1

It’s the only time that I feel at peace. Nothing is out of place. I am only me, looking out over at the end of a long climb and breathing a sigh of relief. It’s quiet. A breeze. Serenity, confined with madness while looking at your own mortality. One foot, one hand, one knee, two fingers, one finger, a chin in the direst of circumstances. Fragments of sheer determination hide within those cracks on the mountainside. It’s all on you. No one is going to save you once you’ve reached a certain point. Ascend. Ascension. That’s what it’s all about. Because where I come from, there isn’t anywhere to go but up. We start low, lower than low; we start in the dirt. And there’s only one way out. 

Up.

2

No Mom. 

No Dad. 

No cuddles for Reston. No, none of that bullshit. A grandmother and her boyfriend that somehow went to school with my parents, but I was never told those stories before bedtime. Don’t ask. Please, don’t fucking ask. I had a bedroom; that was nice. I had a little desk and a smaller television that resided in the left corner. A VHS player was mounted at the bottom of the television. I’d put any video tape I could find in that thing. Thirteen Ghosts, Monty Python, Forrest Gump, Austin Powers, Jaws— those were mostly background noise. Paper was easier to acquire during school. During the summer, I’d make do with whatever shreds my grandparents or neighbors threw away: milk cartons, cereal boxes, bills, old newspapers—anything I could get to create something.

I drew war.

I drew cities. (some on fire).

I drew women. I’ve admired their figures without lusting over their flesh. 

I drew men. (Mostly their bodies— abs, the v’s of their lower abdomen, their marbled, porcelain or olive, ripened skin.)

I drew people, not animals. I never liked animals. I know that makes me an awful person, but what can I say? The irony is that I don’t consider myself a people person either. I’m just a person. A person that likes isolation. I suppose that’s why I started to climb in the first place. I guess that’s why I’m currently sobbing, inebriated, sitting on a stump in front of a hostile mountain I’d fallen off many times when I was a boy. A mountain that couldn’t be climbed properly without the right equipment. I was fortunate— it was in the heart of the town— a virgin never touched or tasted— a virgin in the woods. Although I never successfully climbed it, it whetted the appetite of life I was so desperate to live. 

Before I could admire it more while taking sips of Goldschläger (because I like the way words fall off the tongue when ordering it), I hear the snapping of sticks at my rear. A growl. Something so dastardly hungry—a ghost-town has come alive to fulfill its oath—the one that ends with me hanging from a tree. 

“Frgt.” A peculiar, almost melodic growl, and in the back of my head I decipher it as the word faggot. “Frgt.” It was howling something awful, unnatural, pure macabre. The hair on the back of my neck stiffened and I could barely breathe. I snapped out of my atrabilious mood, walking backwards and trying to find the source of the growling but couldn’t help myself from tripping over the rocky anfractuosities. 

And then, the figure stepped out of the shadow of the timberline, and I admired the whiteness of its skin. Its arms, falling below its knees like a hairless primate. The way the moon fell like a vitreous substance over its muscles as it approached. The claws. Its claws- elongated kitchen knives that would be in the dictionary under the word threatening. 

“Frgt.” It growled once more, shredding my soul and sending spasms of screams out of my throat—locking onto me and beginning to move with ease towards me as I cowered, the mountain at my back. I reached for it, because it was the only thing I was able to do. The rocks, slightly slickened by earlier rainfall. But all my adrenaline sent me up the mountainside anyway, because when something like that is chasing you—the slickness of the stone doesn’t matter. It’s the will, goddamnit, it’s the will. The moon cast on the gilded stone, making it appear filled with gemstones. The monster stopped at the bottom, where I’d only been in a little ball whimpering for a biological mother I never knew. 

“Frgt.” It howled some more and then began after me. 

3

We played tag at recess. We were young. It was before I understood anything about right and wrong. It was spring. Monarch season. Wings of oranges and blacks and yellows swarmed the sky like dazzling daytime shooting stars and would land on you if you’d only dared to sit still. But at that age, we didn’t know how to sit still. We only knew how to go—vroom vroom—we only knew how to scream, love, laugh, and cry at the scary monsters that hid under our beds and not within the recesses of our subconscious. 

“Reston,” Maverick said, my best friend, a little blonde boy with blue eyes that I wanted to look at all day without his knowledge. “Unfreeze me! Do it now!” Freeze tag. The greatest game ever invented. A line of statuesque children waiting to be set free by the palms and fingers of my sweaty hands. I dodged my captors and was rounding home with an elegant stride—about to release my team from their captivity. A hero, that’s what I got to pretend to be. Because at that age, heroism comes in smaller varieties

I slapped their hands one at a time with a wide smile on my face.

“Thanks!” 

“You da man! Reston!” 

“Thank you, sir!” 

Reverence.

My peers had reverence for me then.

  I held my hand against Maverick’s longer than the others. These were the moments I could steal without risking discovery. Playing tag on the playground and watching his chest and blond curls bounce up and down as he pretended we were running for our lives. The way his sweat glistened and we held hands as we ran away from those nasty taggers. 

We dove behind a building into the dirt, but it didn’t matter. Because dirt was just another thing that our guardians washed away from our clothes. We didn’t care about scraped elbows or knees, bug bites that turned red and would be scratched off while we sat bored in our classrooms—we cared about winning the game. We cared about each other.

“This is such a good spot!” Maverick said, using his finger and gingerly pushing his hair away from his eyes. “I don’t think anyone will ever find us.” 

I smiled. “I sure hope not.” I looked longingly, too close, too exposed. I was having a good day. A day where the sun seemed to shine overhead brighter than it ever had—the kind of day that’s written about romantically in Shakespearean stories. A day so swell, I actually dared to be my real self. 

“Maverick,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder, and he turned. God, he turned, revealing a tranquil gaze of baby blues and making me feel like I was looking into the universe. My heart rumbled around and slurped up the moment with an imaginary straw penetrating my chest. How could something ever be wrong if it felt so fucking good? I leaned in and pressed my lips against his own. They were soft. He kissed back. I know he did. I swear, he kissed me back. And for a few seconds there was only Maverick and Reston—hiding in a bush during recess and locking lips in a safe space. 

There was only us.

Suddenly, he pushed me away—the back of my head hit the brick wall, dazing me and striking me down from the heaven on earth I’d been basking within.

“Faggot! What the fuck is wrong with you, Reston? Why did you do that?” He jumped from our hiding spot, out of the bush to tell everyone what I’d just done. He didn’t have to do that … he really didn’t have to do that. Why do they always do that? I think it’s because deep down, all those straight-minded men want people to know someone thinks they are attractive. It doesn’t matter, at all ages, they’re all the same. “Reston kissed me! Reston’s a faggot! Reston’s a fag! He kissed me! Mr. B! Reston kissed me! He’s a Faggot!” 

Maverick, my best friend in the world transforming into a pallid creature, deindividuation rearing its ugly head fueling the witch hunt now chasing me up this mountainside. The venom in his vitriolic condemnation was so baffling you’d have thought I raped his mother and sister while he watched. 

The crowd couldn’t see me at first, even though Maverick was surely pointing at the bush that lay on the side of the school. I lay on my back, watching monarchs swirl against the backdrop of the sun and aqua sky, wondering if I’d finally find the courage to take my own life while washing the dirt out of my hair in the shower. My grandmother’s boyfriend kept a straight razor there. It would’ve been so easy to go home and end it all—end it in the lowest of the low. Because if life could get that low at such a young age, how could it not get worse when you were older?

Suddenly, Maverick and the other sheep were dragging me by the collar from the safety of my hiding spot. They spat in my face, slapped my head, and scratched my neck. 

“Hey, Fag!”

“Faggot’s gotta kiss little boys!” 

“Reston, the fuck is wrong with you? We have sleepovers!” 

“Oh, shit! Nick! I bet he touched you during those sleepovers. You’re sleeping, Reston grabs what little there is of your micro hotdog…” Everyone laughed. Everyone except micro-dick Nick, he was insulted. He kicked me first then smashed the back of my head open-handed: my chin versus concrete, concrete won loosening my jaw from its hinge. My teacher, Mr. B. stood idly by, doing nothing. I grabbed a handful of dirt, throwing it at my attackers before running towards the front of the school, the herd closely behind. My glimmer of hope the nearby adult Mr. B sees they are taking this too far, fading fast. He does nothing. Because he knows you need correcting. They must correct you, so you won’t be a faggot anymore. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that this is your fault? What does Grammy think about little fudge-packers? It’s not the popsicle, son. It ain’t the popsicle. 

I didn’t have time to dwell on a savior, few rarely do. I hopped onto the windowsill near the entrance and began climbing the gutter. One brick, one finger, one chin, only if necessary and when you’re running for your life, your chin is necessary. 

“Look at the fairy go!” It was Maverick who’d said it, my best friend had already reduced me into a slanderous name. My best friend. A boy I first met in kindergarten. His mother baked me cookies when I was sick. His father showed me how to oil a glove and play baseball. I had plans of going over his house that weekend for a sleepover— our parents had plans to go on vacation over the summer. Nowe, instead of being Reston, I was faggot, a fairy. I wasn’t anyone’s friend anymore. 

I reached the top of the building, stood on the edge, looking down at the crowds of my peers who kept gathering. They whispered about my faggotry spreading like a virulent disease passing from mouth to mouth, ear to ear as they pointed and laughed until the chants began. 

A few teachers told them to stop. Not all. Some held their venomous words because they wanted to keep their jobs; they needed the money. 

“Jump! Jump! Jump, fag! Jump! Jump, fag, jump!”

I closed my eyes, surely this was a dream similar to many I had in the past; the pure theatrics of this current experience were surely unreal. Every time I blinked, the hateful crowd of children and teachers begged for me to jump. Begging for me to take my medicine. A long deserved helping of concrete. I scratched the sides of my cheeks, leaving rivets of blood under my eyelids. The Weeping Faggot of Civitavecchia. 

I screamed. 

And I obliged. 

I stepped off the edge. 

I didn’t hear them when I was falling. I’d thought I jumped into another world entirely. The Monarch’s lovely kissing wings momentarily engulfed me. I was flying with the butterflies, and I felt like Reston again. 

4

The mountainside is bloated, like someone who has been smoking weed and ordering Chinese while the workers of the world are out making a decent living. Their sharp, jagged, deficiencies cut my hands as I reach and press my body to hold onto them for dear life. That pale, monstrous entity or creature, or idea, or anything other than something nice keeps its pace. Climbing below me and growling the word it lacks the cognitive ability to enunciate. I know it, so, I know it. That word has followed me forever: like the moon, like my anxiety, like the pain of my parents abandoning me. As if they knew the first time they saw their baby, he was destined to be different. A freak. An enigma. A problem. 

The creature smelled it on you. It knew a little fag entered the forest to cry all by his lonesome. Why are you back here? You did this to yourself. That creature, the one whose claws are reaching to wrap around your ankle and pull you into the abyss, psst, hey pussy, you listening? That creature, it wants to grab you by the ankle and fuck you. Imagine how big the fucker’s cock is? It’s not going to be fun though— it ain’t gonna be like a college dorm room where all those horny little shits just drank their booze, closed their eyes and allowed you to do what you wanted to them. It’s not gay if you close your eyes and pretend that I’m a girl … wasn’t that your line? Wasn’t that the line that gave you a never-ending supply of lollipops to cram down your throat like you were playing Hungry Hungry Hippos? Well guess what, this creature ain’t like that. This creature’s much fucking worse. You better start climbing. Climb. Climb. Climb.

My hand slipped and my head turned down to see that creature’s cavernous face looking up at me—still illuminated by the moon. No smile, creatures like this do not smile. There’s something else there. There’s something hidden beneath those black, no, not just black. Vanta Black. Vanta Black spherical marble eyes seen in the face of a doll rather than a sentient being. They are lecherous, they are leering— the creature’s tongue falls from its mouth like a dog with a treat. Oh shit, I guess that means that I’m the intended treat. I’ve been that before. I’ve been the treat—never like this, but I know how to be the treat. 

I turned and continued the climb— I’m strong. I’m light, and I’m stronger than ever. Light and strong. Light and Strong. A mantra, knelling in my head rather than ringing.  I’m closer to leading a funeral than a celebration. Light and Strong. You are light, and you are—

5

“Strong, man. You are so strong.”

“Wow, um, thanks.” I said it because people who looked like him didn’t usually stoop to my level and speak. He was tall. Really tall. He played football. Probably why he was at the gym. 

“Why are you getting your body right?” His question insinuates that most people’s bodies are wrong. I cannot say I disagree; I know this makes me judgmental.  

“Climbing.” I said, proudly. Young climbers don’t want people to know that they are still climbing large structures like little boys. Not so dissimilar to kids with vivid imaginations who still play action figures. Those not yet fisted by that bitch The Internet and Her Flying Monkeys: social media, video games, and copious amounts of porn. I just liked to climb—after my scrutinizing recovery from my school jump—I’d begun getting to work. I wanted my hands calcified like rock. I wanted abs, a strong core, a body that didn’t weigh much so I could get to the top of my obstacles and look down at the ones who shouted at me. I wanted a perfect body. Two-hundred pushups. Two hundred sit-ups. Sick or healthy. Tired. Schoolwork needed to be done and boys to try to fuck—hasn’t mattered since I’ve been eight years old. Sit ups. Pushups. Feel the burn in the morning and feel better throughout the day. Once, a fat girl asked me if it was worth it. I thought about looking at my body in the mirror when I was a little boy and jerking off. I pictured that girl taking a hammer and breaking every mirror because she couldn’t stand it. Of course it’s worth it, you dumb bitch. It just takes a little bit of work, but you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?

“What? Like rocks and stuff?” he asked, his teeth so white, they looked fake at seventeen.

“Ya,” I bit my lip, my perfectly cut meat pressing against my zipper with absurd anticipation. Expectation. Perhaps, this Adonis of a man would reach his large hand inside of my pants and give Reston a little tuggy in the gym surrounded by sweating, muscular men. Nothing too crazy—a little afternoon tuggy never hurt anyone, right? 

“That’s so cool bro,” he said. As he talked, I observed he had a very rudimentary level of intelligence. Pleasure followed when he smiled—I see that very same smile in my dreams from time to time. It was always welcomed. I recently saw a profile picture of that boy on Facebook. I was drunk. Browsing. Sarah was sleeping and when Sarah is sleeping and I’m inebriated the number of stupid things I do is endless. This time, a little walk down memory lane. You? Do you ever get so obliterated, you can’t help looking at the things you eschew when sober? I do. God, I do, indeed. I found a boy who wore the tightest shorts you’d ever seen. His name was Michael. Good name, go figure. He got married shortly after high school. Cute girl. Cute kids. Nice smiles to go along with that epitome of the dream that we were all told was our only chance at being happy. A mundane dream, but a dream, nonetheless. But the years have not been so kind to my old pal Michael. His body was spoiled like milk. Sagging titties. A gut so large that in my drunken fume state I imagined the boy I’d used to suck and fuck as a pregnant elephant rolling around in the mud and looking for his dinner. Thinning hair; the only people that keep their hair are successful ones. His smile, the only lasting visage of that boy I met in the weight room. The boy that comes to and in me in dreams for a good fuck. I wanted him so bad back then to be my own. I hated the girls he was with … I hated myself for wanting that boy. Guess what I did at three in the morning after discovering this handsome-man turned freakish fatherly ghoul? 

I jerked off. 

Right then and there while Sarah stirred in bed, which somehow only made the experience hotter. I jerked off to his smile because I didn’t have any photos of that man from his youth—the one who used to take me hiking amongst other things. I wanted to remember what his body looked like when we’d take showers together after working out. I wanted to remember the first time—we were hiking, and he laid me down on the grass and dirt and that soil had been heated by the sun’s effulgent rays. When he slipped it in raw and hard—and we didn’t bring anything to make it easier to go in but it didn’t matter because sometimes those berries are sweeter than the fucking juice. Sometimes the best thing you can do when navigating this severely strange and fucked up planet is to—

6

Hold on. Hold on a little bit longer because a fall from this height would most certainly kill me. It’s lethal. Good word. Lethality. I’ve been told my promiscuous behavior is lethal. Not even the climbing—mostly the sword swallowing. Fall. Boom. Blam. Dead. For some reason, I can’t help but think about all the bugs I’ve squashed. Must be thousands. Perhaps, tens of thousands. Simply smushed out of existence, never realizing why. The first night I met Sarah, we went back to her apartment where she left out a half-eaten cupcake on her nightstand. She was a slob before I moved in. Bong-rips. Busch Lite. Cigarettes of every variety on the porch, left behind tokens from former lovers.  That cupcake sitting on her nightstand was swarmed by a mountain of tiny black ants that climbed up the side of her bed to indulge in that delectable sugar. Sarah, fraught with embarrassment; her face ashen, a pallid ghost, worried her cupcake carnival of creepy-crawlers would keep me from fucking her. I was still going to fuck her, of course. That’s why I came home with her—that’s what I was there to do. Not that I really wanted her pussy or her. If I had a steady girlfriend, a wife, someone to share a life with without judgment and ridicule, the insatiable urges to get used and abused by men I hopelessly fall in love with would stop. My body needed a break. There was also a sense of longing for family. I wanted one, and I suppose I still do. I guess I want a family more than anything in the world considering the dirt I came from. A little girl or a little boy. It doesn’t matter. Just as long as they are mine, and I get to—

7

“Love them.” I wasn’t looking at Sarah when she said it. I didn’t even acknowledge her. “Reston, did you hear me, love?” You’re going to love them. My mom, my dad, my brother, and even my sister. All of them. Do you remember their names?” She was acting like a teacher giving me a surprise exam. 

I nodded, but she hit the side of my shoulder signaling that she wasn’t going to allow me off her hook that easily. If things keep going like this, I can almost see a cardboard cut-out version of myself fisting my own asshole in a bathroom and trying desperately to hold back the urges to cut Sarah into pieces and then turn them into art. There’s something awful about the death of oneself. A square peg forced into a round hole that won’t fit no matter how many times you’ve spit on it.

“Your mother’s name is Penelope, Penelope Greer, Reginald Greer is your father. Your sister is Maureen, but you call her Mo Mo. And your brother … Nicholas.” 

“Oo! Good job baby, gold star.” Sometimes I can’t tell Sarah feels joy any longer. It’s a sad thing considering she’s only twenty-five years of age. She expresses joy, and that’s nice because it keeps the façade of life running smoothly. Sometimes when she smiles and laughs, I look into her eyes and there’s nothing behind them. There is no heart beating inside of her brain— she is merely robotic, comatose, a robust idea of conformity fitting perfectly within the mold of a corporation’s dream. There is something heinously malingering with the act of giving me imaginary gold stars, as well—they could be silver dildos for all I care. 

We didn’t have to travel far before I was standing outside of that stunning Venetian with enough columns to make Rome jealous. Everyone knows the more columns you have at the front of your home the richer you are. I felt like a spy covered in my own skin. Someone infiltrating a family’s dojo under false pretenses. A vulpine little boy. Almost all my life I’ve felt that same murky feeling. But what was I supposed to do? In the world I grew up in, if I told someone who I really was and wanted to be, it was usually met with disdain, rage, and a bashful connotation of my soul. 

“Are you ready, sweety?” She’s excited, I don’t have to have a sense of introspection to surmise that. She’s been waiting impatiently for the day I meet her parents. Apparently, I’m a catch. A photo in National Geographic will do that. A contract with Red Bull to climb mountains—an easy thing to work into a conversation at the bar when you’ve had a few stiff cock … wait, wait, wait for it … tails. A few stiff ones. That’s what we call dead bodies that’ve suffered rigor mortis, why do we refer to our drinks that way? Anyway, my little Sarah jump-skips to the front door of her nice family home. I watch her ass bounce up and down under her skimpy skirt and think about whether she’s expecting to fuck me during this trip to her parents’ home. Enemy territory. 

Suddenly, the door opens to reveal a man. A tall man. The kind of man that women climb like cats on a tree. The kind of man that most aspire to be. Grey beard. Salt and pepper hair. Six foot four at least. A built body. Why do you keep your body right? Eyes, piercing green that got greener the closer I got as I watched him scoop Sarah off the floor like she’s still a toddler. His muscles bulged out from under his sleeves, and I couldn’t help but grind my teeth a little while admiring his luxuriant head of hair that seemed to get thicker by the second. It captured my gaze. If he was honey, I would be a bee. If he was shit, then I would be a fly. If he were a wall outlet, you better best believe I’d be the fucking plug. You probably understand what I’m getting at here. The man, her father, was apparently everything I’d been looking for and all it took was a dashing look to floor me. Level me. Reduce me to a pile of blubbering, poetically meandering rubble. 

“Hello,” he said, holding onto a warm façade and furrowing his brow slightly as though he were giving me a quick up and down, “You must be Reston. Reston the mountain climber.” It could’ve been my imagination, but I swear as he spoke, his lips trembled. They quivered as though he was a little friend I’d met at a bar—one that I knew I had on the hook into who couldn’t say no. The kinds of people that would suck in my air if I shot it as flatulence out of my bleached asshole. 

“Hello,” I reached out my hand and when we touched, electricity oozed out of our bodies into the atmosphere that surrounded us. We were vibrating on one another. Admiring the works of our flesh in vivacious synchronicity. Trembling. Bubbling, rubbing fingers and thinking what each other’s spit would taste like if it was being—

8

Swapped. I swapped my right hand for my left one because I needed the correct angle to traverse this part of the mountain. When I did, l looked below to find that monster and see if he’d given up with or was still following closely. The monster was slower—at least slower than me but I found an apology inside of myself to forgive him because he hadn’t been called a faggot at school the same as I. This was probably the first time the monster was forced to climb something so large to get his meal. I’ve been climbing my entire fucking life to get my meal. One foot. One leg. One arm. One hand. One chin, if needed. 

Just then, and I don’t know why but this feeling of dread was rummaging around in my head during the climb. I was beginning to feel bad for my monster. Bad for his state of appearance. Clearly humanoid, like me. Most likely some sub-species residing within the primate family are the same as me. And I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop myself from calling down to my stalker. 

“Hello,” it was the best I could do. I mean what do you do when you’re home alone, the lights are out, and you believe you hear someone that couldn’t be there walking in the dark down the hall? It couldn’t be your wife, because she’s staying with her parents. It couldn’t be the kids—you ran them around all fucking day, and they will be dead as a doormat until that sunlight comes out and sounds the alarms. You can tell yourself it was the fucking cat—fuck I hate cats—Sarah had two, and when she moved in you better best believe we didn’t have a discussion. I suddenly was the father of two cats. So ya, you can blame the cat. You can tell yourself that your son is just getting out of bed to get a glass of water … sure. Let’s do that. But what do you do when that monster starts calling your name from the closet? What if that monster starts using your dead grandmother’s voice as its own, telling you that you’re worthless … telling you that you’ve always been too stubborn, difficult, and downright different to be breathing the same Fucking air as her. What do you do when?

“Frgt.” It calls. It’s out of breath. It’s losing. I’m winning. It might have to take a break, but I won’t have to take a break. “Frgt.”

“Frgt yourself.” I call back down, then blow a raspberry like I’m Sarah’s—

9

Niece Lively, Nephew Kyle, Cousin Sally, Cousin Vernin. One after the other, piling into a house that’s been filled like each one of Sarah’s family members produce in litters rather than one at a time … the traditional way of making‘em from what I’ve heard. I immediately fell in love with her sister Maureen. No. not like that, I mean she hands me a drink and tells me good luck like she understands the gauntlet I’ve been subjected to. Like she’s an outsider as well—I hope we get a chance to talk at some point during this little, or large soirée. I doubt it. She left with a book in hand and a cup of wine, and I doubt she’ll want to talk as much as these other hopping buffoons.

“Oh, honey, you have to meet him,” followed by, “Honey, you know Suzi, I talk about her all the time. Tell her about the rocks, baby. Tell her about that one really big one that you did without ropes. Tell her how dangerous it was.” Before I know it, I’ve already finished the drink that her sister has given me and I’m beginning to feel vertiginous, which, for a mountain climber, isn’t something that really happens to us. You see, I can look down on a 10,000-foot drop in which the only thing keeping me stuck to the side of the rock facing is my hands—sometimes only my finger. I can look down at all the big things I’ve turned little and imagine squashing them the same as all those ants I was forced to exterminate when going over to Sarah’s apartment for the first time. I look down. I look down. Do they look up? I don’t know. I don’t feel anything most of the time. But on the best of days, I feel the rumble of my heart kicking on. I feel as if I’m that little boy sitting in the bush looking at my best friend with his curls … and he looks back at me. He wanted it. I know he wanted it … but it wasn’t allowed. 

“Reston,” Can I get you another—

10

Drink. I really could use another drink of Goldschläger—I’m pretty sure I just left a quarter of a bottle at the bottom of this fucking rock. I wonder if the monster that’s panting heavier with each level we ascend considered drinking it. I wonder if monsters drink at all— from my experience—most monsters drink. Most monsters drink so they can access their primitive instincts. Be who they were really meant to be. Come. Then head back to their families right after they—

11

“Thank you, that would be great.” 

His smile. 

Please.

Let.

This.

Be.

Mine.

My love, has come at last. 

But not yet. Not yet, if you catch my drift. 

I followed Reginald Greer to the bar. I can feel sweat falling down the back of my neck as though I’ve just stepped into a sauna and then I can’t help but picture Mr. Greer sitting in a sauna with nothing left to conceal his body of perfection but a wet towel. I wish I was the towel. His hair, riddled with the saturation of sweat but still able to maintain a coat of perfection because when hair is that thick it doesn’t blink. It doesn’t fucking blink. Suddenly, I began to feel insecure about myself, which I didn’t think could happen any longer. I’m 150 pounds. All muscle. No fat. I get paid to climb mountains with or without ropes and then get paid to write blogs and articles about it. I have a home, good insurance, a fiancé, retirement is sitting for me to reach out and grab it. I can go to a bathhouse and fuck anyone I want … a jewel. They’ve called me a precious little jewel. They still do. But for some reason standing in the presence of this man makes me want to curl into a ball and rethink my position on the universe. My love has come at last. At last. A last. Last. Please, let this be my—

12

Last stretch now. Twenty-five feet or so, and I’ll be up top, looking down at the creature who has been following me like a starving pup. This creature is working harder for his meal than he’s ever worked. He’s gasping for air—begging for his muscles to aspire to be stronger for the rest of the journey. I’ve out-lapped him—hell, I could climb back down this rock facing and redo it before this creature would even know I’d restarted the journey. 

Restarted the journey. 

I’ve restarted.

A new beginning.

There’s pride in the work I’ve done tonight. It lingers slightly below but if I use my third eye I can see it. Most, if not all, people turn into puddles of lukewarm shit when something as daunting as the creature who followed me up the mountainside comes out of the darkness for their flesh. 

“Fgrt.”

“Shut the fuck up you dumb slut!” I yell it, I say slut, but I almost called him the word that I first perceived his own as. I’m almost sober, a climb and a scare like this will do that to you. One slip and it’ll all be over—an egg at the bottom of the pan about to be scrambled. They used to do that, you know? They used to scramble men with afflicted brains like mine with a piece of metal to try and stop our godless actions. We used to have our brains scrambled. I’m starting to realize that I’m feeling a little bit better about what happened earlier. The reason I was drinking alone in a dark forest at the edge of time. I’ve been embarrassed before, hell, I’m the king of being in embarrassing situations. Misconstruing men taking passes at me and ending up in a grimy bathroom stall getting swirled like a fourteen-year-old and sometimes those same men did something that I hated to like. Just close your eyes and pretend I’m a girl. You won’t know the difference. Sometimes those same men did the same thing I wanted them to do to me in the first place—but if a man can pretend he’s straight—pretend that he’s giving me a punishment rather than enjoying himself—a likeness. A loving embrace between two men on the floor of the stall after a quick beating. That a man can come wherever he damn well pleases. Just close your eyes and imagine I’m a girl. It’s the same old shit, a girl. A girl, your girl, feel my pussy lips around the base of your—

13

“Cocktails!” Sarah’s mother is a rather rambunctious drunk. She hired a bartender for her daughter’s engagement party. She’s getting her fucking money’s worth. Tall. Handsome. Brown skin that looks like young vivacious tobacco. That tall bartender is making trays of daiquiris, mojitos, dirty martinis, and limoncello dive bombs. I’ll take one. Then another. And another.  I can feel ‘ole Mr. Greer’s lecherous eyes scanning the slick alabaster of my neck. I imagine his tongue wiping the sweat from my backside in a matter of minutes, like windshield wipers during a raging storm. I give him the signal. A little finger on the ear—seemingly innocuous enough. A little blink of the left eye, otherwise known as a wink. Sarah’s brother is jumping up and down with her as they celebrate like they’ve never evolved from the adolescent stage of prom-life. Some people, in fact most I’ve found, believe it’s their responsibility to get absolutely obliterated during times of celebration. It’s been programmed. It’s engrained. Television. Socials. Anything that comes with their wretched phones. 

I wait for it— the eyes and mouth of my allurer. This moment, the time before the deed is done is almost as good as when his hands are pressed against my curves. The calm before the storm, the allegation before the reckoning. I looked towards the other side of the room— Sarah’s sister, Mo Mo is sitting with her legs crossed in the corner. She’s reading a book, but I know her eyes are still on me. She knows. I don’t know how she does, and you’d think that would give me some motivation to end these promiscuous meetings. But I won’t. I don’t. And do you want to know why? Of course you do— it’s why you’re reading this, right? The reason is because one of his daughters knowing makes it even hotter. The boiling of my blood never ceases as it aligns with the ossification of my cock stroking my priapic tendencies. That much sweeter. That much everything wrong with the world and therefore everything that’s wrong with Reston. I embrace it. I let it caress me as my cock stiffens to calcification in my pants and I point to my left ear like we’re being inconspicuous. Before I know it, Mr. Greer and I are both heading down a long hall towards the private restrooms. I spotted them earlier, so did he. Gentleman’s rooms— even better than men’s rooms because they have showers and a certain Je ne sais quoi. 

Piping hot water fogging up the glass around us and engulfing me the same as his ripened meat before we tenderize each other’s flesh. Biting. Scratching. Punching. Kicking. Fisting. Fingering. Fishing for ideas we’ve only dreamed of practicing while jerking off quietly in those little paper-thin lives we’ve created for ourselves. All is on the table because there’s only one rule when digesting the wickedest of the ritual: There are no rules. This is hell. This is heaven. This is everywhere in between. This is how I want to live. 

Free.

Unrestricted. 

Unabashed. 

Free.

“Dad?”

14

My hand falls from the mineral enriched soil and the next thing I know I’m horizontal rather than vertical. I looked over the side of the mountain because there wasn’t much time to rest. I need to see where the creature is—find a large enough rock and toss it down—slaying my foe and proclaiming myself as the big bad in this little story. But when I look over the edge, I’m met with something rather disappointing. That creature, that wicked beast who’d shown me how awful something could be imagined rather than created, is struggling. It looks down below, grasping onto the mountain side as though it were a scared child who’d gone too far up a ladder rather than a maniacal excursion of death. It looks like it’s contemplating letting go—whether it can survive a fall from the height it’s already traversed. It can’t. It couldn’t. It won’t. It doesn’t know it, but it’s with me now. We will see it through. We must see this through. 

“Push yourself!” The creature doesn’t possess any growls; they’ve been lost to the engine of exhaustion. It was an excited creature in the beginning, but the mood all changed—lust, prowl, determination, has been pacified by the might of the mountain. The might of life. Wolves turn into pups. Lions to kittens. Venomous and asphyxiating snakes into tiny frogs and turtles that are placed into warm touch takes time for little boys and little girls to enjoy. I know the mountain doesn’t care about your talons, your fangs, your muscle structure, and all that weight you carry around because you think it fills out your skin better. I know the mountain reduced this creature to its most basic form, and now, there’s nowhere to go but up. I’m sure he hasn’t changed his mind about eating me—the creature straightens its body and begins the ascension as it listens to me cheer in on with glory. “You can do it. You can do it. Don’t look down—there’s nothing good waiting for you back there. There’s nothing left below. It is only you and I … and I’ve got you. I’ve got you. How—”

15

“Could you!” By the time Mr. Greer and I are dressed, the entire marching dance machine has turned into an aggrieved cavalcade. Marching in one synchronized pace towards the two agitators. They want blood. There is fire burning behind my future bride’s eyes and I know that her brother didn’t keep his mouth shut despite the pleas that were echoing through the showers out of his father’s mouth. Reverberation. The sound of our bodies getting rough. The slapping and gurgling of skin inside of skin—penetration somehow reaches out and impregnates the minds of everyone at the celebration. Sarah slaps, then she swipes down in one motion as her recently placed acrylics created four pinkish concaves down the side of my forehead and left cheek. And then it happened. Again. A cherry on top. The word that has taken the rocks I’ve been created with—the pebbles—the stones that make the walls that surround most if not everyone’s property who lives where we live. Stone. Rock. Dirt. Gravel. “You fucking!” Sarah instinctually knows it will hurt to say. She conspires to be an ally when she has all the aces. When she looks at acts of serration and violence on the world wide web. Persecution at the highest deformities at an unmatched rate. She’s an ally. She’s a feminist. She believes in donating to the LGBTQ Community whenever she is able. Went to a few marches when she was in college and took her bra off because she thought she was freeing the nipple in the process. All part of a unity—one goal to push inclusion forward so her children won’t have to deal with the stifled and rigid mindset of her fellow white man. White men. Always the white men she’d say … It’s all their fault. They did this. But sometimes when you’ve had your heart broken, and it’s been shown to you, and the two people that you’re supposed to run to, and cry, are the ones that did it. Well, sometimes you are reduced to the most basic of argumentation. Sometimes, when the acid is pouring out of your ears—your imagination is running like a horse on fire—and your dad fucks your fiancée, there is only one word to say. “Faggot! Fuck you faggot! You fucking Faggot! Fuck you! Fag! Fag! Fuck you and fuck your AIDS-riddled dick! I hope you fucking die!”

She can say it. She gets a pass. But when the others begin their chants, I realize that even though I’ve grown since kissing that little boy in the bush when I was nothing more than a seed—that the world around me was only pretending to grow with me. We’re pretending. They’re pretending.

I’m still ashamed. 

They’re still trying to understand. 

There’s nothing more that will scare a crowd into hostility than trying to process something they do not understand. Something they couldn’t understand. 

I sigh with relief as I’m surrounded by the insults that are raining still—but somehow muffled out by the room I’ve created in my head to block them out. All my shame—I watched Mr. Greer begin running down the hall and half of the crowd that’s trying to eat me follows him. Most of Sarah’s family, but not her brother. They are pressing me now, and I am unable to sit around with my thumb up my recently plunged asshole.

“Fucking faggot huh?” Her brother had whiskey on his tongue—his friends move like hyenas backing their leader while he investigates my throat. I have no doubt, upon Sarah’s orders, they will take me outside and beat me within an inch of my life. Worse. I have no doubt; they will take me outside and beat and fuck me within an inch of my life. All seven of them— passing me back and forth because men will do what they want for an orgasm if they are able to justify the means of getting one. I know. I am a man. 

He pressed his hand on my shoulder, and I know that it is almost time to take my medicine. But then, an angel and her daughter intervene. 

“Back the fuck off.” Mo, her saccharine voice, a lifeboat gracefully guided past the flotsam left behind from Sarah’s findings. Everyone’s learning. Her Daughter, Lakely, standing by her mother’s side as if she would bite someone’s knee in case of emergency. “Leave him alone.” She turned to me after saying it, a look telling me that she would hold them off, if need be, but I better make my way now. She didn’t hate me, but I certainly wasn’t welcome here any longer. That was fine. That was good. 

“Mo. Go back to whatever book you’re reading and leave this to me.” Nicholas stated, that snide look splayed on his face like the little shit really did intend on going where his father had ventured earlier that day. “Reston is going to come with us. And then, no one in this place is ever going to talk about this. Is that understood?” He asked his sister, Sarah, a ghastly shade of inner turmoil bubbling up from her core as she looked away because perhaps she was having second thoughts. Perhaps she realized that some things can’t be undone. Some things we ignore, the awful ones, the ones that could’ve been prevented if only we’d had the courage to speak up will haunt dreams until death. A nightmare. A thought. A splinter in the brain that burrows deeper until the only thing that will help you feel better is a little visit from the man downstairs. The man in the corner. You know, the one with white bones and black eyes. The ones whose breath is riddled with frosty bits of perspiration that falls into the cracks of your skin that you didn’t know were there. “Leave.” Nicholas finished and his cronies with their perfectly fitted lapels and black ties began to surround me. Each one foaming at the mouth to release their unbridled rage. If you close your eyes and pretend I’m a girl, then it won’t make any difference. Pretend my mouth is a pussy. It won’t make a difference. Now, lay down. Lay down and then I’ll do him next. Please. Just drink more of this. Do it for me baby … please. I’ll make sure I finish you off—

16

“Quickly now. Come on. You want it? You got it, big guy. Just a few more. A few more feet and you can taste some of this succulent meat. The good stuff, right? Firm, muscular, chiseled fag. Doesn’t that sound good? Doesn’t that make you want me so bad, daddy? I know that’s what I’ve always wanted. For as long I’ve been able to breathe. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve been told that happiness is unbeatable.”

“Frgt.” 

“Oh, hush yourself, little monster. Do you mind if I call you that? Sorry if you don’t like it. But since you seem to not be so good with your words, I suppose it’s my duty to make sure that you have a name. An image. An idea, that’s all you really are. And I beat you. I climbed this mountain.” I stood and felt the earth shake beneath my boots. There’s light peeking through the torrid twilight and beckoning to engulf the side of the mountain in which I’ve liberated myself upon. Golden. Red. Orange. A hint of dusky blue. A biome created of a rainbow fireball that doesn’t believe in gay or straight. The big ‘ole ball of flame who gave us all life doesn’t care what we do with it. It just burns goddamnit. It just burns. “Hurry up, let’s get this over—

17

“With that said, I will be taking my leave.” I was a little drunk and couldn’t help myself as those words fell from my mouth. I tried to reach my hands out and grab them, stuff them back in because I didn’t need to add fuel to the fire. It wasn’t my intention to perpetuate their animosity but sometimes my words don’t work so well. Sometimes they come out wrong and I’m left holding my dick in my hand or several others. 

“GO!” Mo screamed at me, and her vile outburst seemed to make Nicholas’s eagerness to bash me slightly lessen. “Get out of here you faggot!” Mo winked after she said it, I nodded my head and left. We took Sarah’s car, but I knew where she had a spare key. So, I took it. What the hell else was she expecting of me? 

I pulled out, half expecting a caravan of gay-killing boys following me like some kind of Road Warrior rip-offs. I realized the moment I got on the freeway that I was only a few exits away from the town I grew up in. I stopped at a package store, grabbed myself a bottle of Goldschläger and started drinking from the source when I got back on the road. That exit. That place. The place where it all started still mocking me as I drove until my hands forced me to take it. I took it. Drove into the forest and found the mountain that mocked me as a child. The place where me and my little gym boy would go to do the dirty so his girlfriend wouldn’t know. You know, the fat one now. I sat there on that stone seat below the front of the cliff, taking my sips of the good stuff and then—

18

Sticks began snapping in the dead forest. That’s how it all started. Goldschläger. Regret. Shame. They flow around me like the tips of misfired arrows. They talk like angels and devils sitting atop each one of my shoulders. 

You did this to yourself. 

You were born this way, it’s society’s fault. 

You fucked your fiancé’s father—this is on you. 

He fucked you, remember? Who’s really to blame? He fucked you. They all fucked you. They all fucked you. Just pretend, Reston. Just pretend, it will all be over soon. 

The monster’s claw reached the edge of the cliff, and it looked like it was struggling. Instead of backing away, I reached out my hand, giving it something to hold onto as it plopped its gargantuan frame next to me to enjoy the sunset. It’s panting. It’s tired. It has come a long way to eat me. To end me. To make me nothing. To make me worthless like the others want, and believe I am. 

“Has it been worth it?” I asked, because I wanted to know. I wanted to know if reliving suffering as a form of existence is worth it in the end. Pain. Humiliation. That twisting knife that turned with me whenever I switched which side of the pillow I’d been sleeping on. Whoever’s pillow that was. How many? How many pillows did I sleep on to try and make myself feel better about something that only I knew about. How many pillows? 

How many heads were left in the dark asking themselves what they did wrong that sent me away? How many girls, boys, and nonbinary people asked themselves what was wrong with them because of what I couldn’t face?

“Frgt.” Its black marbles glaze over as the light of the moon illuminates a cadaverous face that I believe only a mother could love. But there aren’t any mothers here— there haven’t been for a very long time. Too long. Far too long. 

“Do you ever sit back and think about what she was like? What he was like? What he would’ve said if he found us putting in the rough somewhere out in a field with an older boy? Do you think daddy would’ve executed us? Do you think he would execute the men I was frequently seeing? Taking his hand, thrusting it down over and over superfluously until that naked boy out there in the field was nothing more than a blood pie? Tangled bits of what could’ve been, but what will never be. A murderer. That’s what he was, Mr. Monster. A murderer.”

“Frgt.” 

“Ya, I bet you never knew that. I guess I was trying to protect you from the truth. Do you know who Daddy murdered Mr. Monster? Do you know the life that he’d taken?”

“Frgt.”

“Moms. He took our mother’s life.”

“Frgt!” The pale beast stood and howled at the moon as if he was half werewolf. I swear, as each second passes he shrinks in size and the next thing I know I’m sitting next to another little boy. That same little boy that climbed up the school and jumped. That same little boy that couldn’t help but taste the forbidden sweat of a football player that wanted to use and abuse him until there was nothing left. Mutilate, twist, and then eviscerate the veins of the love that were still connected to his heart. And a little boy that couldn’t say no to an older man because of the power older men possess. Handsome. Suave. Promiscuously entangled within the wires of the world because maturity basks in the spoils of the recently bloomed flowers. Ripeness. That’s what degenerate flesh craves. Ripeness. 

But nothing on the mountainside is ripe any longer. 

We are used. 

We have been lied to.

We have been chased. 

We have been torn.

We have bled to get this far, and now we can watch the sunrise together, we can watch the sun rise—

Before I’m able to finish the thought and break free, the monster unleashed its teeth, sinking them into the tenderized meat of my upper shoulder. He struggled, because his teeth were not as big as they once were. And looking into the eyes of a little boy that’s biting you is no different than what I’d imagine my son would be doing if he were a toddler. A son. I think that would be nice. Not that biting—but perhaps, most, if not all the other things that come along with it. Maybe that was the reason I’d been fucking women this whole time—holding my breath and imaging that their little clitorises were just micro dicks as I sucked and tugged. 

“Frrggt!” 

“Ya, I know.” I placed my hand against that little boy’s face and pushed it away. 

It’s time to do what I’ve come here to do, and I don’t need to be playing games when the sun finally rises. I don’t want to see the world in the light ever again. I want it to stay nighttime—it’s what I deserve for being the person I’ve chosen to become. This was me … the world may’ve not been ready for me—but I shouldn’t have been anything other than Reston because I was afraid of being ridiculed and unloved. 

“Frrgt.”

“I know! I know! I know!” 

We are standing hand and hand. The monster may as well be my son at this point because he will never be. He’s morphed, reduced, shrink-rayed, and I fear if I let him go then he will float away with the incessant wind that’s caressing the side of my face like a tender lover. 

We look down. There’s no way that either of us will come back from that. In whatever form, we will cease to breathe. Perhaps we will exist, but we will cease to think. Think. Think. Think. Thinking brings memory, the most torturous of all the wenches that washed up from the sea to throw their poison-tipped spears at our throats. Thinking. That’s where all the pain funnels from. It’s not the bullies that wanted me to hurt at the school, it’s not the football friends that wanted us both dead when they found us in a porta potty at an away game—and it certainly wasn’t Sarah and her brother, a boy that just wanted someone to hurt for hurting his sister. Even I could see that. This was Reston, and Reston is me, and the only way to stop the memories, stop the thinking, and stop hurting the ones that I come into contact with, is to turn off the computer. 

“You ready?” I ask my little friend, he’s almost a baby, the same as I feel most of the time. 

“Forget.” 

And that’s when it hits me. There it is, in all its medieval, primitive, prose, and rather telling confluence. My monster lessens its grip and stops its nettlesome jabbing. I’m left looking down into my demise in abeyance. My monster doesn’t seem artifice any longer—rather he, or that version of me, is promulgating my release from the past to the world and allowing me to walk free. “Forget,” he says it again and I feel the heat of my internal acid burning behind my eyes and fall to my knees. “Forget.” He says again, touching my cheek and then turning to face the daunting fall alone. He turns back and smiles before hurling himself off. I don’t scream. I don’t bask in the glory of being alive. I sit there on my knees and start to think about how to go forward. 

Forward. 

I’m not looking down any longer. 

I’m not going down that road, because if you go down a path as something you’re not, then you’re going to end up somewhere you don’t want to be. 

We start low, lower than low; we start in the dirt. And there’s only one way out. 

Follow and Connect with Nicholas Kellogg

About

Nicholas Kellogg weaves chilling tales from his home in Connecticut, where he lives with his partner and balances fatherhood, with two toddlers under five and a full-time job. Early morning prior to work, he creates nightmares while many are still having them. Drawing inspiration from the eerie realities of everyday life while exploring the darkness beneath the ordinary.

 He has recently signed a traditional publishing contract for his debut novel Green, with Wicked Tales, an Imprint of DAOwen Publications.

Social Media

https://nicholasstarrkellogg.com