Black Static #55 (November-December 2016): Dark Fiction and Film (Black Static Magazine) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dark Fiction and Film
Publisher: TTA Press
Published: 2016-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

***

By the time they left the wake, the afternoon had relinquished its hold to the night. Soon it would be December and this Christmas he’d be on his own. Tom had spent the last three festive seasons with Julian. Mostly they’d been inebriated, or maudlin, or both. At least they’d had each other.

Letting themselves into the house made him feel like a burglar. As they moved from room to room downstairs, he felt the vertiginous sensation of expecting to find Julian waiting for them, just around the corner. But the rooms were empty.

The last time Tom had been here, just over a month ago, they’d sat at the kitchen table, that old scarred, stained thing, the ashtrays overflowing. Solid Air by John Martyn on Julian’s old record player. Julian had been overemotional, reminiscing about his first love.

“His name was Stephen,” he’d said. “With a PH. We had six weeks. June to July. One immaculate summer, as they say. Or it seems like it in my memory anyway. Like when we were kids. The days just went on and on. Everything was just easier.” Julian had paused and ran his finger around the lip of his coffee mug. “I loved him. It was that simple. They always say that your first time should be a bit awkward. But he was older than me, Stephen with a PH, and he knew how to guide me. I was eighteen and things were difficult at home with my parents, but that all just fell away somehow. And it was just me and him.

“I often wonder what became of him. I’d like to know where he is now, if he’s happy. If he settled down. Sometimes I imagine another man with his fingers in his hair, covering his neck in kisses and it fucking aches somewhere deep down inside me.”

He’d sighed and the candles on the table began to gutter and go out. “Sometimes I wish for it all over again. It’s like an ecstatic infatuation. You’re in love with everything about them. And everything’s alive with waiting for one touch, one kiss, or even a few dirty words in your ear. Going out to clubs or staying in, cooking dinner, drinking wine… It’s all just youthful nonsense but it’s beautiful at the same time.” Julian smiled. “But then it ends and you meet someone else, and someone after that and all you’re doing is trying to get back to that original feeling you had. But what if your heart’s desire isn’t attainable? What if you’re looking in the wrong places for happiness? What if you spent all your days reaching for something so hard that you missed out on life?”

There was no one there now. No one sitting at the table, nor leafing through the records or the books in the front room, no one washing the dishes, nor sleeping in his bed. He was gone. Of course he was gone. But there had been someone. In the spare room where Tom had seen

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