[remix] Sky Castles (Shudders remix)
It’s not mind over matter, the Professor says.
Kei feels a trickle down his thigh, and reaches down to find it’s blood. He pulls the covers tighter around his body and listens to the heater click on.
It’s not mind over matter, the Professor says, because the mind is matter. Thoughts and emotions are electrical signals in the mess of gray matter. The dichotomy between mind and matter is false. So is the dichotomy between flesh and spirit.
Kei doesn’t think the Professor really talks to him, or even to himself. Every time afterward, like clockwork, like the voice of a message machine when nobody answers, the Professor mutters the same things.
People need to listen to their bodies. The false dichotomy isn’t simply a lie, it’s dangerous, it’s a wide wound between our self and our desires.
Kei imagines his foot talking to him. He covers his mouth so the Professor can’t hear him laughing.
It destroys people and swallows them whole. Denying what my body wanted nearly swallowed me whole. Even now I’m still poisoned by these societal constructs. Even now I feel guilt for what I did to you.
The Professor grabs Kei’s shoulder and shakes him.
Dammit, are you listening?
Kei nods and tries to kiss the Professor’s neck, but the Professor shoves him off the bed.
Get out, the Professor stands up and pulls on his boxers. I have work to do.
Kei's mother hardly notices when he returns to the apartment that evening. When he gets changed for bed he finds bloodstains in his underwear.
Kei is 12 and his hands are all knuckles, his hair is a dark mess, and his clothes are all secondhand and never quite fit him. He takes the stairs two, three steps at a time. He likes bugs and Edgar Rice Burroughs and The Headstones. He lives with his mother in the Sky Castles high rise apartment complex, and the Professor lives four doors down.
Kei likes the Professor because he smells like rose soap and all the countless little gifts he's been given; saltwater taffy, a Chinese finger trap, a photograph of Einstein with his tongue hanging out, a tattered paperback dictionary, a miniature glass praying mantis. Some nights they go out together and sit on the rusty swings of the apartment's playground. On those nights they eat ramen out of steaming cups while the Professor teaches Kei about the stars. No matter how many times the Professor explains the only constellation Kei can find on his own is Orion.
Kei wakes up and bites down on a gag. The taste of sock floods his mouth. He is naked and his wrists and ankles are bound together with gauze. The last thing he remembers is drinking Sunny D and reading Gods of Mars while the Professor's radio droned NPR.
The Professor sits on the edge of the bed, holding a jar so tightly that his fingers shake. Inside a dark shape moves against the glass.
I am freeing you, the Professor says as he twists off the lid. I am liberating you from the shackles of thought.
The dark thing climbs out of the jar, and slithers across the bed and onto Kei's leg. It looks and moves like a puddle of blood. The thing pushes itself into Kei, like the Professor has done so many times before, until it disappears inside of him.
Kei faints and wakes up in his clothes and in his own bed. The sock taste still hasn't left his mouth.
I'm going to die, Kei says.
His head throbs and throbs. His balls hurt. His insides are hot and the rest of him is cold, like a half-mircowaved burrito.
I'm going to die and he killed me.
Nobody is going to kill you, his mother says. Drink some more water.
That night Kei dreams the Professor is touching him, not the offhand way he usually does before shoving himself inside, but stroking Kei's cock, wrapping his mouth around and sucking, head bobbing, tongue lapping and twisting, salvia dripping from his lips until it's running down Kei's balls and thighs.
Kei wakes to a painfully hard erection. He feels wet beneath his balls and his fingers creep down to touch a hot little mouth, drooling through his underwear and onto the bed. The mouth twitches and beckons with a terrible heat and he is helpless to do anything but shove as many fingers as he can inside. His back curves as he squirms and bucks against his hand until something twists and snaps inside of him. The mouth sputters, closing and opening on his fingers while his cock sprays against his stomach.
He lies on the bed shuddering and panting. He stays hard, something the Professor never did after he spent himself in Kei.
He hears birds chatting, the jangle of his mother's keys, and the door clicking shut. A dull light filters through the window. It is eight in the morning and he is alone. His cock and new cunt throb.
His cock is so hard it almost hurts. He jacks off one, two, three more times, until he comes and nothing comes out of him. The bed smells and feels slimy under his feet. He turns the TV on. Passing the news as he channel surfs, he realizes he has been asleep for nineteen hours.
Despite all his attention he'd paid to the hungry, greedy heat, the heat keeps growing, a black coil on the stovetop turning red. After pretending to be sick he spends the next day jerking off and fingering himself, using one part after he exhausts the other. He knows it isn't enough but he pretends for a day or so.
The toughest part of getting the 14 year old boy six doors door to fuck him is just pulling his clothes on and walking over. The boy with his clumsy tongue and wide eyes falls like a tree onto the bed when Kei kisses him and sheds his clothes, too startled to resist.
Are, are, are you a girl?
Kei grabs the boy's cock and slides it against his cunt. Kei is raw inside but when the cock shoves inside nothing breaks.
A few days later and the boy has a cunt too.
It's, it's, it's just another way to feel good, ri-right?
Right, Kei says, sliding his fingers inside of the boy. Have you been fucking anyone else?
Uh....uh-huh...
Who?
My sis-sister...uhhhh...and some guy friends...and...
The Professor is nowhere to be found. Kei doesn't care. Within a few more days the only sounds Kei hears, and the only language he can speak are moans, gasps, and murmurs.
Kei feels a trickle down his thigh, and reaches down to find it’s blood. He pulls the covers tighter around his body and listens to the heater click on.
It’s not mind over matter, the Professor says, because the mind is matter. Thoughts and emotions are electrical signals in the mess of gray matter. The dichotomy between mind and matter is false. So is the dichotomy between flesh and spirit.
Kei doesn’t think the Professor really talks to him, or even to himself. Every time afterward, like clockwork, like the voice of a message machine when nobody answers, the Professor mutters the same things.
People need to listen to their bodies. The false dichotomy isn’t simply a lie, it’s dangerous, it’s a wide wound between our self and our desires.
Kei imagines his foot talking to him. He covers his mouth so the Professor can’t hear him laughing.
It destroys people and swallows them whole. Denying what my body wanted nearly swallowed me whole. Even now I’m still poisoned by these societal constructs. Even now I feel guilt for what I did to you.
The Professor grabs Kei’s shoulder and shakes him.
Dammit, are you listening?
Kei nods and tries to kiss the Professor’s neck, but the Professor shoves him off the bed.
Get out, the Professor stands up and pulls on his boxers. I have work to do.
Kei's mother hardly notices when he returns to the apartment that evening. When he gets changed for bed he finds bloodstains in his underwear.
Kei is 12 and his hands are all knuckles, his hair is a dark mess, and his clothes are all secondhand and never quite fit him. He takes the stairs two, three steps at a time. He likes bugs and Edgar Rice Burroughs and The Headstones. He lives with his mother in the Sky Castles high rise apartment complex, and the Professor lives four doors down.
Kei likes the Professor because he smells like rose soap and all the countless little gifts he's been given; saltwater taffy, a Chinese finger trap, a photograph of Einstein with his tongue hanging out, a tattered paperback dictionary, a miniature glass praying mantis. Some nights they go out together and sit on the rusty swings of the apartment's playground. On those nights they eat ramen out of steaming cups while the Professor teaches Kei about the stars. No matter how many times the Professor explains the only constellation Kei can find on his own is Orion.
Kei wakes up and bites down on a gag. The taste of sock floods his mouth. He is naked and his wrists and ankles are bound together with gauze. The last thing he remembers is drinking Sunny D and reading Gods of Mars while the Professor's radio droned NPR.
The Professor sits on the edge of the bed, holding a jar so tightly that his fingers shake. Inside a dark shape moves against the glass.
I am freeing you, the Professor says as he twists off the lid. I am liberating you from the shackles of thought.
The dark thing climbs out of the jar, and slithers across the bed and onto Kei's leg. It looks and moves like a puddle of blood. The thing pushes itself into Kei, like the Professor has done so many times before, until it disappears inside of him.
Kei faints and wakes up in his clothes and in his own bed. The sock taste still hasn't left his mouth.
I'm going to die, Kei says.
His head throbs and throbs. His balls hurt. His insides are hot and the rest of him is cold, like a half-mircowaved burrito.
I'm going to die and he killed me.
Nobody is going to kill you, his mother says. Drink some more water.
That night Kei dreams the Professor is touching him, not the offhand way he usually does before shoving himself inside, but stroking Kei's cock, wrapping his mouth around and sucking, head bobbing, tongue lapping and twisting, salvia dripping from his lips until it's running down Kei's balls and thighs.
Kei wakes to a painfully hard erection. He feels wet beneath his balls and his fingers creep down to touch a hot little mouth, drooling through his underwear and onto the bed. The mouth twitches and beckons with a terrible heat and he is helpless to do anything but shove as many fingers as he can inside. His back curves as he squirms and bucks against his hand until something twists and snaps inside of him. The mouth sputters, closing and opening on his fingers while his cock sprays against his stomach.
He lies on the bed shuddering and panting. He stays hard, something the Professor never did after he spent himself in Kei.
He hears birds chatting, the jangle of his mother's keys, and the door clicking shut. A dull light filters through the window. It is eight in the morning and he is alone. His cock and new cunt throb.
His cock is so hard it almost hurts. He jacks off one, two, three more times, until he comes and nothing comes out of him. The bed smells and feels slimy under his feet. He turns the TV on. Passing the news as he channel surfs, he realizes he has been asleep for nineteen hours.
Despite all his attention he'd paid to the hungry, greedy heat, the heat keeps growing, a black coil on the stovetop turning red. After pretending to be sick he spends the next day jerking off and fingering himself, using one part after he exhausts the other. He knows it isn't enough but he pretends for a day or so.
The toughest part of getting the 14 year old boy six doors door to fuck him is just pulling his clothes on and walking over. The boy with his clumsy tongue and wide eyes falls like a tree onto the bed when Kei kisses him and sheds his clothes, too startled to resist.
Are, are, are you a girl?
Kei grabs the boy's cock and slides it against his cunt. Kei is raw inside but when the cock shoves inside nothing breaks.
A few days later and the boy has a cunt too.
It's, it's, it's just another way to feel good, ri-right?
Right, Kei says, sliding his fingers inside of the boy. Have you been fucking anyone else?
Uh....uh-huh...
Who?
My sis-sister...uhhhh...and some guy friends...and...
The Professor is nowhere to be found. Kei doesn't care. Within a few more days the only sounds Kei hears, and the only language he can speak are moans, gasps, and murmurs.