Eleventh Commandment (Short story)

Okay, this is the first short story I've published to my blog. I based it on some poems by Richard Siken (who I absolutely adore) and there are a few lines in it are quite Isherwood (Who I adore in equal measure).

I really enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it. 

Eleventh Commandment

I remember that day like it was yesterday; the day the blond boy in red trunks tried to kill me.

Pushing me under and under.

Deeper and deeper.

Until I couldn’t see anymore. Through the muffles of splashing water and laughter, I heard my salvation. A long, shrill blast on a distant metal whistle.

And I surfaced again.

Breathing, panicking, I settled back in the pool which nearly killed me.

But I was saved.

Not safe.

 The lifeguard, however, was most unforgiving. When he saw it was me, he gave the other boys a look.

 Good work lads, he thought. Kill him. Kill the queer. The others shared his thought, too.

And they were right to try and kill me. I am wrong and unnatural… But I saw that bulge in his red trunks under the water. So I knew that I wasn’t the only one. The blond boy was unnatural too.

I dragged myself out of the water. A thousand glaring eyes were watching, silently stalking me. I was to be their prey, dripping wet, baiting them almost, like a deer before a lion. They were ready to pounce and I was prepared to die. All it would take is one to pull me back under.

And this time, the whistle wouldn’t blow.

*

Folded arms, grey beard and podgy stomach. The principle was no hero. He will never rescue me or anybody like me. I was an infection, that must be destroyed, a parasite.

But he can’t. He would if I was anyone else. If I was on the street, or in another school or state or country.

His father made a kill once. No one spoke about it but everyone knew it. He got away with it.

And so he should. He wasn’t the one at fault.

*

Outside the school, there was the blond boy again, this time not in red trunks. Dressed. Sitting on his father’s old pick-up truck with a girl on each arm. No bulge.

But he was strong, so he would never say.  He was better than me, so he could never say.

*

I grew through this; the teething pains of life.

A year later, I met this brown-eyed boy, bruised on a street corner with ripped clothes. I helped him home and tended to his wounds.

He wore the scar on his stomach like a medal.

As we grew, we healed. We built our lives around each other, spending and sharing every moment.

And we had no hesitations about falling completely in love.

Our summer dates smelt of cheap wine and cigarettes. As we walked through Central Park on our vacations to New York, we planned our lives together. We would buy an apartment and watch each other grow old, while growing closer.

Or, at least, that was the plan.

*

I went home, expecting to see this boy.

My boy, with eyes like golden autumn leaves.

We had been through a lot during our time together. But he ripped open old wounds when I realised he didn’t love me as much as I loved him.

There was a note on coffee stained paper left in his place, saying he had gone to New York with the intention of starting a new life.

In desperation and isolation, I clung to the good memories because they don’t hurt. Words from the past echoed to me: you need to acknowledge the bad times to make the good ones better.

This, however, works in reverse. The good memories make the bad ones so much worse. And this was the worst of times.

That night, I packed up my things into an old suitcase, the battered leather showing its age. I threw it into the back of my car and drove down to the cliffs. She was running out of petrol but I didn’t fill her up.

I had no intention to make the return journey.

*

Nevertheless, I’m lying here now, with a wound from a rock that I could have only got from the fifty foot cliff I flew from, thinking of these memories as I take my final breath and saying hello to the incoming tide, reassured by the sirens that will never arrive.