Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 09:38:22 -0400
From: Jake Preston <jemtling@gmail.com>
Subject: Psychic Detective 38

Psychic Detective 38
By: Jake Preston

This is a work of erotic gay fiction, intended for readers who enjoy a
murder mystery in which fully developed characters interact sexually and in
other ways. Their sexual encounters are sometimes romantic, sometimes
recreational, sometimes spiritual, and almost always described
explicitly. My attention is equally divided between narrative, character
development, and sex scenes. If you don't care for this combination, there
are many other excellent "nifty" stories to choose from. And remember that
while nifty stories are free, maintaining a website is not. Please think
about donating at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html

Writing is usually a solitary avocation, but not necessarily so on
nifty.org, where a longer story appears in installments. If my characters
and my story grab your attention, you can always intervene with suggestions
for improvements. All sincere comments will get a response!

Jake, at jemtling@gmail.com


       *  *  *  *  *  *


Chapter 38
Aztec Cosmology, II


      And when they returned to Juan Carlos Hotel after picaresque
adventures in the colonial streets of Mérida, Jésus reopened the bar
as a favor to the manager, who no longer masqueraded as the proprietor and
whose mind gnawed with a suspicion that he might be in trouble for cheating
the bartenders, or maybe he was developing a conscience. "Only through the
dinner hour," Jésus reminded him. "I'll be joining my friends when the
Papantla pageant begins."

      On the hotel veranda, Xiu sat at coffee with his partners in the
'spank and spunk' ménage à quatre. That game now seemed distant in
time, blurred by the knowledge that while they were playing it, one of the
Papantla acrobats, José Castellano, had been kidnapped and raped and
tortured by Albino, also known as Howard Coleman, and his new accomplice,
about whom nothing was known and perhaps never would be except for the
results of a DNA analysis. Jack and Salvador rehearsed the tale of
Göran's trance and repeated the 'ya'axche-oracle', as they now were
calling it:

      "The vultures will attack the cosmic serpent at Chichen Itza. Then
they will fly to the ya'axche at the sacred cenote. Not for them the river
below the roots of the ya'axche. That journey will be for another."

      "It happened just as they said," Göran confirmed. "I remember
everything except for the oracle. I don't remember saying it, and I don't
know what it means. It it's from Manitou, all I can do is repeat Dark
Eagle's advice that a shaman never utters an oracle unless other people are
present and it is their responsibility to remember it and interpret it. I
won't help you with the analysis, because I'm afraid that anything I say
would mislead you, since I would be violating the limits set for a shaman."

      Salvador said he couldn't see how this could be so, but Jack
understood. "If we write it down maybe we can break it down," he said, and
wrote on the top sheet of paper in his clipboard:

      "The vultures will attack the cosmic serpent at Chichen Itza. Then
they will fly to the ya'axche at the sacred cenote. Not for them the river
below the roots of the ya'axche. That journey will be for another."

      "Let's start with the obvious," Jack said. "The place is Chichen
Itza. We've already planned to be there on Easter Sunday. Is the oracle
telling us to go there sooner? Or later?"

      No one could answer.

      "Very well, then," Jack said. "Maybe we'll have better luck with the
vultures. What do we know about them?" he asked.

      "We know two things that they will do and one thing they won't,"
Salvador said. "They will attack some sort of serpent, perhaps a
villain. They will fly to a ya'axche, which must be some sort of plant,
since it has roots. And they won't take a journey on a river, but someone
else will."
      "I can help you with the ya'axche," Xiu said. It's the Yucatecan word
for 'ceiba'. In Maya myth it's the cosmic tree. It connects earth and sky
and the underworld. The gods live in its branches. Every ceiba in
Yucatán is a replication of the original cosmic tree. It has white
blossoms and when they come to fruition the Maya extract pochote, a fiber
like cotton from which they get most of their textiles."

      Xiu pointed to workmen who were busy erecting a 33-yard pole in the
Square, in preparation for the azteca creación of the acrobats. "That's
the cosmic tree, and it's a ya'axche."

      "That complicates things," Salvador said. "I assumed that the
vultures in the oracle are the same ones that I saw on the beach yesterday,
but now it seems that they represent Maya gods who live in the cosmic
tree."

      The workmen in the Square had finished assembling the 33-yard cosmic
pole. They were starting to raise it in place, and then they were
interrupted by Pablo and the other three male acrobats who insisted on
inspecting the two connecting points on the pole before it was raised.  The
workmen looked pissed but even from a distance Jack and Göran and
Salvador and Xiu could see that Pablo was tightening one of the bolts that
the workmen had left loose. Then they started to assemble a metal framework
to support a safety-net around the pole. The acrobats helped with that,
too, and checked each other's work and the work of the workmen.

      "For the workmen it's a job, but it's life or death for the
acrobats," Salvador observed.

      "It's more than a safety-net; it's part of the act," Xiu
said. "During the combat of the acrobats, they take turns falling to the
ground and the net signifies the ground that they fall to, and then they
bounce back to the top of the ya'axche and cling to a square platform at
the top called Omexocan, the 'place of Duality', symbolized by
Ometéotl-Omecíhautl, the Father- Mother Creator-God."

      How does this relate to the oracle? Göran and Jack and Salvador
didn't ask. They knew that Xiu was getting to that. To unravel the riddle
in an oracle, one must approach it with a large base of knowledge from
which to extract pertinent details. You can't find a needle in a haystack
unless there's a haystack, and the haystack is always more important than
the needle, even though it's not the haystack you're looking for.

      "Let us put Easter out of our minds," Xiu said. "The first part of
the oracle tells us precisely when we must be present at Chichen Itza, and
the fact that it corresponds with Easter is just a coincidence. The 'cosmic
serpent' in the oracle is the image that appears on the front of the Great
Pyramid at the moment of Summer Solstice. This is the secret hidden in the
open.  Thousands of Mexicans travel to Chichen Itza each summer to see the
cosmic serpent. This is the feathered serpent called Kukulkan in Yucatecan,
and Qutzalcoatl in Nahautl."

      "Albino will be in the crowd at Chichen Itza, cruising his next
victim" Salvador said, and added, "even though he knows we're on to him."

      "Albino doesn't know we've got a psychic and a Maya magician on our
side," Jack said.

      "Albino can't help himself," Göran interjected. "He's driven by
lust-murder and it no longer matters what he knows or doesn't know. This
much I can say, but I can't say anything about the oracle itself."

      Jack drew a circle around the first sentence in the paper on his
clipboard: 'The vultures will attack the cosmic serpent at Chichen
Itza'. "Let us consider that we have solved this part of the riddle," he
said.

      "Except for the vultures," Salvador said. "Are they actual birds, or
Maya gods?"

      "If this were a Lakota oracle, or Ojibwe, the vultures would be both
birds and spirits, or birds inhabited by spirits, which is the same thing
as gods." He looked to Göran for guidance, but Göran was watching the
tight-figured acrobats who were tightening the bolts on the brackets that
steadied the framework that was to hold their safety-net.

      "Safety is the most important thing for acrobats," Göran said.

      "Pablo!" - They heard the voice of Jésus who had left his post at
the bar and was calling to him from the low wall of the veranda, and they
saw Pablo leaving his crew and engaging in conversation with Jésus.

      Jack gazed at the undried blood of José Castellano on Göran's
palms and the marks on his face. He realized that Göran had given a new
oracle.

      "Albino wants to take another acrobat, and the one he's chosen is
Pablo," Jack said. "He killed José Castellano by mistake and now he
needs to rectify the error."

      "This new oracle would not have come to Göran if he had violated
the taboo and given us clues about the other one," Xiu said.

      "There's more to it than that," Jack said. "Call him or
Ometéotl-Omecíhautl or Manitou, the Great Spirit will help us as long
as Göran is his shaman."

      "But why Pablo?" Salvador asked.

      "Because Pablo impersonates Ometéotl-Omecíhautl in the azteca
creacíon. Albino wants to kill God," Xiu said.

      "I think we should warn Pablo. He has a right to know," Salvador
said.

      "That would distract him from his performance," Xiu said. "Just tell
him we've got his back, and ask him about the exact time when the Papantlas
perform their pageant at Chichen Itza."

      Back to the ya'axche-oracle: 'They will fly to the ya'axche at the
sacred cenote'. "There are many underground rivers in Yucatán, and many
cenotes lead to them, and many of them are held to be sacred at one time or
another. Even the Christians have legends about saints' miracles performed
at a cenote," Salvador said.

      "That's true," Xiu agreed, "but there's one near the edge of gorge at
the edge of Chichen Itza that's larger than most. I don't recall if there's
a ceiba there, but it's a common tree in the region."

      "Needless to say the underground river means someone will die there,
and it won't be the vultures," Salvador said. For a man who was skeptical
about Aztec and Maya mysticism, he had gotten into it and now he was trying
to make sense out of oracles.



      * * * * * *


      The veranda doubled as a viewing-stand for the azteca creación on
the Square. Xiu served as commentator for Göran and Jack and Salvador
and Jésus, and when a crowd gathered to hear him, a mariachi-singer
loaned him a microphone and he explained each episode of the pageant in
English, Spanish, and German, and then in Yucatenic out of solidarity with
a few Maya spectators. He stood on a chair and after he had engaged his
audience in the allegorical meaning of the pageant, he said that the money
collected in a bowl in the table in front of him would be given to the
family of José Castelleno, the Papantla acrobat who had been murdered on
the night of Maundy Thursday, in whose memory the Good Friday performance
was dedicated, and whose part was now being played by María Santana, the
first woman ever to perform in the azteca creación. Xiu kept sentences
rolling flawlessly in four different languages, a linguistic feat that
entranced his auditors even when he was speaking a language they didn't
understand.  Göran pitched in a hundred-dollar bill, which shamed the
American tourists, and a few Germans, into donating more than they would
have done, although (it pains me to say) Göran's example was not enough
to get mexicanos to part with more than a few meager pesos, perhaps because
they didn't know an American hundred-dollar bill when they saw one.

      Pablo Rivera began the pageant with a solo performance. Xiu announced
him as Ometéotl-Omecíhautl, the Father-Mother Creato. He climbed the
ya'axche like a cat-burglar and somersaulted upward to Omexocan, the
'Duality' platform, where he pirouetted like a ballet- dancer and then dove
headlong toward the net, and somersaulted upright and sprung back to
Omexocan in one smooth bound. Salvador, Göran, and Jack glanced at
Jésus and felt a twinge of jealousy knowing that he was Pablo's sexual
partner while Xiu explicated the scene in four languages, too busy for
jealousy.

      "And now Ometéotl-Omecíhautl will create Earth and the
East. His color is red and the name of this god is Tlatlauhqui
Tezcatilipoca," Xiu said. "The acrobat impersonating this god is Alfredo
Tloxhuitl." Alfredo climbed the ya'axche and received a laying-on-of-hands
blessing from Ometéotl-Omecíhautl and then he dove to the net and
bounced back. From there he flew in mid-air suspended by a rope that was
attached to the foot of the Creator-God, although this part was an
illusion.

      Next came the creation of Fire and North, whose color is black. "This
god is called Yayauhqui Tezcatilipoca and he is impersonated by Antón
Sandro González. One of his ancestors was a Conquistador who settled in
Veracruz but he had cousins in Mérida." The remark drew cheers from the
spectators as Antón repeated Alfredo's performance, and then there were
two colors flying in mid-air, red and black.

      The performance was repeated by Arcaño Xlachihuitl who
impersonated Quetalcóatl, the god of Wind and the West whose color was
white; and again by Señorita María Santana who impersonated
Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of Water. She was Quetzalcótl's wife, who
represents South and whose color is white. "The Aztec god would have been
Huitzolcpochtli, and he would have been impersonated by our beloved José
Castellano, and he's with us in spirit while the lovely señorita plays
his part," Xiu said in four languages, and reminded the spectators to make
a donation in his memory, an then there were four acrobats flying mid-air
in circles of red, black, white, and blue around the ya'axche.

      The peaceful aerial dance of the acrobats erupted into a combat
during which Alfredo (Tlatlauhqui Tezcatilipoca) sent the other three gods
rolling to the net. By the time that they sprung back to Omexocan,
Ometéotl-Omecíhautl had been toppled and Alfredo took his place on
the platform. "This is the First Age of Creation, the Age of Earth, East,
and Redness," Xiu explained. The aerial dance of the acrobats resumed, with
Tlatlauhqui Tezcatilipoca on the 'throne' of the cosmos.

      Other combats followed. Each one began a new age. The Second Age was
Yayauhqui Tezcatilipoca, the age of Fire and North, whose color is
black. The Third Age was Quetalcóatl, the age of Water and South, whose
color is white. The Fourth Age was Chalchiuhtlicue, the age of Wind and
West, whose color is blue. In each of these combats, Pablo
(Ometéotl-Omecíhautl) drove a usurping god or goddess from his
platform, but then is was seized by another.

      In the last aerial combat of the acrobats, Ometéotl-Omecíhautl
too his rightful place and the dance of four colors was restored. "This is
the Fifth Age, the age of the Aztecs and the Maya," Xiu announced. After a
dazzling display of acrobatics, the Papantlas bounded from the net to the
ground, each one helping the other, and the pageant was over. Jésus ran
to them and told them to stick together. "Come join us on the
veranda. Don't disperse. The killer who got José Castellano is somewhere
in the crowd," he said.

      The Papantlas trusted Jésus and followed Pablo to the veranda,
where they spent the rest of the evening with Göran and Xiu. Jack went
home with Salvador, who (at Jésus's insistence) took the José
Castellano 'memorial money' with him. He had good instincts, too: before
the evening was over, the hotel manager came to him and demanded twenty
percent of the money "in consideration of your use of the veranda."

      "The fund is in the care of the Policía," Jésus said. "If you
think we owe you money, you should take your complaint to Detective
Salvador Marcos Gutierez at Police Headquarters, but if they invite you to
stay the night, you might find the sleeping accommodations somewhat less
elegant than those at the Juan Carlos Hotel."

      Jésus thought he heard the word 'mariposas' muttered as the
manager stomped off with unlined pockets. Back at their table, he didn't
forget to ask Pablo what time the azteca creación was scheduled for at
Chichen Itza.

      According to legend, the azteca creación causes Quetzalcótl to
appear on the side of the Great Pyramid," Pablo said. "It's like a ritual,
so we start the pageant an hour before the Summer Solstice image comes."

      Göran looked thoughtful. "From now until Easter Monday, I want you
boys to stick together," he said. "You're all in danger but there's safety
in numbers, and don't let one of you drift apart unless you've got me or
Jack and Salvador close by."

      "Even at night?" Alfredo Tloxhuitl asked.

      "Especially at night," Göran said. "It's a lot to ask but it's
only through to Monday."


       * * * * * *


      Salvador thought that he had to explain to his nosy neighbors,
Señora García especially, why he was bringing a strange man to his
home in a conventional middle-class neighborhood near the eastern edge of
town where Mérida ends and the desert begins. He started to say that
Jack was his cousin, but Jack intervened with something closer to truth:

      "I'm a sheriff from South Dakota, ma'am, and I've come to learn
policing methods in this part of México. Detective Gutierez was kind
enough to show me the Square where we sat a pageant of the Papantla
acrobats and I'm most impressed with your fair city, ma'am, but I believe
there's more people living here than in the entire state of South Dakota."

      It was much to Jack's advantage that 'South Dakota' may as well have
been Timbuktu or Shangri La to Señora García. As Salvador translated
his run-on wordiness, the eyes of Señora widened and her lips smacked of
her first taste of the next day's gossip which had been handed to her so
unexpectedly. Jack showed Señor García his sheriff's badge and let
him heft it to feel its weight. "It's not solid gold; it's just gold-plated
brass," he said, and Salvador translated that, too, as under-the-surface
disclosure was the essence of gossip for Señora and her teatime friends.

      "The Juan Carlos Hotel was too crowded because of Holy Week and I
told Salvador that I would like to see the inside of a real-life house in
México," Jack said, anticipating Señora's next question, which was,
indeed, a not altogether neighborly one about the propriety of bringing a
foreign visitor into the privacy of their neighborhood. So it was the
stranger's idea and Salvador was an accommodating host.

      Señora García commented on the impropriety of bringing "those
pagan Papantlas" to Mérida on Good Friday, but Jack was two quick on the
uptake for her and soon she confessed that she had never actually seen the
Papantla acrobats, except on television, and Jack extracted from her a
pledge to seen them on the Square next year on Good Friday.

      "You look so young for a sheriff," Señora said and of course she
meant 'too young'. His undeniable sexiness penetrated even her gossip-jaded
eyes.

      "A young man like me has so much to learn from an elder," Jack said,
and now the conversation was taking on double meanings and Salvador thought
it was time to end it. He saw Señora's glance at his little house, how
she was calculating the layout of three bedrooms and wondering of Salvador
had a spare bed in one of them. Before she could ask, Señor García
interrupted and said, "I hope you'll get a chance to visit our neighborhood
in the morning light, Sheriff Jack. The desert is only three blocks that
way" (he pointed), "and after you've seen it, Señora and I would be most
honored if you would come to our home for breakfast, say at nine o'clock?"

      Señora García gasped and was about to protest, but Señor
assured her, "you can invite some of your lady friends, my dear," and then
it occurred to her that the neighborhood drama of showing off an exotic
American guest would be worth more than three weeks of gossip put together,
so she repeated her husband's invitation and they were agreed.

      "Alone at last," Salvador laughed when his front door closed behind
the clutches of Señora García. "When she sees me with a woman, like
my cousin for instance, she takes me for a fornicator, and when she sees me
with a man, she takes me for a hombre gay, which is right, of course, but I
think she believes your explanation about why you're here."

      "That's because it's mostly true," Jack said. "What were you planning
to tell her, before I butted in?"

      "I was starting to say that you are my cousin and we just arrived
from the Mérida airport," Salvador said.

      "One would think that a Senior Detective would dream up an alibi that
wouldn't implode the moment I opened my mouth and spoke not a word of
español," Jack teased. "Tomorrow morning, let's give these ladies
something to talk about, some alien exotic Americana that will exorcize
their fantasies of homosexual boys. Maybe they can learn to gossip on a
loftier plane."

      Salvador embraced him and they kissed and then he wondered if they
could be seen through the window and suddenly he realized that he didn't
care. "You seem to understand women better than me," he murmured. "Why is
that, I wonder?" He fondled Jack's butt like it had something to do with
gossiping señoras which of course it didn't, or maybe it did indirectly.

      "Señoras want gossip," Jack said. "Tomorrow morning, we'll tell
the tale of Albino the American serial killer who came to México to
murder acrobats and you'll be their hero because the news will be on
television, and they'll be preoccupied with gory details known only to
themselves, so there won't be room in their gossip for speculation about
who you make love with, or which one of us is playing goalie and which was
is kicking the ball in our amusing soccer game, which is usually the first
thing they wonder about."

      "You are such a bad boy, Jack, so devilish devious," Salvador laughed
and the musculature of his body under his clothes made him horny. He turned
on the air conditioner in the master bedroom because it was stuffy but
mostly to muffle the sounds of romance that would have been heard from his
window, had it been left open, when Señora García took a post-
midnight stroll in her garden to check on the welfare of her roses and
gardenias.

      Jack stripped and presented his naked body to Salvador, who tried to
remember a time when he looked as good as Jack did now, but he couldn't,
for he had never been anything like Jack, never an ideal specimen, and the
thought came to him that if he couldn't be Jack, he could have Jack and
maybe the second option was the better one.

      He tried to explain how he felt, putting his thoughts into
words. This wasn't easy for him, as he was accustomed to keeping his
deepest sexual feelings to himself, and now it seemed like a Good Friday
confession to a closeted priest in Catédral de Mérida, but he was
relieved to confess, and unexpectedly happy when he saw that his words had
planted a seed in Jack that flowered to lust in his soul, and, more
important at this moment, in his body.

      "When you have me you can be me if we imagine ourselves as the same
person while we fuck," Jack said. "All we have to do is concentrate. When
you fuck me I'll imagine my body as an extension of yours, and if you
imagine the same thing, you'll be me and I'll be you."

      Salvador ran a finger down his cleft and then Jack lay face-down on
the bed and arched.  Salvador fondled his butt-cheeks and ran his finger
along the cleft. "Welcome to the breeding ground," Jack said.

      Salvador mounted and cock-frotted Jack's cleft. "What are we doing,
do you know?" he whispered in Jack's ear.

      "We're making love with our minds and then we'll make love with our
bodies," Jack said. Salvador nuzzled his chin on Jack's left shoulder close
to his neck.

      "You know, Salvador, I never told you that I'm basically a top man,
not a bottom. As Göran, if you don't believe it. Then I fell in love
with Calvin, my boyfriend in Lakota, and he's a top too so I turned for
him, but even so I'll always be a top."

      "You made that sacrifice for Calvin and then for me?"

      "I never thought of it as sacrifice," Jack said. "Maybe I thought of
you as Hernán Cortez and me as Montezuma."

      "When in México," Salvador smiled.

      "You're not saying what's on your mind," Jack said.

      "It's overwhelming to learn that I conquered a stud without knowing
it," Salvador said.  "If you're gonna land these surprises on me, you've
got to give me time for cognitive processing."

      Salvador penetrated the portal and he knew that Jack was the finest
specimen he'd ever fuck and then Jack was making noises like he was taking
it like a man which prompted Salvador to give him more pain by sticking
dick into him just a bit harder and then a lot harder. Then Jack flipped on
his back and Salvador crawled between his legs and Jack rested his ankles
on Salvador's shoulders and guided his cock into the culo that seems snugly
fit, not one-size-fits-all but a culo laid out just for him. Salvador liked
screwing most men from behind because then it seemed more like breaking a
bronco or taming a beast, but with Jack he liked missioning, the better to
see the athletic contours of his body as he came down on them, and he liked
the stoic expression on Jack's face when he accepted a full-bodied cock up
the culo from a man he could easily throw across the room if he had a mind
to.

      Salvador knelt before the muscular frog-legged figure of Jack with
his cockhead brushing his partner's perineum and prodding his scrotum. He
fondled Jack's cock and flexed his foreskin with two fingers and imagined
his torso as an extension of his own, just like Jack said he should do, in
an attitude of body-worship that soon turned to ownership while Jack gazed
in his eyes and caught his breath and braced for a violent session of
punch-fucking that he knew was coming.  No words were exchanged but Jack
nodded in the affirmative. They had vowed to fuck without words while
imagining themselves as one body, but Jack couldn't suppress a loud groan
when Salvador's dick drove all the way into him and he moaned when Salvador
pulled it out again.  Still, groans and moans don't count as words and
Salvador's punch-fucking established a rhythm for his subvocal
reactions. An now Jack was ready to cum and the only thing preventing him
was the pressure of Salvador's punch-fucking. Salvador alternated between
cock-frotting and punch- fucking when he saw that he was getting close to
orgasm.

      Release came, when it did, simultaneously, and idealized occurrence
but a rare one, in a fuck (nor a frot), proof, Salvador said, that
Conquistador had turned Tenochtitlan from Moctezuma to Montezuma.

      "You'll have to explain that one to me," Jack said.

      "It's just a bit of Maya folklore about the Aztecs, the sort of thing
you learn when you live in Yucatán," Salvador said. "The Aztec name for
Méxcio is Tenochtitlan and it is also an epithet for the king. His Aztec
name was Moctezuma, until after his death when Europeans called him
Montezuma. I've heard tell of a Maya dramatic troup in Oaxaca that performs
a Conquistador pageant in which Hernán Cortez and Moctezuma fall in love
and during their courtship Moctezuma turned from a 'straight top' to a 'gay
bottom' and that's how he came to be called Montezuma. The pageant gets a
lot of laughs in Oaxaca and Quintana Roo but in Veracruz it would cause a
riot. Of course it's just legend. In reality, Moctezuma became Montezuma
due to an orthographic error in one of the sixteenth-century Spanish
chronicles about the Conquest.  No one in Europe knew anything about the
Aztecs except by hearsay, so the Moctezuma of reality became Montezuma in
history."

      "It's more than legend to me," Jack said. "It's one of those
anecdotes that shows history to be another category of fiction, like the
North American belief that the Indians were illiterate and had no writing,
because Americans never heard of the birch-bark scrolls of the Ojibwe, and
even when you show them the scrolls, as happens at the Ojibwe Monument in
Lake Ashawa, they still believe that the Indians were illiterate. But,
Salvador, I would very much like to see the Montezuma pageant."

      "From what I've heard, it's performed only in Maya dialects and we'd
have to go to Oaxaca to see it," Salvador said. "Still, it's not out of the
question."

      "Priceless pillow-talk," Jack laughed. "I'll bet our friends wonder
what we have to talk about après de sexe," and then Salvador was ready
to fuck again so they did.