Warmth

WARMTH

LUCAS AMANN

Copyright © 2022 Lucas Amann.

All Rights Reserved.

Cover Art by Lucas Amann

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living, dead or undead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Encyclopocalypse Publications

www.encyclopocalypse.com

For Dad

And for Mom and Leanne,

my brightest lights

CONTENTS

ONE

A ROMANTIC NOTION

TWO

COLD FLESH

THREE

AFTERIMAGE

FOUR

INTO THE KALEIDOSCOPE

FIVE

PSYCHIC BRINE

SIX

INTEGRATION

SEVEN

PSYCHONAUTS

EIGHT

SLEEPOVER

NINE

DEEPER, DARKER

TEN

HAUNTED

ELEVEN

FOLLOW THE LEADER

TWELVE

A NEW BEGINNING

Acknowledgments

ONE

A ROMANTIC NOTION

Orange strobes swell, rupture, spill waves of cooling violet into infinity, a plasma garden flourishing from and retiring to the inky loam of outer space. Ethan drifts, boundless as the flames. It’s not so far away as the stars seem. He only has to close his eyes.

His mom calls from downstairs, for the third time now, and suddenly he’s back in his bedroom, submersed in the cool blue glow of the teal Christmas lights he hung earlier while his dad was out doing the roof. Coming, he yells, no intention to follow through. His aunt, uncle and cousins are down there. It’s nothing against them, but

he doesn’t get why they care if he joins anyway. They’re clearly having fun without him, to judge by the laughter. And he already said hi, so.

He squints his eyes and watches a phosphene burn itself out, leaving dim echoes to blossom anew, only fainter, ever fainter...

It’s barely an hour since the sun itself expired, and the void’s already sucking at the warmth it left behind, nibbling at Ethan’s nose and ears. He cranks the dial on the space heater set up by his bed. It whirs and glows brighter. Unusually cold night for mid-December, at least by Sugar Land standards. Been that way all week. He sparks his Bic, traces the flame around his rainbow-striped socks. There’s this neat trick he learned a while back, but you have to catch the lint just right. When you do... whoosh! A flash of dancing amber takes off flowing across his foot like tiny wildfire, consuming all the stray fibers.

Laughter interrupts Ethan’s reverie. Not the affected merriment booming from below, but a more distinct snicker, nearer. His youngest cousin, he thinks at first, spying on him from his door? No. The window, fogged with sweat-streaked condensation. A ghostly visage presses the glass. Eth-uhn, it lisps, sounding to anyone else unrecognizable. But no lisp, no dose of helium, not even a crowd of a thousand competing voices could disguise this one. Not from Ethan.

He bounces out of bed, draws his hand into his sweater sleeve, and mops the frosty pane. I’m ‘thuck, Fox says, tongue writhing like a helpless slug, pinned by his flattened face. Ethan thumps the glass, and Fox jumps, yelps, breath visible. Someone cackles. Wait, is Pete with him? Ethan thrusts the window open to find them huddled together on the eave, which overhangs the fence for an effortless climb.

Getcho dancin’ shoes, boy, Fox says, in his best Texas twang, we gon’ get rowdy tonight. He’s got on the women’s windbreaker straight out of the eighties he found at a Goodwill store a while back. Neon geometry, shoulder pads, the whole works. That jacket means trouble, Ethan knows too well. Fox only wears it when he plans to go off.

Hope you thirsty. Pete tightens his bandana headband, unzips Fox’s backpack and makes a withdrawal: Mad Dog 20/20, blue raspberry. Must have gotten lucky badgering people outside the corner store. He takes a swig, and his features implode into the bridge of his nose. Tasty.

Ethan can feel a grin breaking across his chapped face. It’s not so often Pete hangs with them anymore, and that really hurts Fox, Ethan can tell, even if Fox would never say so. Seeing them together’s an incredible relief. It means Ethan doesn’t have to feel so guilty about what he’s been thinking. It means Fox maybe won’t be alone after all.

I can’t, Ethan says.

Why not? Fox stuffs his hands down the waistband of his school-issue gym shorts, warms them there. He’s not bashful about that sort of thing. Nor, apparently, about wearing those outside of P.E. It’s one of the things Ethan really loves about him.

My cousins are here.

Not like you’re even hanging out with them, Pete says. You’re just fuckin’ with your lighter.

Yeah. Fox tips himself forward and spills head-first through the window, feet banging the glass as they flip through after him.

Shhh, Ethan hisses, worried someone downstairs might hear.

Fox hunts down a pair of scattered checkerboard slip-ons, tries to wrestle Ethan’s technicolor feet into them. Get ya little shoesies on, let’s go.

Stop. Ethan giggles (he can’t help it) and kicks free. "I can’t."

Fox looks up at him, eyes crossed. He balloons his cheeks, bursts them with the soles of Ethan’s shoes. Life is now, Ethan. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Yeah, you keep saying.

S’what Miss Woolley tells us, Fox says, shoulders shrugged, as if that should lend credence to its wisdom. He springs onto the bed, strokes fur angels into the shaggy turquoise comforter.

So you’re saying you actually learned something? Pete drops in with a good deal more grace.

Fox flips him off.

Pete flips the light, momentarily blinding everyone.

Ethan’s room used to be really carefully designed, with lava lamps and drip stick candles, this cool old fiber optic light that looks like a firework paused mid-burst, and all this other retro shit he was really into for a while. His parents helped him fix it up a few years back when they redid it from the kiddy room it used to be. They even found these really neat aluminum shelves to display all his snow globes (he has almost fifty now, including one with a shrunken head Fox made for Ethan’s fifteenth birthday last year). But he’s really let the place go since then, basically the way old people do their bodies.

Fox snags a marker from the nightstand, pops the cap, clamps his tongue between his teeth, and goes to work on the mural he’s been continually building upon since this girl, Felicia, left a kiss-print that Fox couldn’t resist recontextualizing with a doofy face. Now almost the entire wall behind Ethan’s bed is covered in Fox’s art. It’s Ethan’s favorite thing about his room.

Pete throws up his hand. Great, we’re drawing now?

Fox flashes his lopsided grin. The one that shows off his dimple and the small gap in his teeth. The one that makes Ethan fucking crazy, especially with Fox’s cheeks flushed the way they are from the cold. It’s weird, when you really love someone, it’s their imperfections. And Fox is nothing but.

When did Ellie get home? Ellie is Ethan’s older sister. Fox just heard her laughing downstairs. She’s really putting on a show down there. Ethan wonders if she’s actually having fun or if she’s just that good at pretending.

Last week.

What? No way. Tell her to come to the creek. He’s had a thing for Ellie since she drove them to a bunch of haunted houses last year. She was a senior then, but she’s in college now, and Ethan misses her so much.

Come on, man. Pete takes another swig. Lez go.

What you need me for?

Yeah, hey, good question. Fox caps the marker, tosses it onto desk, slouches so that Ethan can see he’s been drawing a skull. What we need him for?

We just do.

Oh yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Yeah, we just do.

You don’t, though. Not really.

Ethan! That’s Dad this time, and his heavy footsteps are plodding up the stairs.

Ethan can’t stop glancing at Fox. It’s the way the Christmas lights twinkle in his watery eyes. They’re aimed at the end of the street, headed for the tree line. The air’s got that stinging feel that somehow makes things more alive. Fox keeps asking about Ellie. How long’s she here for? She still dating that douche from that lame band, what was it called? Think she might want to get high or something before she goes back?

Dude, Pete finally blurts, puffing a breath-cloud into the cool.

What?

You’re obsessed.

Nah, I’m not. I’m obsessed with this one. Fox captures Ethan in a headlock, presses his lips to Ethan’s ear, and shoots it with humid breath as he whispers, I’m totally obsessed with you, E.

A charge flutters through Ethan, electrifying the fine hairs on his neck, and the slightly coarser ones on his forearms, making the boundary between him and the world scream hot and cold at once. Christ, he thinks, blushing like a spanked ass, he doesn’t know what that does to me, and makes a show of shoving Fox away.

They skid down the graffitied concrete slope of the culvert to the steaming creek below. Fox digs the blueberry yuck back out from his bag, drowns his gullet, then, fighting to keep it down, offers the bottle to Ethan. Ethan’s got this thing about drinking after other people, even family, so he usually wipes the lip on his sleeve, but it’s different with Fox, so he skips that step and kisses the bottle’s lip, just a taste test to start. Eek. Like a popsicle blended with rubbing alcohol. Whatever. He takes a big enough gulp to satisfy his friends.

Pete hikes the legs of his jeans up over his knees and carries his shoes to the stream. Is he really gonna... ? Yep, he takes a few tentative steps into the water. Where his feet land, dirt billows, clouding the otherwise transparent flow.

Cold?

Nah, kinda warm.

Fox’s eyes pop. Serious?

Come on.

Fox stabilizes himself on Ethan’s shoulder, brings his legs up one at a time and pries off his skull-print Vans. He hands ‘em to Ethan and turns his back. Couldja help me out please, feller?

Ethan stuffs the shoes into Fox’s backpack, zips it up.

Thanks, boy. Fox snatches the bottle and skips out into the water, leaping and howling like a cat dumped into a bath. Shit-fuck that’s cold, you liar! He sloshes to Pete, pounces onto his back. Pete hoists him and wades downstream with the hundred-some-pound load.

Ethan crosses a fallen tree to the opposite bank and follows along, haunted by the image of his family as he saw them through the windows on his way out, ‘round the side of the house. Like a scene from a holiday commercial, all sweaters, smiles and steaming mugs. How fitting that he should be on the outside looking in. He’s felt that way as far back as he can remember, not just with his family, but in life generally.

He paces himself behind Fox and Pete, swinging on the occasional tree so he doesn’t get ahead. He likes to watch the two together. Been friends so long, they might as well be brothers. His own history with them doesn’t run as deep, even though the back of his neighborhood butts up to theirs. Some invisible dividing line routed Ethan through different elementary and middle schools. Entering freshman year, he was so terrified he wouldn’t make any friends, that he’d find himself lunching alone as he had through much of eighth grade, but he met Pete in AP Biology first period that first day, bonded over Pete’s Tool T-Shirt (the one with the dick wrench), and come lunchtime, as Ethan resigned himself to a solitary spot at the end of a relatively vacant table, Pete spotted him, called him over, and introduced him to Fox, who, as it later turned out, shared his gym period. Reflecting, they seem so young. They may only be sophomores yet, but they’ve been through shit together. The kinda shit that carves your life into eras, splits who you are from who you were. This year, Pete lunches with his lacrosse team. Fine with Ethan, not that he doesn’t love Pete too, but he shares most of his classes with Pete, and sometimes lunch is the only time other than the bus that he gets to see Fox at school at all. They’ve gotten so much closer, Ethan and Fox, reduced to a pair. True, the pseudobrothers share a bond Ethan couldn’t begin to compete with, but there’s this whole other thing with Fox, this whole other side to him Pete doesn’t even know exists. Like Fox has this color, invisible to a colorblind world, only Ethan is allowed to behold. It shines for him, and him alone.

Ethan’s phone vibrates. He pulls it from his pocket. Dad. He rejects the call.

Sippy-sip? Fox holds the bottle to Pete’s mouth. There you go, yeah, suck it down you naughty twit.

A cloud of blue mist explodes out of Pete along with a fit of choking laughter. Dude. That one even wins a grin from Ethan. Fox’s clowning has a way of grounding him when he’s lost and tangled up in his own head.

Yah! Yah! Fox bounces, beats his foot against Pete’s thigh, spurring him onward.

Hey, so... my dad said we can start looking at trucks, Pete says.

Yeah, boy! Fox reaches ‘round, grabs himself a handful of Pete’s chest, thrusts his pelvis at Pete’s back.

Fucking stop. Pete pries Fox’s fingers from his nipple and shrugs him off into the water.

My knee, Fox howls. Hurt it once jumping off Pete’s roof onto his trampoline. Never got it fixed, so he’s always throwing it out.

Don’t twist my tit, then. Pete slogs on, no hint of concern or sympathy.

"Sorr-ie. Ethan loves it when I twist his tit."

Shut up, Ethan says, laughing to mask his discomfort.

Fox hobbles to catch up, his haste throwing waves over the muddy banks of their usual hangout.

Ethan and Ellie used to come out here fishing for minnows when they were little; Pete and Fox, for BB gun wars. Pete still has a tiny ball lodged in his belly from when Fox pumped his rifle ten times and blasted him from all of maybe fifteen feet away, as Pete tells it. You can roll the BB under the skin, push it around with your finger. Ethan can attest; he’s felt it. Lucky they both still have their eyes. Besides that, Fox used to hide his weed here in little graves he’d mark with sun-bleached soda cans, back before Ethan knew him, back when his mom still cleaned his room. So, there’s history here, but, really, the boys didn’t start coming out together until toward the end of last year—that’s when, well... Fox’s dad died. A heart attack, just out of nowhere. It totally destroyed Fox, destroyed him. He’s mostly better now, but there was a while Ethan thought Fox might never laugh or joke again. He’d never seen anyone hurt like that. That’s when they, by then a trio, made this their refuge. A place where they could go and not be found, a place where the rest of the world could just fucking fade for all they cared.

This spot in particular’s cool ‘cause there’s some tile and shit from an old house that must have burned down or something. And what used to be a hot tub, bit further back, filled with toxic green sludge, breeding ground for mosquitoes, cottonmouths, and God knows what else.

The boys settle into the exposed roots of the trees. Pete doesn’t think anyone’s looking, so he grips his bicep and flexes, checking its girth and tautness. Bad habit he picked up when he started working out last year. Ethan checks Fox, but Fox isn’t seeing; otherwise, he’d burn him, no doubt.

Fox hands Ethan the bottle. Ethan takes another swig, wipes the blue from his lips, face knotted in disgust. Might as well bought Draino.

I like it, Fox says, laughing.