Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 07:25:47 -0800 (PST)
From: Willie Hewes <williehewes@yahoo.com>
Subject: Nickolas Rising (III)

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*gulp* Oh, er, Ok, so it's been a really long time
since I last added to this story. I'm Sorry! I got my
act back together now though, so the rest of the
episodes will follow soon. Enjoy, and see you at
Dexter 9: http://www.geocities.com/willie_hewes
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Laine sat on his bed, still dressed. He had just been sitting there for
quite a while now, in the half-dark. He felt disappointed, as if Nicholas
had already left for New York again. He should not have called him Nick,
now Mr. Rising was mad at him. Who cares. It was impossible anyway, they
had nothing in common. To Nicholas, he was just a boy. A nobody. He
couldn't dance, he knew nothing about choreography or ... or whatever. It
had been foolish to think Nicholas would even notice him.

      It was impossible, it was not going to happen. Nicholas would leave
again next week, and none of the things Laine's overheated imagination had
suggested were going to happen. He was just a boy, and Nicholas was so
beautiful! A face like a Botticelli angel, he thought. He dances, even if
he seems to be standing still. If only Laine would have something to offer
him, something they could do together...

     *Wait a second,* Laine jumped up. There *was* something he could do!
His pictures! He snapped on the lights and took out the collection of his
favorites. He went through them quickly. Scenery, some sunsets, a
cityscape, the boulevard... A portrait of his father's second wife, dressed
in a nightgown and draped out on a couch. He stared at it for a
moment. More portraits, a couple of Jesse, the official school-queer. He
had tried to become friends with him, but it didn't work out. Jesse was so
proud to be gay he couldn't imagine why other people would want to keep it
a secret. "So what if your father kicks you out?" he had said once. The
pictures Laine took of him looked good, professional. From under his
mattress came another envelope, with a different type of pictures. Nudes,
or semi-nudes. Mostly self-portraits, a series of his cousin, who was a
model. They looked professional too, esthetic, not pornographic. Except for
the one cumshot he had taken of himself. He smiled at seeing it. If his
father knew of these...

     There was one lone picture at the bottom. He had stared at it for so
long he knew it by heart. An old building in Sienna, with huge iron rings
attached to the stone wall. A young man chained to these rings with two
pairs of handcuffs. They glitter like silver jewelry. His arms are
stretched wide, his head hangs down. His shirt is torn. Laine imagines
Nicholas in that picture, chained to those massive iron rings. He wouldn't
let his head hang down, Nicholas would stand upright, even if he got
whipped. Maybe he would look up, turn his eyes to heaven like a
saint... Yes, Laine closed his eyes, he could see the picture in his head,
perfectly. It exited him.

     When he went to sleep, something resembling new hope had set root in
his mind.

                                         ***


     The Leff's bathroom, or at least the one Nicholas was using, had a
man-sized mirror against one of the walls. Nicholas was not used to seeing
himself so completely, and so naked. Carefully he pressed the soft towel to
all wet parts of his skin. Sometimes when Nicholas looked in the mirror, he
saw beauty. Today he could see only the mutant he knew he was. Modern
fashion was all that made his shape beautiful, in truth he was a freak, at
odds with everyone. Even though the world loved him now, he still hated the
world.

     He had been at odds with the world since the day he was born, since
the moment the nurse had stammered: "It's a boy, but..." There was no
video, but he had imagined what it had been like very often.

     Most of all he hated doctors, physicians. *They* were the ones that
had insisted something was wrong, the baby had to be operated, tiny as he
was. Everyone always told him he was too young to remember, but he knew
that he did remember. He remembered lying on his back in a world of
painfully bright white, with a flaming hot pain between his little legs. He
remembered crying, screaming with pain, and screaming and screaming and on
one came. No one came to pick him up and hold him against her breasts to
comfort him, and when the night was finally over, he was still screaming,
but his voice was gone, and the only sound he could make was a hoarse
whisper, the shadow of a scream.

     These doctors, the ones that had done that to him, that had mutilated
him at such an early age, were the same ones that later insisted he took
those damn hormones. He refused to. Their reasoning, their pleading, their
threats could not change his mind. His mother: "But you will be so sorry if
you don't! The doctors say your bones will not harden, and you might grow
to be seven feet tall! And what about your voice, don't you want to sound
and look like a normal boy?" No, he didn't. He was born a freak, so that
was what he would grow up to be; a freak, and he didn't care what others
thought or did.
     "Don't be so stubborn Nick!" Shut up mom. I won't take them, no matter
what you say. This is my life, you can't force me. They had tried, the
doctors. But he hadn't given in. I know why you want me to take them. You
screwed up, and you know it. And now, thirteen years later, you are trying
to cover up your mistakes, you are trying to make my hide my true nature
with your modern concoctions. Well, I won't! You screwed up thirteen years
ago, you made me into this *thing*, this *unman* and I want *all the world
to know what you did!*

     He stepped back. His face had, for a moment, twisted into an
expression of pain. That old pain... "Never mind about that now," he said
aloud in the low whisper that had become his normal speaking voice. Why
think of these things now? Why was he still standing here naked in this
stranger's bathroom?

     But before he got dressed, he took another long look at his mutilated
body in the mirror. He imagined himself showing it to that boy, Laine. "Do
you want to know *why* I am so beautiful, Laine? Do you want to know the
secret behind those long and graceful limbs, that androgynous face?" He
could see Laine's expression, perfect disbelief, horror, and inevitable,
the shake of the head, his hands to block the view. "No, no..."

				    ***