Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

LOVE AND HUNGER

CONCLUDED

That night he taught Sunny, who was becoming more hungry, about listening for voices. They climbed up the side of a building and Sunny was surprised to learn he could climb like a spider. On the roof, under the moon, and amidst barking dogs and troubled sleep, he heard all manner of thoughts and finally his thoughts took him three buildings away where he saw a man crawling up a trellis. He didn’t do it with nearly the easy Crane and Sunny had crawled to this roof and Sunny could hear him saying:

“… Get that bitch. Teach that bitch to talk that way to me. Give her eighty year old cunt the shock of its life… Never see it coming. She’ll fucking feel it. If my dick doesn’t fuck her to death my knife will…”

“What are you waiting for?” Crane said.

Sunny Kominsky nodded. He vaulted from the roof of the apartment two buildings away. Even as the man’s fingertips touched the window ledge, Sunny, like a hawk, lit upon him and pulled him into the darkness, sinking his fangs into the fleshy throat. As they tumbled to the ground, the man made only a slight “oof” as strong fangs crushed his throat and Sunny’s mouth, his own throat, the soft tissue of the inside of his mouth that was a small barrier between the blood vessels, filled with rich, evil blood, filled all of him, sent him singing. He clung to the man, bucking and bobbing. It felt like fucking. But at the moment near coming, Crane was there, beside him.

“No,” he said. “Loosen your grip, loosen. Release your lower jaw.”

Sunny did, and as his body rocketed in climax, he felt a liquid spurting from his fangs, from his mouth, gloriously, and when it was done, he sank to his knees exhausted, with the body.

While Sunny knelt in a daze, Crane’s hand on his shoulder, the elder drinker explained, “That is ichor. The ichor is that by which we live and live forever, but in the end it must be replenished by human blood, which once it was. When we kill, when blood is restored in us, then the old ichor floods out. If it floods into the one we kill, he will become one of us, and that must not happen. If it floods out, it will dry quickly and leave no sign of itself.”

“The ichor… makes us live forever, but it must be replenished every day? That makes no sense.”

“As time passes, it must be replenished less and less. A drinker of sufficient age need hardly kill at all, but at this point, for you, it must be replenished nearly every day.

“I feel amazing.”

“Of course you do. You are a killer who has learned to kill.”

“What time is it?”

“Not quite four. The night isn’t young, but it isn’t entirely old.”

“I need to go back to Rawlston, to my apartment, to my friends.”

Crane nodded, standing up and holding out his hand courteously, as if a dead body were not stretched out before them.

 “Let’s go.”

All the ride back, Crane had set to the same thing as he had on the way there, his hand expertly working Sunny, its actions becoming more and more intense as the car accelerated. Out the windows the dull scenery and farm fields rolled by and then disappeared as Sunny’s eyes rolled to the whizzing stars seen from the skylight over head. His moan became a staggered shout as he ejaculated, watching his semen leap in increasing, dizzying arcs arcs while Crane expertly worked him.

He came down slowly, amazed by the galaxy of his jism sprayed across the dashboard and glove compartment of the expensive car. Crane, driving on, did not care, and half exhausted, all shame gone, Sunny slipped to his knees in the speeding car, and as Crane opened his legs, he unbuttoned his trousers, and in relief and longing, took his cock, large and thick, deep into his mouth. He sucked and sucked with quiet joy as they drove into the night.

 

They came up the stairs slowly, kissing, their hands wrapped around each other’s necks, and they came into Sunny’s apartment like that, and he said, “Can you wait a moment?”

“I can wait several moments,” Crane said.

Sunny kissed him and then went down the hall, stopped himself from knocking, and simply walked into Brad and Nehru’s apartment.

Nehru began screaming in a high pitch he refused to be embarrassed about later, and threw his arms around Sunny while Brad threw his arms around the both of them.

“David’s not here,” Nehru said.

“David? Why would he be?”

“You have no idea how worried we’ve been.”

“Maybe you do?” Brad said.

“Yes. That’s exactly why I came here as soon as I could.”

“David’s been staying in your room, but I think he’s with his girlfriend tonight,” Brad was saying as he went back into the kitchen. “I’ll make us a pot of coffee.”

“No,” Sunny said.

“Huh?”

“I have to get back,” Sunny said.

“Get back to where?” Brad said from the kitchen.

“Where I’ve been for the last few days,” Sunny said lamely.

“And I have to get back pretty soon but I swear, in a few days, I’ll be back.”

Brad was about to say something, but Sunny saw the look on Nehru’s face and Nehru drew him into a dark corner of the living room.

“Alexander,” he said almost sadly, holding Sunny’s face.

“What, Nehru?”

And he felt that curious feeling that he would never really feel again, save in the presence of a witch, the feeling of being seen, fully, by someone who was not a drinker.

With no fear, intimately, Nehru slipped a finger into Sunny’s mouth, and he nodded as it passed over a canine tooth that was much too long.

Sunny looked away from him.

“How did you…” Sunny began. “You read the journals. David…”

Nehru said nothing.

Sunny turned to him.

“I’m still the same,” he insited.

“No,” Nehru said. “I doubt that. But you’re still Sunny, and whatever you need, we are here for it.”

They were holding each other when Brad came back.

“Is it true?” Brad whispered.

Nehru nodded.

“Fuck.”

They were silent, and then Brad said:

“Well…. Whatever. It takes all kinds, right?”

At that Sunny burst into laughter and felt tears running down his face.

“Takes all kinds?”

“Yeah.”

“Look,” Sunny said, wiping his face, “Look, you guys are in danger if I don’t get back there. I’m going to get away from these assholes and then I’ll tell you everything. I made a friend tonight, and he’s probably going to help me. So… I love you guys but I gotta go.”

Brad gave him half a carton of cigarettes and said, “It’s not like it’s gonna kill you.

Back in his apartment, Sunny gathered clothes, and Crane said, “There isn’t really time for us. Not right now.”

“No,” Sunny put his hand in Crane’s.

“No, goddamn it, there isn’t. Maybe there shouldn’t be. I’ve been very free with my favors this year.”

“Really?”

“The two guys I just talked to? I sleep with them. I slept with a few people on my way here, one of my best friends before I left. And the last person I went to be with turned me into this.”

“Well, the world isn’t Sunday school and a free spirit should take as many lovers as he wishes.”

Sunny stood up and yanked a book bag over his shoulder.

“I was beginning to feel like a slut.”

“Put that word of our your mind. You are Aluka! Il bevitore di sangue! You leap through the air and deal death and bring life. You are a blood drinker. Such petty moralities should have no place in your mind.”

Gabriel’s mad declaration rang through his mind when Crane said this, but Crane’s words filled him with strength, not the fear of madness.

“Will I have a place in your mind?” Sunny asked. “Will you wait for me?”

Crane kissed him lightly, and his dragonish eyes took Sunny in. A moment ago he had sounded like Gabriel, but Gabriel was like a boy, human no matter how inhuman he tried to be.  There was little of the human in Crane’s face now.

“You and I, Alexander,” Crane said.

“When I come for you,” he cupped Sunny’s buttocks, “we will be great lovers, Alexander. You. And I?”

They parted outside of the Grey Note, Crane headed for the expressway while Sunny headed down Rawlston Road. In his life he had felt many things, and in much of his life he had felt several feelings after or before sex. But tonight, as we went back to the people he despised and prepared to seal himself in a coffin till the next night, he felt what he couldn’t ever remember feeling before.

Sunny Kominsky was sure he was in love.