I can imagine his room almost perfectly. I imagine it will get better after this next visit. I can imagine him lying in bed with the bedside lamp on my side turned on. My vision is a mixture of the photograph I took of him sleeping, and of the image I locked in my mind as I game back with a glass of lemon water.
I can imagine the smell in winter. I imagine it has changed since then. The smell of his sickness is no longer lingering about the place, and the smell of life, albeit limited in the desert, is probably invading his room.
The moon is out, and it’s shining through the blinds a bit, bathing the room in a cool blue light that seems to wrap itself around every surface, leaving shadows only on my side of the room. Of course, at this point, I am sleeping on the floor. I do not move back into the bed until the last half of my trip.
I think, perhaps, I was angered by his sickness. For a moment, it spurred my desires to hurt him. This was quickly quelled by my affection for the man in the bed. However, I think it has stuck with me, and has made it that much easier to envision murdering him in that room with the cool blue light smothering us both, and the shadows stuck on my side of the room.
I have tied this image in my mind with a gold scarab, which, if I’m not mistaken, is an image I lifted from the story Richard wrote. So, I begin my imagining a gold scarab. And I focus on that for a minute or longer, and then imagine I am looking at it in my hand. After that, very quickly the blue moon light finds me, and the scene comes flooding into my mind.
I had a very vivid sex dream Tuesday night. I was being fucked in the ass, and fucking someone in the ass. I do not think either man was the man in the bed, though the thought has crossed my mind that both men, together were him. It is not likely, though. The man fucking me was stronger than me. He made sure I knew it, the way he wrapped his arm around my neck. I could not see him. I only felt him fucking my ass slowly. I begged him to fuck me harder. the man I was fucking was small and weak. He was skinny, which was odd for me. He was very vocal, and it felt amazing.
The dream was powerful. It feels like it changed something in me. It has spurred on that affection for the man in the bed in some strange way. I do not always envision killing the man when I envision myself in the doorway to his room. Sometimes I just stand there and think about how much I love him. Occasionally I join him, and in turn, wake him up. Those times which I join him, I do so out of the overwhelming guilt that I have left him alone to fend for himself in this desert of a town. So, I join him to let him know he is not alone, and I am there. Leaving those visions is hardest, because the guilt floods into every part of my being, and I am profoundly saddened. Recovering from that sadness is not easy, and it’s bitterness tinges at my heart as I write this.
I cannot wait to rejoin him in that hellacious town.