

“Yes, three lovely daughters,” Mr. Conrad smiled for a brief moment, bringing his long slender fingers together at the tips. “All of whom had followed their orders. All of whom have married well. But, in an effort to make their little brother feel like a fraction of a man or possibly, to be more sinister, seek revenge for my strict rearing, they will blindly side with him and give up any stake to their inheritance. The only person that truly cares is my portly niece, and she fears that I am afraid to venture out in the world and stay cooped up in this place slowly going mad.”

“So why don’t you venture out anymore, Mr. Conrad?” Abrams asked, already knowing the answer as he looked out at his spacious well-kept two-hundred-year-old renovated plantation home.

“If you’re fortunate enough to live long enough, Mr. Abrams, you will come to a satisfying conclusion in your life that you’ve done everything to your heart’s content. Played every game of golf on every imaginable course; attended every symphony on every coast and traveled the world well until your eyes are spoiled of its wonder and beauty against the pang of every suffering. Thank Goodness my eyes aren’t soured enough not to enjoy every corner of the home I worked so hard to achieve for my family.”

Conrad folded, thinking of his four children and his lovely wife in regret.

“This revelation comes before or after Mrs. Conrad’s departure?”

Conrad froze stiff, not as if he was pondering the question or his private thoughts further. It was as if he was the one caught swallowing the canary. After he bowed his head, he sighed, “I will admit that I was brokenhearted that Wilhelmina left. She should have left me a long time ago. You must understand the reason that she left me, Mr. Abrams, is because I found my pleasures right here in this house.”

“Your pleasures, sir?” Abrams uttered aloud.

“My pleasures,” Conrad snuck in a smile.

“Were you ‘frolicking’ with the help, sir?”

Conrad sighed. “Why is it that the rich only ‘frolic’ with the help?”

“It is the best cliché.” Abrams joked. “It never tires from being scandalous…and being that you’ve retired from your post you don’t have a clerk or an assistant, it’s the only one in my artillery.”

Conrad was not amused.

“Plus,” Abrams said defending his bombing comment. “You yourself just said that you found you’re pleasures in this wonderful abode.”

“Who is to say I couldn’t have found great pleasure with someone other than the help?”

“In this house…where you live alone?”

“Yes,” the old man greedily smiled.

“With whom may I ask?”

“No, you may not.” Mr. Conrad offered tight-lipped.

“Mr. Conrad, it might help my case if you tell me, off the record.”

“Off the record,” Mr. Conrad perked.

“Off the record,” Abrams repeated slowly.

“If you repeat this to anyone else I will deny it through and through.”

“I’m too low on the totem pole for anyone to care, remember?”

“Just the same,” Mr. Conrad offered.

“Just the same,” Abrams repeated as Mr. Conrad waved him in closer. “Jean-Pierre.”

“Jean-Pierre? Who is he?” Abrams asked kindly as small flashes of vision produced a sturdy black man entering his head of a somewhat similar landscape nearby as he himself spoke the name.

Mr. Conrad paused. “He’s a very good friend of mine.”

Abrams could not ignore that Conrad spoke of this man with such pride. He could not ignore that Conrad spoke of a man in this fashion.

“Is he a neighbor of sorts?” Abrams slowly treaded, now seeing this strange man shirtless and well-defined and in tattered pants and a rice field all in his mind.

“No,” Conrad shook his silvered head. “It might be best that you left at this time, Mr. Abrams.”

Abrams looked down at his cheap mall watch. He had wanted to leave a long time ago. He was hoping to ride out the storm before searching for a nearby motel before turning back to the capital. In addition to that, he wasn’t fond of these new mental frames coming on.

“You’re absolutely right,” Abrams stood, extending his hand. “I am sorry if I offended you.”

Conrad reached out his large skeletal hand and stood, straightening out his suit and showing that even with his age he was still a fine man with narrow shoulders that seemed to stretch out his slim frame.

“Of course,” Mr. Conrad said calmly. “I think the storm has past and I wouldn’t want to subject you to my bizarre cuisine.”

“I understand.” Abrams said, moving towards the door. “For whatever it is worth, Mr. Conrad, it is the twenty-first century. Most may be ignorant around these parts but what you do with Jean-Pierre is your business as long as it doesn’t impede negatively on you or others around you.”

Conrad said nothing, moving toward the door to open it. Conrad was surprised that the tin roof of his home had lied. It had been a while since he heard the pelting and thought that the storm had passed. It was simply without wind. In good conscious, Wilbur Conrad could not send the man away, particularly not knowing his destination from such a rural place.

****

The unusual cuisine that Conrad spoke of turned out to be much more intriguing than anything else. It was a feast of crawdaddies for appetizers and blue crab for the main course. Both served in such a peculiar way that Linus Abrams had never ate before yet was quite simple and delectable just the same. Abrams was a bit thrown that for such a man that breathed an heir of tradition that his choice of drink wasn’t bourbon or whiskey, but flavorful mojitos that Abrams accredited to the portly niece Conrad talked about earlier. Modern age, Abrams thought, questioning his new authority on convention. The strangest thing of all, however, was that the traditional lemon meringue for dessert was replaced by a richly orange pudding pie topped with a chocolate whip. Mousse, perhaps?

Dinner was quite silent. There were a multitude of things the men could converse over being their Ivy League educations had branded them without so much academic knowledge. Instead, Abrams and Conrad listened out for the let up of the violent rain. Minutes prolonged, hours passed. By the time the storm had let up it was closer to midnight, and with the abundant amount of space and the number amount of guest rooms set up, it was only hospitable for Conrad to invite Abrams to stay the night. In kind, Abrams refused and then generously accepted.

It wasn’t until Abrams decided to retire to bed that Conrad became much more talkative, talking about everything from his career to his life in retirement. Although Abrams was tired from his day, he listened intensely hoping that Conrad would delve into Jean-Pierre. Conrad did a couple of times, only mentioning his name in passing before trailing off into another conversation about yesteryears. Abrams wasn’t afraid to inquire about Jean-Pierre as it was he didn’t want to make Conrad mad, forcing his hand and asking Abrams to leave.

Before Abrams knew it, he was being pulled further away from his temporary bedroom and back into the study where Conrad kept a long wall of books and extraordinary trinkets he obviously picked up from his many travels. His desk was big and wide, made of the finest wood for a man of his stature with a black pad on top of it and a weathered blue book on top of that.

“What’s that?” Abrams interrupted and asked after some time with the flashed from earlier retuning in much more lasting forms.

“That?” Conrad repeated a bit more hesitant, “Off the record?”

“Of course,” Abrams offered, instinctively crossing his heart as if he were a child.

Conrad placed his fingers on the book, touching it as if he was marveling it for the very first time. “This is how I found out about Jean-Pierre.”

“The infamous Jean-Pierre,” Abrams mouthed. “What does that have to do with him? With all due respect, the book looks to be older than you.”

“One hundred and thirty-six years older than me, to be exact. Jean-Pierre was a Creole stud slave that roamed around these parts many years ago.”

“Wait a minute,” Abrams paused, thinking about his earlier conversation about this mysterious man as a sudden headache pressed itself, trying to remember if Conrad was talking in the present. “You spoke of this man as if he lives in the here and now, like he was a good friend of yours or something.”

“He is, Mr. Abrams. He has been a very comforting friend of mine throughout the years.”

Abrams inquired, “Through the pages?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous, Mr. Abrams,” Conrad said with a smirk. “Books can be comforting to lonely individuals. However, Jean-Pierre is of a different breed that lives in the here and now.”

“How exactly?” Abrams inquired.

“In a lesser form, of course, or I should say spirit.”

“A ghost?” Abrams wanted to laugh but only kept a charming smile.

Conrad frowned. “Off the record still, yes. He is a ghost that with the taste of semen placed upon his lips he can somewhat materialize into this world.”

“And you know this because?”

“Because of this book,” Conrad said. “I found him wondering the attic of this old plantation house one stormy night like this, pulled out my prick and allowed him to taste my semen so he could become tangible, of a hybrid human-spirit flesh.”

Abrams tried to do a better job of suppressing his feeling of laughter or even a smile, “and the book says that?”

Conrad handed Abrams the book and saw where it said just that in handwriting different from the rest of the pages in the book.

Abrams felt a strong connection to the book, to the pages. He saw the sturdy black man in tattered pants make his way to the rice fields in his mind. He saw him clearer, even with a smile brighter than most of the other men around. He didn’t know why he held such an image in his head. But it was as real as real could get. He could even taste and smell the dew in the morning air and see a sunrise over the treetops.

Conrad further explained to Abrams that Jean-Pierre was a literate man that knew many languages. Obviously, he wasn’t highly valued because of this. This was his secret as the journal confessed, as it were back then that slaves weren’t supposed to read much less write. This was somewhat familiar to Abrams, someway, somehow much like the vision. Jean-Pierre was solely valued because of his strength and brawn. He was so valued he was farmed out to procreate with slave women and in some cases allowed to become a dominant to his so-called white masters, temporary or otherwise. It was because of this compromising position eleven years after the journal was penned that the voodoo priest that came up with the spell to bring him back to life also noted that Jean-Pierre was killed by a neighbor in the throws of passion mounting an inexperienced bridegroom.

Abrams wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry after he thought about the account in his room. He wanted to laugh because the story and the book were quite elaborate and detailed. He wanted to cry because it appeared that such an otherwise intelligent man bought into this hogwash to the drum that he gave up his wife for a mirage. He was mostly confused overall, this strong connection to something beyond the book and its pages. Even if it was true, the story, which he was sure that it was not, what would possess him to follow through to find out if the words were true enough? What was he not getting from his wife or potential mistresses or houseboys that he had to search for it in a ghost? Rather, a story within a book.

Abrams was sound asleep in bed when he was stirred out of his sleep. Abrams wasn’t sure what the noise was at first. It was low and lingering and long-lasting at certain decibels. It could have been the settling of the house, Abrams imagined. It was an old place, an actual working plantation in its time. Fear sort of crept deeper into his psyche as he thought of rodents scouring about it. The thought alone paralyzed him in bed, remembering his very brief stay in a low-cost apartment in Manhattan where rodents and roaches were quite commonplace. He was calmed from these thoughts as he made his way out into the hallway, instantly recognizing the soft squeak of an old mattress.

This should have brought Abrams enough comfort to return to his bed. It did not. Noting the only he and Conrad were the only two men in the house and the rumbling adjoining the squeaks involved one other soul. Jean-Pierre? Abrams wanted to laugh but couldn’t. He was too afraid of what he might have walked into.

“Keep quiet, you,” Conrad bucked sneeringly from bedroom door ajar. “I have a guest down the hall.”

Abrams moved into a better position to see the elderly black man (who was still in relatively good shape even for someone who might have peak twenty years his junior) knelt in wide stance behind this being that was neither transparent or real and yet both also naked and even in a wider stance. The first thing that caught his attention wasn’t that this nameless being on the other end of Conrad was another man but that of his pale brownish transparent thighs were large and firm, thick with muscles much like his lone-scarred torso that extended further to the headboard.

This thing was somehow familiar to Abrams.

Abrams listened to Jean-Pierre groan against the sweaty thrust Conrad had seized him for, gripping those broad shoulders and pushing his face flat against the headboard. Abrams was quite perplexed to find such a virile man in such a submissive stance. In passing alone, Jean-Pierre being bigger and stronger and much more virile should have taken his place as stud to the master of the house. It would have been much more becoming. Then, too, being that Jean-Pierre was such a younger man to Conrad he might have been in his rightful place, Abrams thought. However, going by the journal, Jean-Pierre only appeared to be younger at twenty-eight years, approximately when he died, although in lifespan he was actually older at one hundred and sixty-four years old.

It was true Abrams was intrigued by the old man fucking the ghost and thought that for a second he locked eyes with the poltergeist. He wanted to free the former somewhat familiar stud slave from this inhumane disgrace. But just the same, Abrams retreated to his bedroom hoping this was all a bizarre dream.

He was sound asleep when he awoke again. It was as if the other time was nothing more than a figment of his pure imagination. This time it was real. Very real, Abrams reasoned, casting the other awaking merely as an erotic dream. He just wasn’t so sure of that, though. The day before when he showed up, he swore he was greeted by the subtropical heat of a Louisiana summer day which also required that his summer night was to have been hot and humid in the same step, especially after the rain. His room was not, and the large house was without air-conditioning. It came with the crisp cool snap of an ice-cold glass of raspberry lemonade. Cool to the touch. Abrams was unsure if he should welcome the feeling or not when he felt it crawl up between the thin sheets between his spread legs, find its way to his panic-strained crotch.

It was only after his member was engulfed by this shocking cold that Abrams saw the body form below him. He could tell by the shape of the body it was the same shape he saw earlier. The one earlier he was unsure of before. He wasn’t afraid, feeling this peculiar mouth over his cock. He was just stunned that the coldness seemed to amply his pleasure instead of freezing him colder. Doing and adding certain things that Abrams had never felt before in his life.

He combed his hands over the sheets, to feel if he could feel the mass stationed between his legs. It felt like cold hardened flesh that wasn’t nearly as cold as the wintry chill that echoed throughout the room. Abrams pulled back to the covers to witness the being in action, bringing his nose to his pubic bush and pulling out in one big drag before nibbling on the foreskin just to deep throat it again.

Jean-Pierre kept this up for awhile, saying nothing, but surprising Abrams out of the clear blue using his cold fingers to slide into him. Abrams arched his back powerful, never knowing that he could get so open so fast. Then, he remembered. Abrams wasn’t a stranger to something penetrating him. It just had been a very long while, more than a century ago. His mind raced weirdly. First, after he took his wedding vows sometime ago and last week in an airport hotel meeting a man that promised a hefty package.

Abrams gasped, welcoming the second and third cold fingers and the firm twist that came with it, opening him up even more. He remembered this particular feeling well, being invaded like this in preparation to be used. But it hadn’t felt like this, not in a while. The fingers made him dripping wet, ice cold, like he could come straight from his bottom hole.

“Oh, Jean-Pierre,” Abrams moaned, looking at the handsome face pressed again his nipples for the first time, with his body alongside his in bed.

“I see you remembered,” Jean-Pierre smiled, his voice resonating in that Creole flavor.

Remembered?

Jean-Pierre was real, Abrams thought with uncontrollable tears racing down his face. His lips were full, eyes devilishly luring, his face and chest and arms hard as solid ice rock.

“No,” Abrams shook his head. “You’re familiar somehow. Very familiar.”

Abrams was so overcome by everything he didn’t know his hips were thrust high in the air. He didn’t come to until a cold long cock rested along his crack.

“Relax,” Jean-Pierre spoke. “You’ll be just fine. I’ve been doing this for a very long time.”

“I know.”

He remembered in another flash. Except here in a bed, he was on a table, a desk, with the same face and body tiling above.

Abrams obliged to the cold hands roaming his body, getting into the position as he felt the shaft tease his crinkled hole. He took to humping against it, taking several deep breaths trying to gauge Jean-Pierre so he could get to the ghost before the ghost got to him.

It didn’t work. Jean-Pierre grabbed his ankles and sank deep into his bowels, stirring in the back of his deep hole.

The first few strokes brought Abrams very little comfort. Even for a ghost, an imaginative being, Jean-Pierre proved to be too much too soon. Jean-Pierre showed very little concern, fucking the trembling Abrams to the point he eventually had to conform to him. And before long, Abrams was bucking back fiendishly.

“I knew if I worked you long enough you would come off of this sweet snatch of yours.” Jean-Pierre puffed in accent, slowing down, with his human lover begging for more as he gyrated against his cold solid body.

Jean-Pierre continued his ferocious stride after catching his breath, pounding eagerly into Abrams, enjoying the pleasures and enduring the headaches of flashbacks. It had been more than forty years since the last time Jean-Pierre seized another man, and he was going to everything in his power to enjoy the moment, enjoy being the stud he once was. The one he was meant to be before Wilbur Conrad Senior made him a less than.

Abrams came by chance, washed in the waves of pleasure and splattering his mess all across his slender frame. His orgasm knocked the breath out of his body, causing his inner walls to restrict around his Jean-Pierre, choking his thick cock out of every drop of potential milk it had to offer.

Abrams wasn’t sure what it was. But whatever it was he was forced to pay attention to his dominant lover, heaving his breaths. In any other instances, Abrams would have found humor in this: A dead man gasping for air. Abrams wasn’t even on that plane mentally. He was even too disenchanted that he felt something physical spread inside of him and then didn’t as it was awfully familiar to him. He was overcome with lust, almost a feverous pitch after the fact, and even that dissipated. It was like this stronger sense of connect came over him, a calm. A much-needed inner peace. Abrams was still so enraptured in the physical moment, or rather still present, but he was more than sure he wanted more. He looked forward to Jean-Pierre lying next to him. He wanted more than anything else to rest next to him, instinctively hoping that if he did his body heat might rub off on him. That he may somehow become realer than he was after such an intense experience.

Jean-Pierre obliged him without words, and the two fell asleep drifting into each other’s eyes.

****

Abrams was startled out of sleep for a third time. This time awaking to the ghost being half the shell he was, more transparent than he was of an odd flesh. Jean-Pierre was going back to rest in the spirit realm. Abrams wasn’t disturbed by this as he was to find his host standing over him with a gun. Abrams wanted to jump and run but was so frightened he didn’t. He was more concerned about the poltergeist snoring against his sleeping left arm. There was no needing be, but still. Instinct was hard to shake now that he awoke with full recollection instead of just most of it.

“He’s mine,” Conrad said, ready to attack.

“Oh, really,” Abrams rolled onto his back, showing the dried flaky mess on his torso to the elderly man.

“If you want to keep him then I best suggest that you put down your weapon.”

Conrad looked at him, most angry that Abrams wasn’t the least bit frighten, “on what authority?”

“On the authority that if you’re not successful in doing me in then this beloved home that you’ve come to treasure will be lost to you as you rot in some uncouth facility.”

“Who says I won’t succeed?”

“Aren’t you a clever old man?” Abrams laughed, using a wisp of sarcasm with the word clever. “If you knew anything in your wise years you would know that unlike you, I didn’t need the book to lure him to my bed. Secondly, don’t you think that it’s sort of redundant to kill the already dead?”

“Dead?” Conrad froze.

“Don’t look so shocked, Mr. Conrad. Who do you think taught Jean-Pierre how to write? Called upon the witch doctor to conjure up the spell to bring him back for my use?” Abrams paused, realizing he was going too fast. “Why am I in the flesh and he’s not? Jean-Pierre was killed so suddenly between these legs by a stranger’s knife that he wasn’t given the potion of everlasting form like I was on my death bed.”

Conrad laughed, shaking his head in disbelief, “What kind of wacko are you?”

“The kind that fucks with ghosts,” Abrams threw back. “The kind that also have something to do with journals.”

Abrams paused, looking at the bewildered old man go through the recollection of his mind, changing his face many times before the revelation struck him.

“It finally occurred to you that you saw my surname before, in the front pages of the book in very small scribe. G. Abrams, if you recall. That was mother. She was an abolitionist that hated the thought of owning slaves, so she thought she would screw with the ways of the day by teaching them how to read and write. When father caught her, she sent me to do her dirty work. She didn’t know how close Jean-Pierre and I had gotten. Nobody knew except the stranger that thought he was saving me from a ravenous slave.”

Abrams felt the cold disappear from his arms.

Jean-Pierre had almost disappeared into thin air with barely a thin outline representing his frame.

“If that’s so, why did you leave him alone for so many years?”

“In order to stay vibrant with everlasting form, Mr. Conrad, you have to stay constantly on the move because even though you appear of this world you’re not. I shouldn’t have to tell you that staying stationary in a place wears on the flesh–even if it brings you great joy.”

Conrad observed the whitening hair of his forearms, the gone elasticity of his skin there.

“Remember your speech earlier about seeing and doing things?”

Conrad nodded.

“There’s a thing you failed to add to that speech.”

“What’s that?”

“Remembrance,” Abrams unexpectedly spoke with the same accent as they. “The downfall of living so many years is that you remember so much before you forget the sentimental things until you touched and taste them again. I forgot all about this home, the reason I took the form I did, as it was the first I had with my wife after I lost Jean-Pierre across the dip where a pond existed. He was killed in one of the quarters.”

“Then, how did he end up in the attic?”

“I don’t know Mr. Conrad,” Abrams said annoyed. “There’s a lot I cannot account for. I guess that when the addition was added above that someone came across his journal and stuffed it up there until you found it, I guess.”

“Well, if your memory of him was foggy before, and if you’re dead in living flesh then leave him to me and go about your life in Baton Rouge.”

Abrams smiled, lifting his body upright, “I was kind enough to let you borrow him for awhile, but that was kind enough. You’ve abused him like a beast. He’s a stud, not a mare. Most of all, he’s mine, from the shackles of slavery through to the rest of eternity.”

“Not if we’re playing on the same plane,” Conrad smirked.

Conrad turned the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.