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“Bro,” Ororon says gravely when Ifa answers his video call, wiping a stray drop of water away from his eye, “I think you should move out.”
Ifa groans. “Why do you always call me when you’ve just gotten out of the shower?”
“I am calling you about something I saw in the shower,” Ororon replies. He pushes his wet hair out of his eyes.
“Dude.”
With a heavy sigh, Ororon sets his phone on the bureau and begins to rummage through his clothes on the floor. “I was watching the new neighbour from the window. Something isn’t right.”
“You have a window in your shower? Also, I can’t move out. I haven’t even moved in.”
“Yes, I have a window in my shower. It looks into my neighbour’s yard. You should start looking for alternate arrangements.”
Again, Ifa groans. “C’mon. Which neighbour? You can’t kick me out. We’re in a housing crisis. And I’m coming tomorrow.”
“Housing crisis!” Cacucu parrots in the background.
Abandoning the fervid search through his floordrobe for clothes he wouldn’t mind getting flour on, Ororon turns to his phone and starts at the beginning: “It was weird. He like, appeared out of thin air.”
But the strangeness did not begin with the fact that the man seemed to appear out of thin air; it began with the fact that Ororon lives in an insular community of veritable gossips and yet no one caught wind that Huatli and Mansa were thinking about selling their house, let alone actually selling their house, let alone moving out, but somehow the neighbour that babysat Ororon every afternoon when he was six and whose brand new baby is afraid of him have disappeared without a word or a note or a nod. Citlali was offended but Ororon has bigger problems, namely, the man who may or may not have appeared out of thin air. Ororon hasn’t ruled out his ability to materialize at will, considering Huatli and Mansa’s house was empty one day and inhabited the next.
Perhaps Ororon should have expected it. The house was too small for a couple and their new baby but it’s certainly too large for just one man, however large that man may be, though Ororon can’t exactly tell—is it a jacket, or his shoulders? Why is every inch of his skin covered in Mictlan’s heat? Where did he come from? What is he doing here?
“So Huatli and Mansa were scared of Citlali and you think the new guy dresses weird,” Ifa summarizes, rolling his eyes. “What’s the issue?”
Ororon huffs. Ifa doesn’t get it. Something is off about the man; he can’t put his finger on it, but something isn’t right. “Something isn’t right. It’s just one of those things.”
“Just one of those things, huh?”
“Yes. Just one of those things. You’ll see when you get here.”
“So I’m not kicked out?”
“Why would I kick you out? We’re in a housing crisis.”
“Housing crisis,” says Cacucu.
✧ ✧
“You know,” Citlali says later that day, crossing her arms and looking up at the ceiling of her ancient, square kitchen, “if you have anything you want to tell me, you can.” Her cheeks are pink, but she doesn’t look drunk; only embarrassed.
Ororon doesn’t pause shredding his carrots on the counter. “I don’t have anything to tell you. I tell you everything.”
“That is blatantly false. Also, I mean, you’re—you’re twenty… five, now. You can… I mean, I’m happy for you to live with me as long as you like, but if you…”
“I’m twenty-three,” Ororon interrupts, putting down his knife to inspect Citlali’s unusual expression. Her brows are furrowed and her mouth twisted into a scowl, but she doesn’t look angry; uncomfortable, perhaps, or afraid. “Is something wrong? Your face is red.”
“I know how old you are, Ororon. And I’m fine.” She huffs. “Fine. I give up. Is there a reason you begged me to let Ifa stay here? Why were you calling him right when you got out of the shower? Do you talk to all your friends naked?”
“Hmmmmmm,” Ororon says. He resumes shredding his carrots. Does Ororon have many friends? He has acquaintances—he’s acquainted with half the city, having never left the bounds of Mictlan, but Ororon wouldn’t call most of those people friends. The people closest to him are Citlali and Ifa, and Citlali would not call herself his friend even if she weren’t his grandmother, and so Ifa must be Ororon’s only friend. In which case: “I suppose I do talk to all my friends naked. Have you changed your mind about Ifa staying? Haven’t you heard about the housing crisis?”
Ifa is moving into Citlali and Ororon’s spare room because he was hired as a co-op at an animal hospital in Mictlan for the four months left before he begins veterinary school. Citlali was resistant at first, mostly because she detested the idea of emptying out her spare room, so Ororon cleaned it for her. When Citlali couldn’t come up with another excuse, Ororon informed Ifa the room was his.
“What do you know about the housing crisis?” Citlali hisses. “And that didn’t answer my question.”
“I did answer one of your questions.”
“You did not.”
“I asked you if Ifa could stay here because we have a spare room no one was using, and I called him when I got out of the shower because I had to tell him something I was thinking about when I was in the shower.”
“You’re impossible, Ororon. You’re going to put me into an early grave.”
“If I was in a sexual relationship with Ifa, I would probably have called him when I was in the shower, not when I got out. Does that answer your question? Do you like carrot cake?”
She groans. “Not really! And yes! Why are you doing the carrots by hand? Ugh. You really get on my nerves, you know.”
But she grabs a knife from the drawer and joins him anyway, muttering to herself. Ororon shreds the carrots by hand because he finds the ritual soothing; it’s thoughtless and repetitive. It’s how he’s always done it. Ororon likes routine; perhaps that is why the abrupt departure of Huatli and Mansa disturbed him so.
“I was going to bring some of the carrots over to the neighbour,” he says idly, “but since Ifa’s coming tomorrow I wanted to make something for him. The rhubarb only needs another day or two… Maybe I’ll make pie. Have you spoken to him?”
Citlali shakes her head. “I saw him going out yesterday, but that’s it. I don’t care to say hello. Clearly it’s not worth the effort to make friends with these people. I can’t believe Mansa didn’t even say goodbye! Not even to you!”
“Hmmmmmmmm,” Ororon says. He licks a bead of moisture off his finger.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
What could Ororon say? I think something’s up with him. Citlali would roll her eyes. Granny, do you think the new neighbour is dangerous? She would laugh at him. It’s not that Ororon thinks his new, mysterious neighbour harbours malicious intent; it’s just that he doesn’t know that his new, mysterious neighbour doesn’t harbour malicious intent. It’s only a hunch, but Ororon’s hunches are usually correct.
“I just have a feeling,” Ororon finally explains. “That’s all.”
✧ ✧
Ifa moves in quietly; Cacucu moves in loudly. Citlali locks herself in her room as soon as she hears Ifa’s voice, and so she does not hear Ifa scream at the unsettling painting in the spare room the first time he sees it.
“Bro,” Ifa says, eyes wide and hand over heart, “you did not warn me about this.”
Ororon blinks. “Is something wrong?”
“The painting. Look at that thing’s eyes.”
“I don’t want to look at its eyes. It’s creepy.”
Once they’ve carried Ifa’s boxes downstairs, Ororon leaves him to his devices. Ifa has a meeting with the director of his clinic first thing tomorrow morning; he’ll probably be gone by the time Ororon wakes up. Sometimes Ororon texts Ifa late into the night and Ifa replies because he’s already woken up for work, or class, or whatever it is that Ifa does. Ifa is a real person with a real job, while Ororon mostly dirties the knees of his jeans in the garden or communes with the deer that keep eating the hostas.
My idiot grandson doesn’t know better than to wear jeans in the garden, Citlali once sighed. Ifa asked, Why don’t you plant something the deer won’t like? Or build a fence?
But Ororon likes what he likes, and the deer can be reasoned with. It’s just one of those things that Ororon knows.
Outside, the day is bright and sunny. The snow peas are happy and the rhubarb patch is thriving; the wild strawberries growing in the shade of the great cypress are so sour he screws his eyes shut when they break under his teeth. But something within him won’t settle, even as he climbs the cypress’s broad trunk and twists himself into the vee between two thick branches reaching west.
Once when he was very young, he climbed the tree—which was ancient even then—and fell asleep. The rain woke him; at first it was light, but soon it turned into a downpour, falling in sharp, slanted sheets. The tree became too slick to climb down and Ororon was too high up to jump. He was stuck. He could have called for help, but Citlali wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the storm, and he thought that she’d probably have been upset anyway. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before Citlali threw the back door open and started screaming his name, but each second stretched out into hours. How many storms had the cypress seen? How many little boys had gotten stuck in its branches?
Citlali found him in the tree and dragged a ladder from the shed. At the time, Ororon was awestruck; she’d come to rescue him. She climbed the ladder in a torrential downpour and helped him down without hesitation.
“You stupid boy,” Citlali said once she’d bullied him into a warm bath. Her hair was soaked through; as she spoke, she wiped rainwater out of her eyes. “You could have been struck by lightning. Or fallen. What if the wind picked up and the branch broke? Or if the tree fell? Why didn’t you yell for me?”
“I fell asleep,” he explained, staring down at the rim of the tub. He was so cold that the warm water made his toes burn. “When I woke up, it was too wet to climb. But I wouldn’t have fallen.”
“Stupid,” Citlali repeated. “If you ever climb that tree again, I’ll lock you in the basement.”
It was one of a thousand of Citlali’s mindless threats, but that one she remembered; Ororon kept climbing the cypress until he was twelve, stopping only when Citlali threatened to have it cut down. Now, as an adult, the responsibility is his own, but he still avoids it when the clouds are out.
Across Citlali’s sprawling property, Ororon spots the neighbour’s house, and there: the mysterious neighbour. The house has a small veranda in the back. The man is smoking. His black clothes cover almost every inch of his skin; even his face is impossible to make out from this distance, partially hidden by his long, dark hair.
✧ ✧
Ororon blinks awake to the sound of the coffee machine and an ache in his back. His dreams were frightening and erotic. Long shadows flood the cramped living room. What time is it? He groans.
“Good morning,” comes Ifa’s voice from the kitchen. “It’s seven o’clock. Why are you sleeping on the couch?”
Ororon blinks again. Why is he sleeping on the couch? He couldn’t sleep after his late dinner with Ifa and Citlali, so he made pie in the early hours of the morning. Yes, strawberry rhubarb pie for the terrible, awful neighbour, made during the witching hour to curse him, and then he’d fallen asleep on the couch.
“I was too tired to go back upstairs,” Ororon explains. He covers his ears with a throw pillow and tries to drown himself back into sleep.
“Wait. Ororon, let’s do something later. What do you usually like to do?”
They’d met on a field trip as children. Ifa’s hometown is close enough to Mictlan that they’d stayed friends but far enough to be inconvenient, and so they don’t see each other much. Rather: they didn’t see each other much. Now Ifa lives in Ororon’s house.
“Aghhhhh,” Ororon replies, meaning I will figure it out later.
“Good night,” Ifa sighs. “I’ll see you.”
Ororon wakes again in the early afternoon to Citlali stubbing her toe on the ottoman and shouting about it. In her distraction she doesn’t even scold him for sleeping in too late, so Ororon makes his escape, that is, he goes to sleep somewhere Citlali won’t look: the spare room. Rather, Ifa’s room. He’s covered the painting in a sheet.
Cacucu does not appear to object to his presence, so Ororon makes Ifa’s bed and sleeps on top of the duvet. Later, Ifa’s voice wakes him for the second time that day.
“Bro. Why are you sleeping in my bed.”
“Citlali wouldn’t find me here,” he says into the pillow.
“What?”
Ororon turns his head. “Citlali won’t find me here.”
“This is why she thinks we’re gay.”
“Are you not?”
“You and I aren’t in a relationship.”
“Whatever,” Ororon mutters as he sits up, cracking his back. “Good morning, Ifa. Good morning, Cacucu. You asked me what I usually like to do, but I don’t know. This time of day, I usually walk Kunnau’s dog.”
Ifa laughs. “Then let’s walk Kunnau’s dog. Also, what’s with the pie on the counter? Can I eat it?”
Ororon’s spine straightens. With a withering glare, he replies, “No. It’s for the neighbour. I guess you are also a new neighbour. But I already made you carrot cake.”
“Oh, right. Have you met him yet?”
Ororon does not bother to reply.
✧ ✧
Old man Kunnau’s dog Antu is as grey as Kunnau. He walks in slow, meandering paths, stopping to sniff every dandelion and cower at the sound of every car. Sometimes, he sits down and refuses to take another step so Ororon has to carry him back.
“He’s an old bastard,” Ororon explains. “Doesn’t like most people. But we’re friends. Aren’t we, Antu?” He scratches the massive dog’s ears.
Antu pulls away and barks at Ifa, who laughs. “I got it. I’ll keep my distance.”
Ororon points out various notable locations as they walk: there’s my grade one teacher’s house, she was OK. There’s my grade three teacher’s house, she’s why I started homeschooling. There’s the path to the park, there’s another path to the park but don’t go there because that’s the one the high schoolers take. There’s the tree I fell out of when I was ten and broke my arm.
“I thought Citlali didn’t let you climb trees,” Ifa says.
“No, she just didn’t let me climb our tree. All the others were fine.”
The clouds pass over the sun, casting a gloomy shadow over the cheerful day. “And there,” Ororon announces, “is Huatli and Mansa’s old house. Mansa babysat me when I was a kid. They just moved out.”
Ifa cranes his neck to look at the house through the pine trees lining the front yard. It’s small and old, like most of the houses on this street, built during wartime. “And your evil neighbour moved in,” Ifa finishes for him. “You still haven’t met him?”
Ororon shakes his head. “I saw him yesterday though.”
“What, were you creeping in the shower again?”
“No, I was—”
Ororon stops when the leash tugs, out of slack. Antu has sat himself down on the gravel at the side of the road. He licks his front paw like a cat.
“Great,” Ororon sighs. Maybe this is it—the neighbour will see Ororon, Ifa, and Antu loitering, and he’ll charge after them with a machete! And then they’ll all be dead, and Ororon will have been right. He sits beside Antu on the rocky ground and continues as he scratches the old dog’s grey fur, “Anyway, I wasn’t creeping on him in the shower. I was creeping on him from the tree in the back. The one I’m not supposed to climb. I saw him smoking.”
“Riveting stuff, Ororon. But if you say he gives you bad vibes, I trust you. Why the pie, though?”
“I have to scout him out,” Ororon says. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Ifa agrees. “Is this a busy street? Is it safe to sit on the side of the road like this?”
Ororon shrugs. “Usually I just carry Antu back when he doesn’t want to walk anymore.
“So why are you sitting with him?”
“Well, you’re the vet. You should know how to handle dogs. You could carry him.”
“That dog is massive.”
“I can carry him.”
“So why don’t you?”
“We can just sit here if you really want.”
“Fuck you, man. I guess I’ll take the dog.”
✧ ✧
The day slips by, and the pie on the counter whispers to Ororon. You should have poisoned me. You should put a razorblade in the crust. You should eat me all by yourself. If prompted, Ororon could not say what it was that set him off. Only that he has been set off, and the source is the spectre haunting Huatli and Mansa’s house.
It was not always Huatli and Mansa’s house. When Ororon was young, Mansa lived there with his mother; Huatli, Mansa’s then-girlfriend moved in when Ororon was fifteen, and Mansa’s mother Fatou passed away soon after. Ororon remembers it clearly. He’d been trying not to scare off a rabbit when suddenly it froze, and half an instant later the sirens sounded from up the street. The rabbit bolted and Citlali soon called Ororon inside, and then he didn’t see her for hours. She’d been friends with Fatou; Fatou was three years her junior.
Perhaps, then, it is Fatou haunting the house. Perhaps she’ll scare the new man off. Ororon resolves to keep an eye out for any spirits as he carefully transfers the pie into a circular container—the chariot delivering the pie to its gory death.
Or maybe the man won’t eat it at all. Sorry, he might say. I have a lot of food allergies. This, of course, will be a flimsy cover for his true malady: vampirism! He’ll whisk Ororon into his blackout-curtained house and slice his jugular, but Ororon will make a heroic escape because Ororon knows that house, having spent many afternoons following Mansa until Mansa never wanted to see again. And now Mansa may never see him again, concerned with his new baby, while Ororon concerns himself with ridding the neighbourhood from bloodsucking predators.
Having prepared for the worst-case scenario, Ororon nods to himself. There used to be a dirt path trod into the grass between his front door and Mansa’s, but it has long since disappeared; Ororon follows where it once lay as he cuts across the neighbour’s yard to knock, once, twice, three times in quick succession.
The door swings open so quickly Ororon starts. For a moment there is silence. The man is handsome; there’s a scar through one of his thick brows and two more parallel pink scores running down his cheek. A sharp jawline hides behind his long curtain of black hair streaked with silver. His eyes, a startling icy blue, avoid Ororon’s gaze.
“Hello,” Ororon says, holding out the container in his hands. “I’m Ororon. I live next door. I made you pie. Are you a vampire?” He looks over the man’s shoulder for signs of Fatou, but the house seems peaceful, if empty. There’s a teetering stack of boxes where Fatou had a wooden statue of a giraffe.
“Hello,” says the man after a pause, expression unchanging. “Not to my knowledge, no. It’s nice to meet you.” When he pauses again it doesn’t seem as intentional—he flounders for a moment, mouth open like he’d begun to speak but had no idea what to say. Finally, the man goes on, “I’m Captain—”
And then comes a loud crash.
The man—the captain—rushes inside. Ororon follows, but it’s too late to save it—the top box on the stack that was once a giraffe has fallen to the ground, and the ceramic plates within it have shattered. The captain stares.
“You should put your shoes on,” Ororon suggests, pie in hand. “You’ll cut your feet. Do you have a broom? Or a vacuum?”
“No. I haven’t—no.” He seems lost.
“I’ll go get mine. Pie.”
“Pie,” the captain echoes, taking it from Ororon’s outstretched hands. “Thank you very much.”
“Please be careful if you try to pick up the big pieces with your hands,” Ororon calls over his shoulder as he leaves.
When he returns with the broom and vacuum, the captain has gathered the larger chunks into a pile out of the way. It occurs to Ororon that the captain is dressed too nicely to be crawling on his hands and knees, or perhaps it’s the domineering aura he radiates; in any case, he lives up to his moniker—he’d be better off barking orders than doing the dirty work himself. Ororon begins to sweep for him. The captain stands slowly, leveraging himself on a box to his right, and takes the broom from Ororon.
“I can’t ask you to clean up my messes,” he says. His voice is low and gravelly. If Ororon touched his chest, he’d probably feel it vibrate.
“How old are you? You should probably get a housekeeper or something.” The captain didn’t wince, but Ororon knows what bad knees look like.
“I’m not that old, thank you.” His expression doesn’t change, but he sounds amused. “I appreciate this.”
“Probably don’t put your dishes on the top of a stack of boxes next time either.”
“Astute. I don’t plan on moving again, but I have learned my lesson.”
Ororon plugs in the vacuum and doesn’t listen when the captain tries to protest. Old people shouldn’t push themselves, and the captain seems tired besides. Perhaps Fatou has turned into a poltergeist and is trying to run him out of the house.
If the captain were a vampire, he’d probably have pushed Ororon onto the broken shards and drank his blood, but the fog hasn’t yet cleared; the house is eerily empty. He can’t be bothered to unpack, but he doesn’t plan on moving again?
Once he deems the floor safe, Ororon makes a decision. “I have to go make dinner for my granny, but I’ll be back tomorrow to help you unpack.” It will be easier to surveil the captain from inside his house instead of the tree in the back yard or the window in Ororon’s shower. While vampirism has been eliminated, there are a thousand other possibilities, each more horrifying than the last. The captain could be a cannibal, or a hypochondriac.
The captain tries to argue but Ororon ignores him. “Good night, captain. I hope you enjoy the pie.”
✧ ✧
The night after Ororon meets the captain, it storms.
Ororon doesn’t sleep well in the rain; the break in pressure in the air sets him on a strange course. Tonight he chokes on dust underneath his narrow twin bed.
Last year, Citlali had poked her head in his room and said, What? You still have a twin bed? Do you want a new bed? You’re an adult. Ororon had felt strangely defensive. He likes sticking his legs off the end. He likes that he can hang his arms off the sides. A double would see him lost. I wonder where you came from, Citlali had said with a sigh, and then she never mentioned it again.
Ororon could have come from anywhere. Citlali found him with nothing but a blanket with his name sewed into the corner. Perhaps he wasn’t born at all; perhaps he’s a homunculus wrought from blood and stone. Or perhaps he’s a sleeper agent, and one day, someone will come to claim him—he’ll destroy all of Mictlan. There must be something inside that sets him apart. Otherwise he’d be a real person like Ifa, working a real job. Ororon couldn’t even finish grade school.
He stares up at the ceiling washed in moonlight, silver like the captain’s hair. When Mansa got older, he stopped wanting to play outside. He tried to show Ororon how to use the console hooked up to his TV because that’s what boys did, or so Mansa said. Then I guess I’m not a real boy, Ororon told him, and laughed. Mansa did not.
✧ ✧
“So you’re going to help him unpack?” Ifa asks. He and Ororon have been drafted into chopping herbs for Citlali, who claimed carpal tunnel and left them to drink her mostly-vodka margarita on the back deck.
“Yes.”
“And he just introduced himself as the captain?”
Ororon frowns. “He was going to say his name, but then stuff started falling, so I had to go help.”
“What’s he the captain of?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the secret police.”
“Does Natlan have a secret police? I don’t think he’d be telling you he was a captain if he was captain of the secret police.”
“Hmm. You’re right. I don’t know. I’m all out of ideas. I’ll just ask him later?”
Ifa shivers. “Bro, but what if he is the captain of the secret police?”
“Then I’ll have been right all along.”
“But you’ll be at the mercy of the captain of the secret police.”
“I bet I could take him.”
“I dunno. I saw him out this morning. Pretty big dude.”
“I can employ psychological warfare,” Ororon says sagely. “I’ll be fine.”
Later that day, Ororon knocks on the captain’s front door. He must be home; Ororon watched him from the shower. He’d been smoking on his veranda and then retreated back inside. Ororon hadn’t smelled cigarettes in the house. Maybe he only smokes outside. Maybe he’ll be a good influence on Citlali, if she ever bothers to meet him.
It’s nearly a full minute before the captain answers. Today, his long hair is pulled back into a ponytail. The sleeves of his button-up are rolled up to his elbows, exposing his forearms. He’s scarred there too. An old burn mark adorns the back of his broad right hand.
“Hello, Ororon,” he says. “Though I appreciate the offer, you don’t need to do this. I’m sure a young man like you has better things to do.”
“Nope,” Ororon replies, pushing past the captain into the empty house. “Are you part of the secret police? What are you the captain of? Can you tell me where all your kitchen stuff is?”
The captain follows. It takes a moment for him to answer. “I put all the kitchen boxes by the fridge. I just haven’t unpacked them yet. And I was in the military. I was not involved in any secret police.”
A member of the secret police wouldn’t reveal themself so easily. But Ororon relaxes slightly. This old man seems like a mess, so he can’t be that dangerous, and in any case, Ororon has an eye on the kitchen knives.
It’s an odd collection: most of the utensils are cheap and matching like the captain had gone and bought them all in a rush, with some nicer, stranger pieces mixed in: real silver cake forks and a handmade pizza cutter. Gifts, probably. Most of the plates are broken now, but the pattern continues in the bowls and mugs and glasses: cheap sets mixed in with sentimental oddities. He sets the cups over where he imagines the coffeemaker would sit and the utensils in the drawer.
It looks nothing like Citlali’s kitchen. Her fridge has so many notes stuck on with magnets that they all quiver every time he opens it. There’s novels stacked on top of the breadbox with old receipt-bookmarks sticking out of the edges. Ororon never eats alone. But the captain must.
It isn’t long before the boxes labelled KITCHEN have been emptied to the best of Ororon’s abilities. He wanders through the doorway to find the captain sat on the floor in the hallway looking through the box of pictures.
“What’s that?” Ororon asks, standing over his shoulder. “Your family? The secret police?”
“If I was part of the secret police, I don’t think I’d keep pictures,” the captain replies, slipping the photograph back into the box. “Old friends. I shouldn’t get distracted.”
“Probably not,” Ororon agrees. It was too dark to catch a glimpse of the photo. What had the captain looked like when he was younger? Was he as handsome without the streaks of grey? “Have you sorted out your bed yet? That’s important?”
“My bed is together.”
“You have a mattress?”
The captain sighs. “Yes, Ororon. I have a mattress.”
Something isn’t right here. Ororon crosses his arms. “You got sheets?”
“I’ll get sheets.”
“Which box are they in? We can look.”
“I have to buy some.”
“We could go now. Do you need anything else? Are you hungry?”
The captain lets out a stilted, uncomfortable laugh. “I am not hungry. You don’t have to concern yourself with my bedsheets.”
“The captain of the secret police should have bedsheets.”
“I think I preferred vampire.”
“Do you want to go? I can drive you.”
And so the captain dwarfs the passenger seat of Ororon’s beat up hatchback.
“You can put the seat back. Usually my granny sits there.”
The captain does. He looks out of place in Ororon’s car; he looks like the sort of person who would be part of the secret police, or a vampire. Someone with enough life inside of him to hold his head high—someone who knows his place because he earned it. Ororon painted his car lime green because he was bored and it doesn’t work very well because he does all the repairs himself but doesn’t know very much about cars.
“Sorry about the smoke,” Ororon says. “I tell my granny not to smoke in here but she says the car would be improved by lung cancer.”
“I don’t mind,” the captain says. “What a charming shade of green it is.”
Ororon nods firmly. “I used to be bad at finding it in parking lots. Now I never lose it.”
The captain doesn’t respond; the rest of the ride to the department store is spent in silence. It’s plainly apparent that the captain doesn’t want to talk, but Ororon finds him novel—he doesn’t seem to care about Ororon’s everything, or his anything. He likes Ororon’s neon green car. He has long dark hair and a scar through his eyebrow and a serving bowl with a porcupine hand-painted onto the inside.
“If you want something with a high thread count I don’t know where to direct you,” Ororon announces when he parks. “But you need to sleep on sheets tonight.”
The captain’s mouth twists into a barely-there smile. “It’s alright.”
The guy seems too serene for Ororon to successfully manipulate him, should psychological warfare become necessary, but it occurs to him as the captain wanders through the tall, plastic-scented aisles that psychological warfare is not necessary. The captain seems like a perfectly polite man.
But something still isn’t right.
Ororon can’t put his finger on it.
Once the captain has picked out a black set of queen-sized sheets, Ororon drags him to the opposite end of the store to pick up orange juice for Citlali, who had texted Ororon with a list when she saw him leaving. Unfortunately Ororon’s phone died before he read past orange juice. It’ll be fine. When they walked through the frozen aisle, Ororon saw Mansa with a baby on his hip and wanted to cry a little.
“You should wash them before you sleep on them,” Ororon suggests when he parks in the captain’s driveway.
“I know.”
“I’m just saying. You didn’t even unpack your kitchen, so who knows. What have you been eating?”
“I’ve been eating alright. There’s no need to worry about me. You didn’t have to drop me off at my house. We’re neighbours. I could have walked home from your driveway.”
“Old people should be careful.”
“I’m forty-six.”
“Okay, well, I’m six hundred.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
The captain laughs, rich and deep. Ororon wants to eat it.
✧ ✧
That evening, Ororon fingers himself while he watches the captain smoke on porch through the window in the shower. If only his fingers were thicker, longer—he thinks about the burn scar on the back of the captain’s right hand and bites his forearm to stop himself from crying out so loudly Citlali would hear through the wall. Idly he draws shapes with his come on the shower wall until it washes away into the drain.
Ororon fishes a long-sleeved shirt out of his floordrobe to hide the teethmarks on his arm but falls asleep early at nine o’clock, only to wake later at half past two in the morning. On a whim, he looks out the window in the shower and sees the light of the room that used to be Fatou’s switched on.
✧ ✧
Ororon [11:49]: bro where areyou
Ororon [11:49]: cat in the front yard
Ororon [11:50]: [IMG_7628]
Ifa [11:56]: My JOB
Ororon [11:57]: so why are you texting me rn
Ifa [11:58]: Break
Ifa [11:59]: Tell Cacucu hello
Ifa [11:59]: Cya later
Last time Ororon told Cacucu hello, Cacucu screamed at him until he left the room, so Ororon leaves him to his own devices. Instead he watches from the deck in the back as the deer sniffs at the hostas. She’s on the edge of the yard, near where Citlali’s property borders the captain’s. Maybe that’s why: she knows it’s almost beyond Ororon’s domain, so she feels safer encroaching on his territory.
Citlali left a note on the fridge that she’d gone to play cribbage at the library, which is not true; she just says she’s gone to play cribbage when she doesn’t want Ororon to know where she’s going, and has either not put together that Ororon knows Citlali would never be caught dead playing cribbage or doesn’t care to come up with a more convincing lie. And Ifa is at work. Ororon watches the deer alone.
Last year, there was a family: a female deer and two smaller ones, leaping across the yard like they owned the place. But now she’s alone. She looks over her shoulder at Ororon and then sticks her nose back into the garden.
Here, in the bounds of Citlali’s two-acre yard, under the watchful eye of the cypress, Ororon belongs. He did not belong in the third grade, nor did he belong at the singular college class he attended for three weeks, nor did he belong at the construction job he tried to work; it wasn’t that he felt unwanted or excluded—only that nowhere seemed to be built for the sort of person that he was, because Ororon is not a real boy.
The deer across the yard doesn’t understand when Ororon speaks, but she knows what’s in his heart. That’s why she eats his hostas instead of anyone else’s; she knows he’d never chase her off.
Suddenly the deer freezes; there sounds the creak of a door, and then she bolts, leaping in graceful arcs through the grass and into the wilderness.
The captain waves to Ororon, a cigarette pinched in his fingers, and shuts his back door behind him. Ororon jerks his chin and shouts, “Come on over!”
The captain’s hair is down today. It flies every which way in the wind until he pushes it out of his face with an irritated shake of his head as he trudges across his neatly trimmed yard, and then Ororon’s overgrown one. The old deck groans when he steps onto it and settles into the empty Adirondack chair.
“Looks like it’s gonna rain soon,” Ororon observes idly. “Weird weather… it’s not good for the garden.”
The captain looks out into the garden beyond the cypress. “It’s very impressive.”
“Thank you. You can have whatever you like from it, I always have too much.”
“You’re very generous.”
“We’re neighbours.”
“My other neighbour has yet to say hello.”
“Caholom isn’t very friendly.”
“You know him, then?”
“I know everyone around here. I’ve lived here my whole life. What about you?”
The captain’s hand twitches. “I’ve spent a lot of time in Natlan.”
“But you aren’t from here?”
He laughs. “I think you could have guessed that.”
“I dunno. So where are you from?”
“Snezhnaya. Zapolyarny.” He raises an eyebrow. “I’m not a spy, if that’s your next question.”
It was on the tip of Ororon’s tongue. He grins. “It doesn’t hurt to check. So what are you doing here?”
The captain blinks. “Excuse me?”
“In Natlan.”
“Oh.” He takes a long drag. “Trying not to retire.”
“But your hair hasn’t even gone grey.”
“That’s why I’m trying not to.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever,” the captain agrees. “What do you do?”
Ororon gestures around. “I garden. I walk Kunnau’s dog. I could probably mow your lawn if you wanted.”
The captain hums. “I see. And it’s just you and your grandmother?”
Ororon makes a see-saw motion with his hand. “Ifa lives with us now. He’s my friend who moved here for a job before he goes back to school.”
“The boy with the white hair.”
“Yes, him. And his bird.”
“Do you like birds?”
“Not really when they’re in my house. But Cacucu is okay.”
The captain doesn’t speak anymore. Again Ororon is struck by the sense that the captain belongs somewhere greater than this—like he should be sat atop a throne and not a campfire chair with the paint peeling off the armrests.
Perhaps when Ororon sensed something wrong, it wasn’t the captain at all—it was something greater: a change coming on the horizon so big Ororon can only sense its shadow. But he must still keep an eye on him. All at once a jumble of words well up in Ororon’s throat: What were you doing up last night. I watch you from my shower. I think your receding hairline is kind of hot. I wish you were a vampire. I wish your fingers were inside me. I don’t know what you’re doing here.
There’s too much he wants to say, so he says nothing. The captain offers his cigarette but Ororon shakes his head.
“Thank you,” the captain says. “For dragging me out yesterday. It was nice to sleep on sheets.”
Ororon nods. “My granny says you should always help the elderly.”
“I don’t think I’m that old yet.”
Ororon waves him off.
✧ ✧
The front door opens, followed by the sound of keys jingling and a merry whistling. Ororon is laid on his back under the coffee table with his hand pressed flat against the underside, waiting in the dark.
“Spider,” Ororon announces to the intruder when his footsteps approach.
Ifa screams. When he catches his breath he glares. “Huh? Why are you there? I didn’t even see you.”
“I told you,” Ororon whispers loudly. “Spider.”
The spider in question finally crawls onto the back of his hand. Careful not to jostle it too much, he shimmies out from under the table and stands slowly, cupping the spider with his free hand.
“Look, Ifa. It’s some kind of sac spider. It’s not meant to be inside.”
Ifa leans in with a shiver. “You couldn’t have just gotten a cup and a piece of paper?”
“He likes me.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever,” Ororon parrots. “Wanna go get the dog?”
“I just got home from work.”
“…So do you not want to walk the dog.”
“Fine. Let’s go get the dog.”
Today Antu is ambivalent toward Ifa, who has abandoned any hope of canine affection and walks just ahead of Ororon, staying out of Antu’s way as he tells a long and winding story about his frazzled supervisor frightening a dog almost as tall as her.
“But other than that it was pretty boring,” Ifa finishes. “Mostly paperwork or following people around. What about you? Do anything exciting?”
Ororon hums. “I was investigating the captain.”
“Like, watching him?”
“No, he came to hang out for a while. I’m revising my theory.” Antu stops to eat grass so Ororon tugs at his leash. “I think maybe he’s just a portent.”
Ifa cocks his head. “Of doom?”
“Yes, Ifa. A portent of doom. A calamity will befall us.”
“He told you that?”
“No. Portents don’t speak, they just portend.”
“He does speak, though.”
Ororon shakes his head. “You don’t get it. It’s fine. Anyway, you should watch out. That big dog might get you next. Or I’ll get hit by a car and die.”
“Ororon, you’re not going to get hit by a car and die.”
Ororon huffs. “Okay, maybe the apocalypse will come. Whatever. It’s just a theory. Did Citlali mention to you where she went yesterday?”
Ifa shakes his head. “No, she didn’t. Is everything alright?”
Antu sits back on the gravel, unmoving, and barks at Ororon. A calamity will befall us, Ororon imagines Antu saying, tongue lolling out of his toothless mouth. “Yeah, bro. Everything’s fine.”
✧ ✧
The captain is eating an orange on his veranda. Or maybe he’s eating a tangerine or a clementine. He’s too far for Ororon to catch the details: his calloused fingers scrabbling at the rind, or the juice spilling down his mouth.
There was a sheet of paper sticking out of Citlali’s purse. It was a printout of the results of a blood test. The only highlighted number was H 104; all the others were happily ‘within normal range’. Citlali has always been a little anemic. It’s fine. Sometimes Ororon even manages to make her take her iron supplements. He used to cook with a cast iron pan but Citlali said that she could taste the iron too much and went on a hunger strike.
So Ororon watches the captain from the small, square window in his shower, dressed and dry. Why’s he always outside? Does he not like his house? Is it haunted by Fatou’s ghost? Or has he just not unpacked? He doesn’t even have a nice chair; he has a camping chair that keeps getting soaked in the intermittent rainfall. At least Ororon’s Adirondack chairs dry quickly. But the captain doesn’t seem to mind as he tosses his orange peels onto the grass. Maybe the deer will visit him instead and nose through his scraps. Or maybe the scraps will be subsumed into the ground, and from that fertile soil will spring a new boy, strange and useless.
✧ ✧
The captain doesn’t look surprised when Ororon knocks on his door the minute that Ifa leaves for work three days later. It’s just past eight in the morning—the first time Ororon has been awake at this hour in months. The captain looks exhausted; for the first time since they met, he’s wearing a t-shirt. His long, greying hair is everywhere.
“If I had oranges, I’d have brought you some,” Ororon says, pushing his way inside and holding up a flimsy plastic bag of cabbage. “Or clementines or whatever you were eating. This was all I had today.”
The captain cocks his head. “You were watching?”
“I watch you a lot,” Ororon says earnestly. “All the time. I’ll leave these in the kitchen.”
The captain swallows. Ororon watches his Adam’s apple bob. “Yes. The kitchen.”
It occurs to him that the captain doesn’t have much in the way of furniture. Outside of another foldable camping chair by the kitchen, there’s a bare sofa, a cabinet, and not much else; he doesn’t even have a table to eat at. Has he been eating on the floor? What has he been eating, anyway? When he looked in the fridge, it was nearly empty.
“Let’s finish out the main room,” Ororon calls. The captain obeys without a word, and it’s only when he yawns—Ororon spots three silver fillings—that Ororon realizes the time. “Did I wake you?”
The captain shakes his head. “I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Hmm. I don’t sleep much either.”
Ororon sprawls out on the floor while the captain sits on the flimsy camping chair and opens the nearest box. Half of it is filled with CDs, and the rest are mismatched mementos: photos and knickknacks and pins.
“You listen to a lot of music?” Ororon asks, flipping through the cases. He doesn’t recognize most of the titles on the spines.
“Not much anymore. But I suppose I should find a CD player. I’m not sure what happened to mine.” He takes the case from Ororon’s hand and squints at the tracklist on the back. “This album was the favourite of a friend of mine.”
Ororon begins to sort the CDs into the bottom shelf of the cabinet. “A friend from the military?”
The captain nods, eyes faraway. Abruptly he reaches down into the box, fishing around until he locates his prize: a black, unmarked CD case with a stack of pictures inside. He flips through them and shows Ororon a Polaroid: the captain, ten or twenty years younger with his arm around another man; the other man’s nose is pressed into the captain’s cheek, warmly affectionate and impossibly close.
“Ayizu,” the captain says. “He was from Mictlan. I was a few years older than him. We…”
Ororon takes the photo and holds it closer to his face. “You look so different,” he breathes. The captain’s hair is silky black in the photo, and his mouth doesn’t have any lines around it; he’s clean-shaven, where the man beside Ororon has a silvery five o’clock shadow. “You were—? You and Ayizu?”
The captain shrugs. “He was married. But… yes, I suppose we were.”
Ororon has questions. When did you meet? Why were you in Natlan in the first place? Did Ayizu make it home to his wife? Do you have any friends left alive? Do you have any friends at all? Am I the only person on the planet who knows about this? He hands the photo back to the captain, who runs his thumb over its glossy finish before returning it to the nondescript CD case. In a stilted, unpracticed movement, he slides to the floor and tucks the case into the back of the cabinet, sitting with his knees bent and feet flat on the floor.
“I used to have a crush on the guy who lived here before you,” Ororon says as he sorts, thinking of Ayizu and Fatou and the deer. “I was a kid and he was older than me so… you know. But he got a girlfriend. And then they had a baby and moved out.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Citlali says he wasn’t very nice to me anyway. The baby was scared of me.” Ororon shivers. “I don’t know.”
“Is Citlali your grandmother?”
“Yes, my granny. We’re not really related. She just found me.”
“Oh?”
He wrings his hands together. “My name was sewed into the blanket. I always felt bad. She didn’t want kids.”
“You seem to care about her a lot.”
“Yeah. I do. Hey, what’s this?” Ororon lifts a golden medal from the box; words in the old script are engraved along the bottom. It hangs from an expensive-looking red ribbon. “So you served here? Not Snezhnaya?”
“It’s not important,” the captain mutters, but when he takes it from Ororon, he stares down at it for a few moments. “Yes, for a time. But I don’t have any good memories associated with this medal.”
Ororon crosses his arms. “You could probably get a lot of money for that, then.”
“I am content to let it rot in a box.”
“So you don’t want to let it go.”
“I suppose that I don’t.”
“Only people who do cool things get medals,” Ororon says confidently. “So don’t get rid of it.”
“Cool?” the captain echoes with a funny smile. “Not heroic?”
“I dunno. Yeah, I guess you seem pretty heroic.” He takes the medal back from the captain’s open hand and leans forward, crawling between the captain’s outstretched legs. “You’re like a knight. Hey, captain, I really like you, okay? You can push me away if you want.”
The captain blinks, confused until Ororon leans forward slowly, giving him a chance to back away, and kisses him bold and unashamed. For a moment he doesn’t respond; he doesn’t push Ororon away, nor does he kiss him back, but whatever hesitation the captain had soon dissipates and he relaxes, his right hand coming to rest in the back of Ororon’s hair as Ororon licks into his mouth, embarrassingly electrified at the soft touch. The captain’s hand is in his hair. The captain’s tongue is in his mouth. He runs his hand up the captain’s chest and over his shoulders, feeling sort of like his head might float off into the sky, never to return.
The captain pushes him away all too quickly. “Ororon,” he croaks, breathless enough that Ororon feels a burst of pride. “I shouldn’t. You shouldn’t.”
Ororon wipes the captain’s saliva off of his mouth with the back of his hand. “The window in my shower looks west over your house,” he says. “I watch you. I touch myself thinking about you. All the time.”
The captain gulps. “All the time? I just moved in.”
Ororon nods. “Yeah. My wrist hurts.”
“I’m not…” the captain looks down at the floor, then up at the ceiling. “I hope this isn’t what you mean by helping out the elderly.”
Ororon shakes his head like a dog. “I think you and I are the same sort of person.” He leans forward to mouth at the captain’s neck, relishing the scratch of his stubble.
The captain sighs, and then shudders when Ororon sinks his teeth into the spot under his ear. “You shouldn’t.”
“But I want to.”
The captain closes his eyes. “Not on the floor.”
He stands and Ororon pushes him back onto the dusty sofa, crawling onto his lap with his thighs thrown over the captain’s, his back hunched over to meet his mouth. For a moment Ororon feels like a teenager again, blind with want and canting his hips against his mattress thinking about when Mansa accidentally pulled his hair but Mansa is gone and the captain is here—a warm, muscular, twitching body. His hand brushes against Ororon’s ass and he snatches it away like it burns.
Ororon tries to guide his hand back, desperate for anything, but the captain gently pushes him away, firmly anchoring his hands on Ororon’s shoulders.
“Captain,” Ororon says into his mouth, “Captain, I, I need—”
But the rest of his sentence doesn’t come. He ruts against the captain’s stomach, messy and uncoordinated, and the captain still doesn’t move his hands; he only swallows Ororon’s wanton, unashamed moans without complaint. The only way that Ororon can tell he’s enjoying himself at all is his bitten-back hisses when Ororon rocks down against him, or the way his grip tightens when Ororon gets too loud.
It’s not good, or it shouldn’t be good, but it is—it’s good, it’s the best, writhing unashamed against the captain is a mindless, endless pleasure, it kind of hurts, his jean are getting uncomfortably wet, he wants the captain to touch him, he wants—just a little bit more, a little bit faster—
“Please,” Ororon gasps out as he comes, unsure of what he’s asking for. It shudders through him. The captain holds himself remarkably still.
“Ororon,” the captain says, seemingly aimless, but he pushes him away when Ororon reaches down for his waistband. “It’s fine,” he says.
Ororon grinds back against him once idly before relaxing. The captain must be interested; Ororon can feel it. But he doesn’t push. He licks his lips. “Really? Sorry. We were unpacking. I got distracted. Sometimes people tell me I can’t read the room.”
The captain’s eyes flick down to the wet spot on the front of Ororon’s jeans.
“It’s alright,” he says, stilted. “Don’t worry. Are you, ah, comfortable?”
“I’m great,” Ororon answers. He rolls his hips again. “Are you?”
“I am fine,” the captain says. “Everything… is fine. Let’s get back to unpacking.”
✧ ✧
The captain doesn’t like to touch him, or perhaps he likes it but doesn’t want to, or perhaps he wants to but feels like he can’t. In any case: Ororon soon learns that the captain likes to watch, stone-faced like it doesn’t affect him, while Ororon writhes feverishly in his lap. The captain doesn’t start it, exactly, except that sometimes his gaze lingers on Ororon’s exposed arms for too long, or he puts his hand on Ororon’s lower back and it feels like an invitation. If Ororon was delusionally perverted, the captain wouldn’t shove his leg between Ororon’s, or he wouldn’t pet Ororon’s hair when he collapses against him.
The next time Ororon visits, the captain sits on his camping chair in the sad, empty living room, beer in hand, and pushes Ororon away when he kneels in front of him.
“Haven’t you any shame?” the captain asks, and then: “God. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”
“Not really,” Ororon answers easily, crossing his legs and sitting back on his hands. “I mean, I like spending time with you, you know. It’s not really that different.”
“I shouldn’t entertain this,” the captain says, mostly to himself.
“You don’t have to.”
The captain sighs. “I suppose that I don’t.”
“Is it because you’re old?” Ororon demands. “Is it because I’m young? I wish you’d touch me, captain. Or you would let me get you.”
The captain barks out a laugh and gestures at the near-empty room. “No. Well. Perhaps. Look around, Ororon. I have nothing to offer you here. There isn’t much of me anymore.”
Ororon frowns. “I don’t care about all of that. I just wanna talk to you.”
The captain stares.
“And whatever else, yeah, I guess.” He shakes his head, distracted. “If you don’t want it, you should just say it.”
“It’s not that I don’t.” The captain drains the last of his beer and crushes the can in his hand in an impressive show of strength. “What if I was a spy? Or the secret police? Or a vampire?”
“I know you aren’t now. I think. You’re more like…” he tears his gaze away from the crushed can to stare up at the ceiling, searching for the right word. The captain isn’t at the centre of the storm; he’s been swept in. “A symptom.”
“A symptom?”
“Yes. A great calamity is coming, so Huatli and Mansa moved out, and Ifa has a job, and Citlali is maybe sick.”
“What kind of calamity?” the captain asks.
“I dunno. A bad one. We’re all going to die. At least I will.”
“You sound very certain.”
Ororon is certain. He picks at the hem of his shirt. “Whatever people I come from, maybe they were psychics.”
“You could make quite a bit of money with that, then.”
“I don’t do so good at working.”
“Ah, well, I don’t do so well at not working.”
Ororon looks around. There’s almost no boxes left to go through, but the house still looks like no one lives in it. “Yeah, I can see that. Let’s go smoke.”
The captain frowns. “Do you smoke?”
“I could smoke. I won’t get addicted.”
“If you say so.”
The captain folds the living room camping chair and ports it out the back door onto his veranda, just as sparse and lifeless. The grass has gotten longer now; bright yellow dandelions dot the yard. Farther down, a deer pokes her head into Ororon’s hostas. The captain lights a cigarette and they pass it back and forth. Ororon doesn’t even cough.
“Is your granny alright?” the captain finally asks.
“I don’t know,” Ororon says, but it doesn’t come out right—his voice is a whisper. “I think she’d tell me if she wasn’t. But I just. I don’t know. She’s getting older, and so’s everyone else.”
Perhaps it’s a cruel thing to say. None of the captain’s friends got older, as far as Ororon can tell. Only the captain, all alone in his little house on the bounds of the city with the deer and Ororon for company.
“It’s a good thing,” the captain says after a lengthy pause. “Change.” But he doesn’t sound like he believes it.
✧ ✧
Citlali [19:44]: Are you coming home for dinner
Citlali [20:07]: Where are you
Ororon is busy. He was straightening the painting he’d just hung in the captain’s study over the empty desk and saw him watching. “You have a lot of tattoos,” the captain had said without any particular inflection. Did he like Ororon’s tattoos or not? He must. He traces the edges of them when he indulges himself by letting his hands wander.
So Ororon asked, “Do you like them?”
The captain, sitting on the edge of the dark wooden desk, hummed but foolishly didn’t look away. He tried when Ororon met his eyes, but by then it was too late.
And now:
“I don’t really get this,” Ororon says, stepping between the captain’s legs. “I mean, you’re watching me.”
The captain doesn’t try to deny it. “They’re beautiful,” he says of Ororon’s tattoos.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” He takes a chunk of the captain’s hair in his hand and tugs gently; the captain lets it happen like he always does. “I mean, do you tell yourself that it doesn’t count ‘cause you didn’t touch me? I’ll pretend to be a girl if you want.”
“You shouldn’t offer that so easily,” the captain chastises him. “And I don’t want that. I am… aware.” He’s clean shaven today. Ororon hates it. He misses the scratchiness against his cheek.
Ororon tugs at the captain’s hair again. “Does frotting make you feel young again? Or is it that you can’t get it up?”
The captain tries to look at the ground but Ororon pulls at his scalp, forcing him to look up. His voice catches when he speaks. “I am sure you understand my apprehension.”
“I’d get it if you pushed me away,” Ororon says, tilting the captain’s head back and pressing their foreheads together childishly. “But you don’t.”
“I want you to feel good.”
“It’s not really more honourable to watch me hump your leg, captain.”
“I know,” the captain laments. “I wish you didn’t like it so much.”
Ororon sighs and lightly pushes the captain’s shoulder back. Like a marionette he lets himself fall back onto the desk, silky hair falling every which way like a silver halo. If the captain were less righteous or less uptight, he’d wrap his legs around Ororon’s waist, but he isn’t so he doesn’t. Ororon leans over him and traces the two odd scars on his cheek, wondering how they’d gotten there.
The captain’s broad hand cups his cheek, but Ororon isn’t in the mood—he collapses bodily on top of him, chest to chest and face pressed into the captain’s neck.
“My back,” the captain rasps. “Mercy.”
“Shh. Enjoy your retirement.”
✧ ✧
Weeks pass, then a month. Soon, the only thing left for the captain to do is buy new furniture to house his sentimentalities, and perhaps a table to eat at. Unfortunately the captain seems opposed to it, and Ororon keeps getting distracted; the captain won’t touch him, but neither will he push Ororon away. Right now, he wears a black t-shirt that blends in with his black bedsheets, pink around the ears and laid prettily on his back as Ororon jerks off over him, thighs around the captain’s waist. His come ruins the captain’s black shirt. Some gets on his chin, so Ororon licks it up without thinking.
“Mmm,” he says, falling onto the bed beside him. “You know, I don’t know your name.”
The captain blinks. “You what?”
“You never said. You got cut off when we first met. I don’t know what your name is.”
The captain sits up so quickly he jostles Ororon. “I wondered why you only called me...”
“Well, it would feel weird to stop now.”
“You don’t want to know?”
Ororon turns his head into the pillow. It smells like the captain; strands of grey hair decorate the sheets. “I dunno. I don’t really care.”
“It’s Thrain.”
“If I call you Thrain, can I suck it?”
“How crass,” the captain mutters, queasy. “It doesn’t matter what you call me.”
Ororon stares up at the ceiling and absentmindedly runs his hand under the hem of his shirt. “Ah, yeah. I’ve seen that movie. It’s not you, it’s me.”
At that, the captain scowls. “I suppose. Hmm. Ororon, if I’m a side effect of your great calamity, you could think that you are also a side effect of mine.”
Childishly Ororon scoffs. “What are you worried about? Aren’t you supposed to enjoy your not-retirement?” His voice quiets. “Don’t you like me?”
The captain’s shoulders drop. “It’s not you, Ororon. Please don’t think that.”
“Whatever. Whatever. C’mon, I wanna go smoke.”
✧ ✧
The skies are cloudy: another omen. It smells like rain but Ororon sits tucked away into the branches of the cypress, watching over his garden from above.
His peaceful solitude is interrupted by the back door to the house slamming open and closed. Citlali stomps across the yard and shouts up at him, hands planted on her hips, “I saw you smoking! And I saw you and the neighbour! Ororon, what’s wrong with you?”
Ororon cranes his neck down to look at her. From this distance, she looks small—frail. “You smoke all the time. And what about him?”
She makes an unintelligible noise of frustration. “That man is twice your age! At least stay off him in his backyard where I can see you!”
“How do you know how old he is?” Ororon demands.
“So he is twice your age? Ororon, have you no brains in that thick skull?”
Ororon lets his legs dangle off the branch, swinging them back and forth. “What does it matter? And what about you?” he shouts. “You went to the hospital. I saw the blood test. You didn’t tell me.”
Citlali looks over her shoulder. “Don’t say it so loudly, Ororon. Won’t you get down from there? It’s going to rain.”
“No. Tell me, or I’ll stay up here forever.”
She stares up at the stormy sky, hair flying loose in the wind Ororon had not noticed until now. She doesn’t seem to have heard him, or if she did, she didn’t listen. She cries out, “Ororon, you get down from that tree this instant or you can sleep on the streets.”
Ororon laughs, bitter. All at once, he realizes the great calamity was inside of him all along—or maybe he is the great calamity, and it is him, all tangled in a ball of worthless nothing. The words spill out before he can stop them. “What, you want to kick me out? And leave me to go beg the old man I’m fucking for scraps? Is that what you want? Or do you want me to beg you for forgiveness, for, for—”
“Fine!” Citlali screams. “It was a lump. I found a lump! I thought I had cancer! Because I’m old! But it was a fucking lipoma, because I’m old. Everything’s fine. You know how much I hate the hospital, you know I—but it doesn’t matter. Ororon, I told you, so please get down now, it’s going to rain any second.” The anger has bled out of her voice now, replaced by sheer panic. “I told you to never climb that tree again.”
At that moment, the clouds begin to weep—the change in pressure makes Ororon’s head ache just behind his eyes. As a child, the cypress seemed impossibly tall, but now Ororon is tall too. He pushes himself off of his perch and falls down—
down—
down—
And lands with a painful jolt in a crouch. Citlali grabs his arm and drags him through the downpour back inside. She doesn’t bother drying off before sitting him down at the table, exasperated.
“Is this some kind of mid-life crisis?” she asks, attempting earnest kindness but landing somewhere closer to incredulous.
“You would tell me if you really had cancer, right?”
“I just didn’t want you to worry. Yes, I would tell you. Would you tell me if you were sleeping with someone twice your age?”
Ororon stops to think. He has no reason to hide it from her. “I guess I would. I already told you, didn’t I?”
“I hoped it wasn’t true.” She buries her face in her hands. “Whatever. Just be careful. Look, Ororon, I don’t think I have to say it, but you know I’d never kick you out, right? I just wanted you to get off that damn tree.”
“I know,” he promises. “I’m sorry for losing my temper. I guess I’ve been thinking about some stuff.”
“Idiot,” Citlali sighs. “Whatever. Don’t climb that tree. Use protection. I need a drink.”
✧ ✧
“Woah,” Ifa says of Ororon’s fight with Citlali. “Dude, she did tell you not to climb that tree.”
Ororon, whose nap in Ifa’s bed was disturbed by Ifa’s return home from work, rolls his eyes. “I survived the fall.”
“And you are sleeping with the vampire guy?” Ifa goes on. “Every time I ask you, ‘what’d you do today, bro?’, you just say ‘nothing’. For the whole month. I feel like I’ve barely seen you. We’re roomies, man.”
Ororon sighs. “Yeah, well, we’re barely sleeping together and also maybe he doesn’t want to see me anymore. I don’t know. I don’t think I was that nice to him earlier.” But it isn’t true; the captain isn’t that kind of person. He’ll probably apologize to Ororon for making him worry.
“Are you, like, doing okay?” Ifa asks after a lengthy pause.
Ororon buries his face in Ifa’s pillow. “Immmfff.” Ifa rips the pillow out from under his face and glares. “I’mnothavingamidlifecrisis,” Ororon tries again.
Ifa sighs. “Is it about the portent?”
Ororon reaches up to Ifa’s shirt collar and bullies him into lying down beside him, face to face. There are dark circles under Ifa’s eyes like he hasn’t been sleeping. How could Ororon not have noticed?
“I think I may have been the problem,” Ororon confesses. “I didn’t like that you got a job. And Mansa didn’t say goodbye to me, and Citlali maybe had cancer.”
“Citlali has—?”
“No. But she might have. Don’t worry about it. Look, I just think maybe I’m a different species than you or something.” The words come out all wrong, but Ifa will know what he means. Probably.
“We’re still going to hang out even when I’m working, and when I’m in school, just like always,” Ifa promises, cutting to the heart of the issue.
“But I’m”—not a real boy, a homunculus, an impostor, an island sinking in the rising sea—“unemployed.” Even Ororon’s best friend seems to hail from a different planet than Ororon.
“Hey, you walk Antu,” Ifa argues.
“Still.”
Ifa rolls his eyes. “Employed Ororon would probably make me cry, and Citlali doesn’t have cancer, and even though things are different now, you’re going to be fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Ororon scrunches his eyes shut. There is everything to worry about. The world is ending and Ororon is going to die. What if the captain moves without a goodbye? What if Ifa has a baby and never speaks to Ororon again? What if Citlali finds another lump?
“Fine,” is all that he says. “I’ll bring you lunch at work like a good husband.”
“Dude, I think they already think we’re gay.”
“So you don’t want me to?”
“What? No.”
✧ ✧
When Ororon opens the captain’s front door, he finds a torch-wood table by the entrance. He’d bought new furniture? Without Ororon? The captain’s house had started to feel like his house too.
“Hello?” Ororon calls. “Your door was unlocked so I just came in.”
The captain doesn’t answer so Ororon sallies forth: the table by the door must be the only new addition because the rest of the house is just as sparse as the last time Ororon came over days before. Don’t the bare white walls drive the captain crazy?
Ororon finds him sitting on the floor of the study by the cabinet where he’d stuffed all his old photos. His hair falls in a curtain around his face, hiding his expression.
“Good evening,” he calls out. “I’m glad you came.”
“Oh?” Ororon sits beside him, crossing his legs. “What’re you looking at?”
There’s a spread of photos on the floor; by now, Ororon recognizes them as family of the captain’s old squad. There aren’t many photos of the captain himself. He picks up one of Ayizu and a woman with long braids and passes it to Ororon.
“I received a call from an unknown number today,” he begins. “Not many people have my number, so it was unusual. She left a voicemail. It was Ayizu’s wife. She heard I was in Mictlan and wants to meet.”
“…Oh.” Ororon squints down at the photo. “She’s pretty. What are you going to say to her?”
“She never knew about… Ayizu and I, and I could never tell her. It’s history now. But I’ve grown tired of censoring myself, I suppose.”
Ororon nods sagely. “Something you’d have to do a lot of with the secret police, I guess. You don’t have to go see her.”
“I will. I came here to see them put to rest. It’s one final goodbye.” The captain’s eyes go foggy and unfocused. “I meant it when I told you I was trying not to retire. I can’t stand being here all day. But I feel like I’ve already lived six lifetimes over, and though it’s childish, I don’t want to start a new one. I’m tired of making decisions.”
“We went to buy sheets,” Ororon points out. “You got a cabinet when I was gone. We hung like three paintings. That’s new stuff. You don’t have to do anything important. You could just become a hermit and it would be fine.”
“Hmmm,” the captain says.
“If you were a real boy for the first six lifetimes, it’s probably okay to take a break now,” Ororon goes on, thinking about Ayizu and his wife and Mansa and the rain. “You don’t have to censor yourself around me, at least.”
“Hmmmmm,” the captain says again. “I have to apologize to you too. I haven’t been understanding. I do like you.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“No. I’m sorry. You’ve been kind to me, and I took advantage of you.”
Petulantly Ororon drops his head and mutters, “I wish you would actually take advantage of me. But don’t worry. I’ve been pushy. I shouldn’t have.”
The captain laughs despite himself. “It’s alright. I admire how you ask for exactly what you want.”
“I’m not part of the secret police so I don’t have to censor myself.”
“It’s courageous,” the captain insists all too seriously. “I have a lot of respect for you.”
“Mmm. Is that it?” Ororon stands and tugs on the captain’s arm. “Is that it?”
“Of course I do. I care about you. I’m sorry I couldn’t show it before. I was…” he sighs. “I was hung up on the past.”
“Yeah. I get it.” Ororon nods and gestures at the door to his bedroom. “Your back. You should lie down. Take a rest, you know.”
The captain laughs again. “I see,” he says gravely.
Ororon looks over his shoulder and tugs on the captain’s wrist. “Maybe I’m not reading the room again. But you could admire me more like this, okay? I’ll make all the decisions. You can just relax.”
The captain sits on the bed and Ororon follows him, pressing their bodies together in a warm line, relishing the scratch of his five o’clock shadow as he mouths at his throat. The captain’s hands roam under his shirt in slow, exploratory movements. He doesn’t seem shy or unwilling—instead he seems content with what he’s been given, sighing happily as he bites at Ororon’s bottom lip. Ororon, keyed up and desperate after the captain holding back for so long, decides that this is not good enough and palms at him through the layers of his clothes until the captain’s dick stirs under the attention.
“Lube?” Ororon asks, no-nonsense. “Do you have any?”
“In the bathroom,” the captain says, voice tight. “Do you… One moment.”
While he disappears, Ororon shucks off his pants and underwear before spitting on his palm and pulling himself off idly while he waits. The captain’s hand will be bigger, his skin rougher—Ororon shudders thinking about it. The captain, upon his return, freezes for a moment before snapping out of it and crossing the room. Before he can touch Ororon says matter-of-factly as he sits back, “You can finger me, and then I’ll ride you. If you want. I like to top but I’ll let you for now because you’re old and fragile.”
The captain laughs, which was not the reaction Ororon was hoping for, but he obeys without complaint, pouring lube over his fingers as he kneels before Ororon on the bed. “Thank you for the itinerary,” he says earnestly, and then he hesitates for so long the clear fluid starts to dry on his fingers.
“What, are you out of practice?” Ororon asks. “I need you to hurry up or I’ll die.” Without warning he sticks his first two fingers into the captain’s slightly open mouth, coating them with his saliva, and reaches down, wrist pinching at the awkward angle as he pushes his first knuckle past the rim. It’s good but not enough. The captain stares at where Ororon’s finger disappears inside of himself and goes still.
“Let me,” he says, once again coating his fingers in lube.
His fingers are thicker than Ororon’s, but the captain doesn’t meet much resistance and clearly it pleases him. Ororon rocks back onto his hand, desperate to climb higher. “It’s better than I imagined,” he says breathlessly. “Your fingers are so thick.”
The captain lets out a strangled noise. “You take it so easily.”
“Yeah, I do this all the time. More, please. I can take it. C’mon.” It’ll be tight, but the burn when the captain obliges and pushes a second finger past his rim makes him shudder. Ororon can’t help himself from canting his hips, trying to fuck himself harder, deeper on the captain’s digits. When he crooks his hand just so Ororon jolts. “There, there, please, I need—”
He could come like this, delirious and begging on two of the captain’s calloused fingers, and when he says so the captain’s eyes darken. They kiss, wet and open-mouthed and messy as the captain adds a third.
“I’m ready. It’s fine. I want to come on your cock, okay, and I’m so—” he squirms, trying desperately to hold himself still. “Lie back, okay?”
Capitano nods. He lets go of Ororon and kicks off his clothes, quick and impatient. Even the slide of his fingers slipping out makes Ororon whine. Pleased with the captain’s nakedness, Ororon strokes him a few times, marvelling at the thickness before crawling over him and settling with his thighs on either side of the captain’s hips before he lines him up and sinks slowly down. At first it burns; he’s big, but the fullness feels so good.
The captain has been good so Ororon would have liked to draw it out, but he’s spent so long imagining what it would be like to ride the captain’s fingers, or to sit on his cock, and now he’s leveraging his hands on the captain’s tits to raise his hips and slide back down and he feels like flying. Rocking his hips shallowly as he adjusts to the size of him, Ororon watches the captain’s eyes flutter closed. He keeps remarkably still even as Ororon speeds up, searching for the right angle. In this position, the captain is so deep inside him Ororon could cry. He shouts when he finds it, a starburst of pleasure exploding in his stomach.
Soon he settles into a punishing rhythm, chasing the drag of the captain’s cock against his prostate. Vaguely he becomes aware of his own hiccupy moans, head thrown back as his pleasure mounts higher and higher until the captain wraps his hand around Ororon and—
It’s too much. Between the terrible, awful fullness and the grip on his cock, Ororon manages a few more jerky, uncoordinated movements, thighs burning, before he comes all over the captain’s chest with a full-body shudder.
“We can stop now,” the captain offers, pushing Ororon’s hair out of his face.
“Nonono. Just—let’s do this instead.” He slips off of the captain and lies back, spreading his legs and shivering at the cold emptiness. “Here. I wanna see you.”
Wordlessly the captain throws one of Ororon’s legs over his shoulders. When he pushes in, Ororon jerks, painfully oversensitive, but he clenches around him and the captain gasps, soon fucking Ororon in earnest. He’s not as hurried as Ororon—he takes his time, drawing it out so long that Ororon’s cock hardens against his leg. He could probably come again from this—from watching the captain lose himself in sensation. Ororon licks his thumb and rolls his nipple between his fingers, groaning as the captain grinds against that spot inside him again and again until his hips begin to stutter. Ororon reaches down to stroke himself as the captain spills inside him with a breathless cry, but it’s not enough.
“Please,” Ororon begs, rocking down helplessly on the captain’s softening cock, “just, Thrain, please—”
When the captain pulls out Ororon shivers at the pleasure-pain of it. He pushes Ororon back onto the bed and wraps his lips around him, licking up his shaft before swallowing him down to the back of his throat. Ororon shakes, overwhelmed by the warm, wet heat and pulls on a handful of the captain’s long hair, bucking his hips until he comes again down the captain’s throat. It’s embarrassingly, hopelessly endearing when the captain starts to cough.
“Too much for you, grandpa?” Ororon asks, patting his chest where Ororon’s come has already begun to dry uncomfortably.
“I am not old enough to be your grandfather,” the captain says immediately. He wipes the back of his red mouth with his hand. “Just one moment. I’ll clean us up.”
“Noooo, let’s lie here and get all gross.”
“That isn’t funny.”
Ororon wraps his arm around the captain’s waist, effectively trapping him. “If you get up, you’ll probably start thinking about Ayizu’s wife.”
“If I wasn’t before, I certainly am now.”
“Shh. Sleep. Zzzzz.” He smacks a kiss onto the captain’s cheek and flops face-first onto the bed, warm and satisfied. “No secret police watching you here. Do whatever you want forever.”
“That sounds nice,” the captain agrees, lying with his chest against Ororon’s back. He starts to speak again, but Ororon can’t hear it over the sound of his own yawn.
“Sleep,” he echoes. “Everything will be here when you wake up.”