Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2017 15:26:09 -0500
From: Bear Pup <orson.cadell@gmail.com>
Subject: Lake Desolation 1 (Adult Friends / Rural)

This story and its characters are fiction. It is a personal fantasy which I
am sharing with you. If any character resembles you or someone you know, I
WANT DETAILS, you lucky fucker, preferably with photos! It is, of course,
copyrighted by the author with all rights reserved and very, very
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when you had to BUY porn. Five miles uphill both ways in the snow just to
GET to the XXX store. You whippersnapper don't know how good you've got it.

This involves sex between consenting adult males; if that is illegal for
who/where you may be right now, fuck off and get thee to a monastery (where
you might just find scenes similar to some below). Also, please note that
all my stories exist in a world where STDs are neither common nor
deadly. Don't be a fucking idiot; use protection. 'To die for' sex should
never lead to your actual death.

I like hearing from people but I also hate spam. If you get off on flaming
people, please know that you will HATE the results. I will read your
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that you cry like a little girl. Bullies get as bullies give.

***** Lake Desolation 1: For Our Sins

By Bear Pup

M/M; plot only

I look around, seeking any sort of escape. When I bought this cabin with
the advance on my tenth novel, Maria and I had laughed at the delicious
irony of it. A dilapidated near-ruin on Balsam Creek that feeds nearby Lake
Desolation in Upstate New York. The irony at the time was threefold.

First, the place *was* desolate. The area around was wooded but more with
the scrubby type of crap that looked like the reject bin in God's celestial
plant-design lab. Nothing about the cabin was literally falling down, but
it was a close-run thing.

Second, balsam was catch-all term for resins-in-oil, including the thing
that brought us together -- the one and only time either of us tried
hashish, at a university party way-back-when. In the giggly and hazy
evening, we found we had a lot in common (including no real use for hash)
and we started dating a week later. The year I graduated we married, and
the year following we had out first and only child, a boy we named Jacob,
Jr.

Lastly, I was a writer of dark historical fiction (bordering on the dread
label, Romance) where at some point the hero or heroine was be desolate at
the apparent loss of his/her belovéd (the acute over the 'e' was
essential).

Now, I am adding two more layers: It is no longer my characters desolated
with loss. Maria was killed six months ago as her car idled at a stoplight,
struck by a stray bullet from a gang killing as she came to pick me up
after a book-signing in some God-forsaken New Jersey hell hole. Her death
is gradually destroying me, starting with my writing. The blank paper of my
old typewriter, the blank legal pads under my archaic fountain pen and the
screen of my laptop area all equally... desolate.

Today is my seventy-sixth in the cabin. The Miller kids (two boys and a
girl who live where the Forest Road crosses Balsam Creek, the nearest that
cars can get to my retreat) make weekly trips to bring me supplies and (I
suspect) to check if I'm dead yet as a favour to their mother. I bought the
family an ATV years ago to carry the heavy stuff like fuel oil and propane,
and I pay them well for the service though I expect they'd be happy to do
it for free. Especially now. Maria treats... treated them as if she were a
doting grandmother. One thing I insisted on: a full month's supply of
everything I might need. We've... I've been snowed in for weeks in the
past.

I look out the window and check my weather station. Wunderground says that
I should expect a sudden drop in temperature (it was currently 40°F)
ahead of an unseasonably-early winter storm with a chance of actual
accumulation. Some of the trees still have hints of green amongst the reds
and golds, so I'm not sure how much I believe them. I fill the hearthside
logbox just in case. I have plenty of tinder, I laugh ruefully, looking at
the metric tonne of wadded notepaper and typing sheets littering the area
around my writing desk.

I am unabashed Anglophile and a lot of my works use an 'awaiting the return
of my belovéd sea captain' motif, so I use a lot of nautical ideas. One
I have taken as a habit is the daily 'tot of rum', a bit under an ounce
plus a jigger (70ml). Lately, I've been alarmed that a tot has become three
but I've steadfastly resisted the fourth. I have a feeling that I'll break
that tonight, accelerating my spiral. As Maria's face fades and blurs in my
mind, her frown of disapproval at overindulgence has less and less
force. I'm getting better; this is only the sixth time today I cried.

The cabin is a simple affair. The original structure is a single, long
room, roughly 34 by 16 (roughly because it's five inches narrower at one
end than the other). We added an ell to give us a kitchen and a
bathroom. There are only three doors in the entire cabin: one to the
full-length porch in front, one from the kitchen in the back onto the herb
garden, and the third between the main room and the bathroom. All the
finishes including the ceiling are polished, warm wood except for the
floors of the kitchen and bath which are tight-fit stone, as is the shower
enclosure. The countertop is a massive, single piece of soapstone from a
nearby quarry. It cost us more than the cabin and land did originally,
something that Maria laughs... laughed about until... Okay, seven times
crying.

About an hour earlier, I'd set of can of Bush's Grillin Beans on the odd
feature of the hearth, a wide and thick cast-iron 'shelf' that pulls heat
from the fireplace and turns it into a sort of cooktop when we... I don't
want to use the kitchen. I grab a couple of the thick and delicious hot
dogs from Primal over in Saratoga where I get my meats. Skewering them
neatly, I roast them slowly until the tight skins start to crisp and pop,
cut them into a bowl and spoon out the beans. Ah, Beanie Weenies, the
bachelor's friend.

I eye the bottle of Zaya. A delicate, rich, smoky-sweet, vanilla-caramel
flavour and delightful alcohol content. Over the last week, I'd killed
about a third of the bottle. Zaya is an expensive indulgence, but I love it
now and again. I normally drink Cruzan. I have more money that
we'll... I'll ever spend, but why waste it?

I awake to a brutal and unprovoked assault of blinding white light. It
pierces even the fucking pillow. I groan, squint and risk a peek. After the
screaming agony passes, I see that Wunderground had not only been right,
they severely underestimated the storm. At least six inches of
blinding-white snow blankets the countryside and the cruel and merciless
sun glares off it in a frequency uniquely designed to torture hangover
victims. God is a seriously cruel motherfucker.

I stumble and hear the skittering-glittering of a bottle before it hits the
edge of the kitchen floor and explodes in shards. I am inventing new cuss
words as I find and don my boots and begin my clean-up, ripping down shades
on each window I pass.  I get the last of the obvious shards swept up and
the last of the fucking portals-to-agony covered before taking care of my
morning needs. I actually howl in pain when I open the bathroom door. The
wall of windows over the tub and into the shower funnels light to the giant
mirrors, which bounce it off every glass and porcelain surface. I serious
consider pissing in the kitchen sink.

Emptied, cleaned and stuffed full of a handful of orange M&Ms (aka generic
Ibuprofen), I rekindle the fire to a nice roaring blaze. I set the kettle
to boil for my obligatory oatmeal. I realise my tragic mistake just as the
fucking evil kettle begins its whistling attack on my eardrums. It's like
fingernails scratching down the blackboard of my very soul.  I silence it
and pour the water over my breakfast and set about finding things with
which to top and disguise the gruel.

The doctors could never convince me to eat the crap, regardless of dire
warnings of colorectal horrors that would surely befall me. Then the evil
fucking conniving bastards appealed to a higher power: Maria. I had meekly
eaten the cardboard-paste every morning since. I find slightly-brown apple
slices and some raisins, pour a glass of milk and set to, masticating the
grey spackle until I can force myself to swallow.

Gradually, the world ceases to be a purgatorial nightmare and resolves
into... a different purgatorial nightmare. I allocate twenty minutes to
mourning, but find that I no longer need to cry, at least not until
something might trigger it. This is a revelatory change; the first day I
started with grief but not weeping.

With this boost in confidence, I sit at my computer and... well, let's
check Facebook first. And BBC. And Times of India. And Sydney Morning
Herald (I never read American media unless I want news about politics in
other countries). I put off mail until last. My editor has recently moved
past subtle hints and suggestions to being serious worried about my
unprecedented lack of productivity. I am... had been treasured by my
publishing house for three reasons: My books sell, my books are not
formulaic, and I deliver an average of a book every month, using three
pseudonyms to keep from flooding my 'fans'.

I sigh, the letter today is actually considerate. He asks how I am doing
and if he can do anything to ease my 'situation'. I consider replying,
'yes, Clive, bring Maria back from the..." Okay, that's one on the day. I
dry my eyes and move to Gmail. Unbeknownst to Clive and [bleep] House
Publishing, I also write surreptitiously on Nifty. I know, intellectually,
that if the press finds out that the famed Stettler McKay is also
Mr.Kink.Daddy.1950, I'll be ruined. Then again, we... I can never spend
what I have already, so fuck it. And the mail it generated is the highlight
of my day. Marie doesn't... didn't care; she even enjoyed the mail I got
back.

I get fan mail by the truckload for my vapid, uninspired prose. Sad and
needy housewives across the English-speaking world gush over my heroes and
heroines. The genuine and thankful words I get from men (and the occasional
woman) who read my lust-drenched fuck-fests are what gets me through the
tedious fan-mag interviews, though. Maria and I frequently laugh... laughed
at the irony.

For reasons I can't and don't understand, I am suddenly interested in the
window over the sink. The shade has never really covered it right, one of a
dozen things that I had never bothered to fix. I raise the shade gradually,
letting the evil fucking light in bit by bit. I find that the M&Ms are
kicking in and I can actually tolerate the light. I ponder what might have
drawn my attention. A hawk hunting? A strange shadow?

Then I see it. It is not smoke, but a plume of distortion. Heat-ripples
from a summer roadbed incongruously overlaid upon a not-quite-winter
sky. Intensely curious, I don my cold-weather gear and boots, grab my
shotgun (yes, there are bears in upstate New York, and not always the
furry-big-guy type), a compass and a canteen - fifty years later, my
scoutmaster's deep voice screaming, "Never, ever hike without water" echoes
still. I take a sighting on the nearly-invisible plume and another on a
distant hill and scribble the info on a notepad. It was around 20°F,
cold but not near dangerous.

It takes me an hour to work my way carefully to the pond at the edge
between my own property and some state-owned land held for water-rights. I
slowly realise where I'm headed. There is an old hunting-shed next to the
seasonal pond (in spring and early summer a wide, lush bed of catnip and
reed; the rest of the year a meadow with a deep pool).  I approach with
extraordinary caution. No one should be here. No one should even know it
exists. I check the safety on my 310 over/under.

I spot the fire and award the unknown stranger. I give him/her 9 for 10 on
fire-building skills. He or She had used bone-dry wood producing no smoke
at all and built a nice if rude stone circle to contain it. I then see
movement. A short, broad-shouldered but painfully-thin man stands beside
the pool. The 'lake-bed' is basically a funnel, a wide, shallow bowl with a
deep, sudden spot in the middle. Below was a spring feeding it. In spring
and summer, enough runoff could not only fill the 'lake' but actually
activate a dry creek-bed to drain into the Balsam. He stands there, arms
out as if praying, but not moving.

I move close and see that he is not just shivering, but quaking, head to
toe. 20° is cold, but not *that* cold. He has a coat and boots. His
shoulders move in a different rhythm, as if he is wracked with sobs. I move
within a dozen yards before speaking.

"Who are you?"

He whirls and has a reaction I never expected. "God, Thank you! Shoot me!
Please, shoot me! God, PLEASE! I hate cold water!" Without preliminary or
warning, he crumples in a heap. I move forward with rather exaggerated
caution. He is unarmed as far as I can see. I move to the shed and kick
open the door; the lock is broken.  There is nothing, *nothing*
inside. Anything this guy has is on his body.

I kick sand over the fire to smother it, then move to the still but
quivering form of the man. On closer inspection, I'd call him a
boy. Perhaps 20? 22? He is insensate, almost as if the shaking is a
seizure. I decide that he'll die if I leave him, and the risk that he is an
axe murderer is lower than the risk that I'd be murdering him to leave him
like this. I use a couple of zip-ties to secure his wrists, certain that I
would need to drape them soround my neck to get him to the cabin.

I lift him and he weighs... nothing. It's as if he was the pile of clothes
and nothing else. I use a fireman's carry. Even at my age (66) and moderate
strength, it's like carrying a case of soda. He is quaking like an
epileptic, and I wonder if that's the problem. We reach the cabin in a
quarter-hour. I pull the thick, mountain-goat rug in front of the hearth,
cover it with sheets and towels, and set the boy down. I revise my
esitimate; he can't be more than 18-19 (the age we lost Jacob Jr) with
delicate bone structure and troubled, quivering features. He twitches as I
pull a couple other towels then quilts around him.

I cut away the bonds and replace them with a pair of leather cuffs that
Maria... never mind. They are soft and comfortable and quite secure. I lock
them together with several cable-ties and do the same with his feet. He
locks himself in a foetal position whenever I release his limbs. Unlike
Maria, I am not enough of a softie to put me and mine at risk for a 'lost
lamb'.

The man-child loses control of his bowels and I strip him of his clothes,
deciding quickly to throw them outside the cabin; they reek of much more
than what he just let loose. It is the smell of sweat and fear and
boy-musk.

He loses control, front or back, several more times and I clean him up as
if he were a baby, no better and no worse. He regains his senses to some
extent three times that day, at each point I force both water and soft food
into him. Our son, before we lost him, had several bouts of violent illness
so this is nothing more nor less than a learned response. The kid seems to
settle around midnight and I go to sleep as well.  As Morpheus takes me, I
realise that I did not cry a single time since morning, and had felt no
need for my nightly tot (or five). I am asleep before I finished the
thought.

I wake to a loud noise. The boy is struggling frantically as if
possessed. I move to him and smell the fact that he's soiled the towels in
the night. I grab his feverish face and make him look at me. "You will be
okay, son. You will be fine. Breathe, son, breathe." It takes several tries
but he quiets and falls back to a fitful and restless sleep. I clean him
again and decide that, since it is 4:00, there is no reason to return to
sleep.

I rekindle the hearth and make myself the vile breakfast inflicted upon me
by the medical profession. I decide on a quick (as it turns out, abortive)
trip to the woodpile; contrary to Wunderground, we've gotten another foot
at least of snow during the hours of darkness. I'll have to break out the
skis or snowshoes to move around. As I come back into the cabin, I hear a
loud groan and smell that my guest has again lost control of his bowels. I
clean him again, this time bathing every part of his quaking, seizing,
pain-wracked and quite filthy body. I replace the water in the pail three
times and the sponge once. He twists and moans and writhes, and I dutifully
ignore it all. Is certainly and emphatically male, and no mistake!

I am readying a noontide meal when I hear a gasp, a sob, a shuddering
breath. I look and, for the first time, see my charge's eyes outside of the
rolled-back or feverish orbs that had flashed at me occasionally. They are
a rich, soft brown and I can somehow see a life of torment within them.

As chance would have it, I am heating chicken and noodles on the
hearth-iron. I add a can of broth to thin it. "Do you know where you are?"

Panic rushes to his face.

"Never mind that. What is your name?"

The level of fear and terror in his face confuses me. I saved him from
hypothermia, perhaps death, and he fears *me*?

"Screw it. I don't care if you tell me your name. Just give me something to
call you."

His voice is harsh, rusty, unused. "L-Logan."

"Hi, Logan. I'm Jacob." I shock myself. I have not told a person my
original name for, perhaps, forty years. I've been Stettler McKay since I
was 22, when I submitted my first novel. Maria is... was the only person
who called me Jacob or Jake. I turn back and find the boy staring at me,
confused and terrified. I grab a bowl and pour soup (mainly broth) into it,
then sit cross-legged in front of 'Logan'. He looks at the bowl with
revulsion, but I prop him up and spoon it into him, bit by bit. The act of
eating exhausts him, and I watch as he sleeps, finally peaceful. Tremors
wrack him occasionally, but I think the worst is past. The question
remains, though: Who or what have I brought into my otherwise-hermetic
world?

<eof>

Like the setup? Think it's worth exploring? Let me know at
orson.cadell@gmail.com

*****

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