Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/camping/canvas-hell) for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights reserved. Includes sex between young-adult men. Go away if any of that is against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to Nifty TODAY at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.
I was a bit shocked that I didn't sob or cry at all. Mr Weepy seemed to be out of the office right then. What I said meant a lot to me, and took a lot out of me. I just sat breathing, rethinking each word and honestly decided I didn't want to take any of the back. I dragged a camp blanket around me, still leant against my kit with feet pointed in the direction of everyone else's head. I turned and listened to the forest at night, sounds that slowly wove into dreams and dreams into deep sleep. I don't know what those dreams were, but they had a peaceful tension to them that floated me clear to morning.
***** Canvas Hell 13: Monsters and Demons
By Bear Pup
T/T/T; NO SEX; self-discovery; centipede monster from hell; confession and honesty; the demons that haunt us
Saturday dawned clear, bright, beautiful and utterly miserable. Unlike normal, I was not the first out. I woke to hear Jim heading off to the Hygiene Hut and Karl moving around to water the beech. I pulled myself out and relieved my own night's piss. Karl was off to HH before I finished. Jim was heading to the Mess Hall and Karl was drying himself desultorily when I got to the showers. Breakfast was a repeat of Thursday, each of us sitting well apart, pretending it didn't matter.
I had been assigned Policing Duty for Saturday morning; Karl and Jim had obviously pulled some other duties. Policing normally mean making sure that the fire-rings, tents and cabins were in good shape, equipment cleaned and stowed correctly and suchlike. Today, though, we were told that the boardwalks had to come up. The enormous groan that accompanied this news was met with a stern explanation. The pallets were just a little safer than muddy paths, but far more dangerous than bare ground. Two boys had already been treated for sprained ankles, so the pallets had to go.
Leaders broke 13-16-year-olds up into groups of four. All the 17-year-olds (myself included) were the draft horses of the operation and assigned two to each team. We were equipped with large-tyre flat carts and were responsible for returning the pallets to the storage shed just above the Admin Building. Horse 1 (me) would tootle along next to the struggling boys as they pulled the pallets out of the dried mud and stack then on the cart. When Horse 2 (a nice kid and Jason) came back from dropping his own stack, I'd head to the shed and the leaders would unload them quickly.
So. Wooden pallets on the ground in slowly-drying mud. Not only were they reluctant to release their hold, they had become homes to... a variety of monsters. I hate bugs, and so did a couple of my team, and the others laughed raucously when spiders or big hairy roaches would come scurrying. Turnabout being not only fair play but cherished by all boys, I laughed myself silly when they uncovered a snake. You could not have cleared the area faster if it had been a bomb or a Mom brandishing a just-uncovered Playboy. Those four just scattered.
I laughed and laughed. I love snakes; always have. They eat all the creepy-crawlers I hate most. Plus, as a complete geek, I knew what most snakes looked like. This was a gorgeous young milksnake with sharp, twisted banding in every shade of reddish brown. He was probably a bit under a foot long and the thickness of a big magic marker.
I'll admit he was a bit pissy about suddenly having his house removed and he bit me as I grabbed hold of him, but they're not poisonous and he happily wound himself around my wrist as I pried his jaws off my pinkie finger. I very politely tried to introduce my new friend to each of the boys on the team, but for some reason they just didn't want to get to know him. At least I got that impression from their girlish squeals of terror and sudden desperate need to be anywhere else. I walked over to a bramble floored with old beech leaves and let the little guy go.
I got my comeuppance a couple of loads later. I was standing right next to one of the pallets when they lifted it, revealing a monster worthy of Cthulhu. Black as sin with way, way, WAY too many sickly-yellow legs armed with hideous, obviously-venomous pinchery things. It was about three feet long and big round as my wrist and came at me, intent of poisoning me and eating me at his leisure, each hideous leg to pick and claw at my flesh.
I was cursing the fact that none of the nearby trees had climbable branches when I found myself about twenty yards off, gibbering as I peeked around the trunk of a tree. Those fucking little snots just stood there and laughed, LAUGHED at my brush with an unspeakable death. They had shooed off the (according those lying little fucks) four-inch centipede. I was, perhaps, a bit grumpy when we finished. Every time one of them would say the word centipede I'd shudder. Regardless of the fact I wasn't particularly dirty, I spent a long, long, LONG time in the shower.
I still had forty minutes to kill before the travesty of lunch so I headed back to Tent Canvas Hell. Jim and Karl arrived at almost the same time and we sat frowning. Finally, I broke.
"Okay, stop it! I refuse to be miserable and watch you two glower at each other and at me every second for the next three weeks! We end this, NOW."
Wow. Where did that come from? Painfully-shy me getting all forceful and commanding? I was a bit worked up, though, and frankly still on the Mutant Centipede Adrenaline High. They just stared at me and grumped.
"Fine! Fuck! I'll start. Which one of you was awake last night?"
To this day, I am a terrible poker player. But even as a terrified teen I could tell the answer from their faces.
"You FUCKS! You were BOTH awake! Go ahead. Deny it." Karl and Jim just looked at each other and blushed harder, eyes questioning. Both just nodded and looked down.
"Wa, was Eaglas right?"
"About...?" That was Karl.
"About you being upset that I won't let you 'help' me?"
"Yes," Jim's small but confident voice came out with. "You go nuts if one of us is hurting, but we can both see you're ripping yourself up and won't even, you know, let us do anything."
That sent a bolt of fear, shame and elation through me and I turned to Karl, waiting.
Karl sighed deeply and took a sudden interest in the pattern on his sleeping bag. "I want to help. I worry. But I don't know what to do. I can't beat up a bully that's in your head, can I? And not sm, smart like you two."
That was a knife of pure ice into my soul to hear Karl say that. "But you are, Ka--"
"NO! No, I'm not. I'm not a complete idiot but I know I'm not in you guys's league. If we're g, gonna do th, this, then it starts with being honest. So don't pretend I'm smart. Last night, you said that you felt terrible that you can't talk to us. Bullshit. You feel terrible cuz you won't talk to us. You want to be our friend without letting us be yours. So either p-p-put up-p or sh-shut up, Patrick."
Jeez. Karl didn't say much, but when he did, it was a doozy. I looked down and Jim took up the narrative.
"So now we get to it, Patrick. You kept talking last night about what you can't say and can't want and are fighting not to do and shredding yourself about all of it. Out with it. What is it you can't say / want / do, Patrick, that you think is going to make us hate you?"
In the past week, I would have sworn on every Bible and even the Lord of the Rings that I would never have been relieved to hear the triangle calling us to a dubious meal. How wrong I was. It pealed out and I practically leapt up. "Lunch!"
"Patrick!"
"No. After. Promise." I could only utter mumbled one-word statements. I made it out of the tent without actually screaming or hyperventilating, trailed by my seriously disgruntled tent-mates.
Lunch was something called Pepper Steak. Yeah, there were some tragically-abused peppers and translucent onions in the rice-packed, soy-based slimy gravy, but 'steak'? We decided it was probably Chihuahua filets. Regardless, it was far better that Chef's average. The cold option was a white-bread sandwich containing a half-jar of mayonnaise and a single slice of American cheese each. I'm pretty sure the only people who took them were ones planning to fish later... as bait.
I had planned to use the lunch and the afternoon's activity to give me time to sort things out in my head. I had forgotten that Saturday afternoons were universal Free Periods. I nearly choked on my Chihuahua realising that I had no way to escape or delay what would come next.
We finished and I could tell that both Karl and Jim were watchful and ready for me to try and make a break for it, and just slumped my way out of the Mess Hell and walked -- where else? -- to the Middle Earth Dell. It seemed, well, better than the tent and a lot more private.
We got there and sat roughly where we'd been before my epic meltdown, but I steeled this time to simply get it over with. I'd dwelt on Dr Eaglas' words throughout lunch and the walk. I couldn't, couldn't reveal the core of what I wanted. It would destroy me as well as any chance at friendship. I could open up, though. Some. A little.
For once, I didn't wait for Karl or Jim to prompt me. As soon as we sat, I looked at them for a minute and then just spoke.
"Karl already knows some of this, Jim." That got me a puzzled and suspicious glance from Karl. "I, I am always, always afraid, Jim. Terrified all the time. The idea of trusting people makes my skin crawl. You two are the first people I've ever really trusted."
Karl stayed quiet and reserved. Jim, though, was... Jim.
"But WHY? You are such a great guy, really cool."
I took a real deep breath. This was the 70s. Every family was 'perfect'; there was no such thing as dysfunctional families. I was the only boy on Earth with such a home.
"My father... drinks." I saw Jim draw breath and cut him off. "He drinks a lot, Jim. And Mom is scared of how he'll react to, well, anything. So if I ask Dad about something, his answer is good until he's next, you know. And if I ask Mom, she won't answer at all. They're not {sniffle} there for me, you know."
I looked up and Jim was jumping to say something that would help. Karl, though... Karl's face was a study of a mask starting to slip and crack. There was a story there, and I thought it was probably a bad one. Perversely, that gave me more courage.
"When I've made friends, it always lasted until they came over at the wrong time or something. Then they'd make excuses for why they couldn't come over any more and finally just move on to other folks. Dad's parents are dead and Paw-Paw, Mom's father, seems just like Mom, scared of Dad and his own wife even after she died a couple years ago... so family is out. I mean, it's not that bad. You hear of, you know, kids beat by parents or hurt or neglected. I just, well, survive."
Jim looks for a minute. "Where do you live, Patrick?"
"You'll laugh."
"Why?"
"I live, well, we moved two years ago. I live {sigh} in Hershey and Dad works as an accountant for chocolate bars." Karl scowled at Jim as he actually did start to laugh.
"Jim! You can't make fun of Patrick for where he lives! What's wrong with you?"
Jim sat up and said, "Yes I can. My mom and dad BOTH work for Hershey. Where's your house, Patrick?"
I smiled hesitantly. "Um, we live in what they call the trees? You know, Oak and Elm? We live on Linden."
Jim whoops with laughter. "I probably walk past your house on the way to school. I live on South Fifth, between Cedar and Beech!"
"Really?"
"Yep. And you know what, Patrick? Now you DO have a friend and some other people to count on. My mom and dad would... would really l-l-like you. And my grandpa lives up on Caracas by Pronio's?"
It's my turn to laugh. "We go to church catty-corner from that!"
We smile and Karl cleared his throat. "So, um, so you don't trust anybody cuz of that? And that's why you looked at me so scared? You know, on the first day? You weren't, you know, scared of me for, for, wh-what I, you know, for what did, the kind of p-p-person I..." His voice had slowly vanished along with our smiles.
"Oh, God, Karl. No. I am so, so sorry. I just have a d, dr, oh God, a drunk for a dad, Karl. And no one wants to be around me. And I, I th-thought that I'd have a chance this summer, since no one would, well, know and he wouldn't be, be around to..." my voice fled as well, "scare other kids away?"
We were all silent at that for a minute until Karl's hoarse whisper captivated us, "You have a, a dad 'like that'. But you have a dad, Patrick." Jim and I stared as Karl with wide eyes. His head was down, fiddling with a tuft of grass between his feet.
"I was six. Daddy {cough} Dad was a security guard at a bank. After first grade each day I went to the bank and waited until he finished, about 30 minutes and he'd drive me home? You know? And. And Thursday there were open an extra two hours, for people with payroll checks? So I took, I dunno, the Big Chief pad to practice letters? Dadd- Dad was a few feet away with a man came in, yelling. Da. The guy."
"Oh my God, Karl! You said you were six!" The penny dropped for me. "The thunder. The way it hurts you. Oh God, Karl. Oh my God." He started to leak tears, not sobbing or weeping, just so heartbreakingly sad. His eyes never left that tuft of grass. His flat, hoarse and horrified voice continued.
"Daddy didn't even do anything. He just turned and BOOM! The guy shot him and shot him and shot him until the gun stopped working. And then he ran away. He di-di-didn't even," and here Karl did sob, just once, "even rob the bank. He killed Daddy and just ran away."
Silence again enveloped the dell. None of us was willing to break it. It was so different than the silence when I first came here, the silence of awe at the beauty of God's creation. Or the silence of horrified foreboding after Karl asked, "WHY?" Or the silence of awkwardness that met my confession of my broken family. Or the silence of desperate, gnawing tension and need that reigned so often in Tent Canvas Hell. This was the silence of, of reverence. Silence that honoured and embraced and commemorated something sacred.
Jim could only let silence of any kind go so far. "What happened after, Karl?"
"They caught the guy and he died," he told the tuft of grass. "He'd never robbed a b-bank before, just stores. They think he saw Daddy's uniform and freaked, then ran. We buried Daddy and all the real cops were there and saluted him, which was special. Then we, we just went on. Mom got a job. She married a guy who had a daughter about a year later. He was there for four years then just... left. He left his daughter behind like, like an old suitcase.
"She cried for months. My own 'real' sister and youngest brother needed somebody, and I decided it should be me. Mom had two jobs by then. I started taking care of everything I could. I got strong so no one could bully the kids. I learned to, you know, clean and stuff? And we, we made it work."
I schnorked loudly, trying to clear my leaking, weeping nose. Karl finally looked up.
"I hate how much you hurt, Karl. It makes me hurt, too."
Jim's voice was curt and sharp as it cut across me. "Well, genius, that's how it feels for us when you are ripping yourself apart."
Karl and I looked at him, shocked to the core. "It's true and I'm tired of it. It stops NOW! I swear I am going to let Karl beat you with your own severed limbs (he offered) if you don't tell us what is going on and let us help. You hear me, Patrick?"
I was crying again (naturally, when didn't I cry? When did I become an eight-year-old girl with a boo-boo on her knee?). I just nodded and Karl got up and came over and put his arm around me and Jim came and hugged us both. We sat there for a minute then went back to our individual rocks.
I had never been so scared. I was literally shaking. Could I do this? I didn't know. I opened my mouth to speak and snapped it shut so many times I looked like Karl's bass. I finally looked down and started turning a water-smoothed rock over and over and over. I could hear Jim's mounting impatience and finally told the rock the truth, voice tiny, distant and shaking uncontrollably.
"I think I'm really sick. I think there is something really wrong with me. I want to, to be a-around you guys so m-much it hurts, you know, like actually aches. And what we d-d-did, Jim, and when I k-kissed K-Karl? It felt so r-r-right and was so, so, so r-r-wrong. And I'm so confused and scared and I finally have friends, had friends, and I know you won't want to be near me and couldn't say anything and it was going good, well, other than the running off and crying parts but I couldn't not tell you, but if I did, I knew that it was over and I'd lo-l-l-l-lose you."
Jim and Karl spoke in unison, and I almost died when I heard them. "You can't lose us, Patrick." Jim went on. "You couldn't lose us if you tried."
So now you know. By the way, is anyone still reading this (other than the ever-adorable Roger)? I'd still write it cuz I like these three a lot, but I just wondered if I were writing for an audience of one. Let me know: orson.cadell@gmail.com.
PS: The snake and centipede scenes are actually autobiographical, the only parts of this entire tale that have been (other than 'adolescent Tolkien addict'). I fucking hate those creepy, billion-legged monsters and love anything brave enough to eat them.
***** Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Canvas Hell: 13 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Karl & Greg: 15 chapters .../incest/karl-and-greg/ The Heathens: 3 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Beaux Thibodaux: 4 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ Mud Lark Holler: 4 chapters .../rural/mud-lark-holler/ Turntable Rehab: 5 chapters .../authoritarian/turntable-rehabilitation-services/