the young man sits next to the older man on the bed, contemplating him, silently.
what he sees next to him draws him and repels him all in the same breath. draws him because the older man is the antithesis of himself: broad, expansive, outgoing to his shy, little nature. repels him because of why he is here. dangling his legs over the side of the bed he waits, patiently.
the older man strokes his silver/black beard and looks over at the boy. he's maybe eighteen, maybe nineteen, at the outside twenty, and of all the young men he's had in this room this one is the quietest, the most introspective. and he isn't afraid. there's a quiet fire in those eyes.
'why are you here, boy?' the voice comes out deep, rumbling; it sounds like the voice of a bear to the young man - if bears could talk. he contemplates the question for a moment and then replies: 'because there's no where else for me to go, sir.'
of all the young ones so far he's the only willing participant and the older man wants to keep this dialogue going for as long as he can, to find out what's going on here. more than meets the eye, probably. 'how so?' he asks, quietly, putting his arm around the boy's neck. hesitation, then: 'got no family, sir, no friends, no job, no place to belong to, no god to believe in...i've just got my disease.'
'how...bad is your disease?'
'getting worse. physician morton gave me maybe three more months to live, sir...so i need your help.'
'you know why you're here, though? officially, i mean?' the big man asks, his hand absently stroking the boys arm.
it's then that the young man does something that the older one hadn't expected of him; he bows his head and whispers, almost inaudibly, as if he's revering something, or praying to something. 'you...eat the boys they select.'
he gets down onto his knees, in front of the big man.
'please don't turn me away, sir, please...'
and then the thing that makes the decision for the man who is more than six hundred years old comes...as he's kneeling, the boy begins to cough, raising his little hands to his mouth he tries to stop the coughing...but when he removes his hands, there's blood in them. he's dying *much* faster than avery morton predicted...wasting away before his eyes. the fire in his eyes clouds, dies, as tears roll down the young man's cheeks.
'please...' he says, softly.
instead of the rumbling, pleasant voice, a gruff, almost trembling voice emits from the old man. 'get off your knees, boy.' obediently, the young one sits down, arms around his knees, waiting patiently to be turned away, but that doesn't happen. instead another question comes.
'where did you find out about me, son?'
the young man thinks. got to fight the fog at the edges of memory. got to get the answer. got to be obedient.
'i...an outcast...one of the priests who live in the wood told me, sir...his name was...' and his voice fails him as it trails away to nothing. 'george thurman,' the older man finishes for him. dumbly he nods. coughs. more blood.
for the first time the older man takes time to actually look at the small young man on the floor. he's short, perhaps five foot, he has a beard, which, to all intents and purposes, looks brown. his hair is cut short, and that too is brown, at a guess. because the fire is obscuring them, he'd say the eyes are the same colour. now his gaze drifts downward. there are the beginnings of chest hairs poking through the tunic, which is far too big for the little body. his hands are small, bony, but they look strong. Because he's afraid, the little one won't meet his eyes, instead the [supposed] brown eyes dart this way and that, looking over the room, but never looking into his own. he gets up, soaks a towel in the font and goes over to the young man. kneeling down he takes first his left hand, then his right hand and wipes the blood away.
the sombre brown eyes meet his and the boy says, softly: 'no one has ever done that for me...'
he stands up, offering his right hand, 'come with me...i want to show you something.'
standing up the young man is surprised to find that the big hand of the older man is holding his little one. slowly he goes where he is bid, through passages of the house...down stairs, until they come to a door, which is closed.
he opens the door to the part of the house that no-one has ever seen and leads the boy inside, closing the door behind him. 'i've...never shown this to anyone before, but you need this more than i do...and i want to give something to you before...' the boy nods and stands, in awe...watching the beauty before him.
the colours are unbelievable...nothing he's ever seen has come close to this, as he watches, an incredible sense of peace begins to blanket everything he feels: the pain, the anguish of dying, the fear of the big man behind him. it all drains away. he's heard of places like this, but they are rare and he never thought he'd get to see one in his lifetime, it being the short span that it has turned out to be. he goes limp, suspended in spirit, but not in body and as he watches the gold, red, amber, yellow, green, purple, blue anoint him. he falls to the floor, kneels in front of this vision.
then the white light that he's only ever read about in books and which is rarer still than this gate, the soul gate, falls upon him and washes away the last traces of fear and doubt and pain.
now awed himself, the big man watches as the little ghost of a boy is washed in the light of the gate that transfers souls...he doesn't know what it means, but knows that from now on everything is different, everything has changed.
the young man gets up and walks over to me, his eyes are no longer filled with either fire, or mist, but with incredible peace. he reaches down to me and takes first my right hand and then my left and wipes both of them with the wet towel, which he has been carrying since we left my room.
'no one has ever done that for me...' i whisper.
he nods. he understands. after six hundred years there's more than enough blood on my hands, but it hasn't been blood i've wanted. i'm a reluctant deliverer of souls. tonight, all of that ends, though. 'i don't know what to do for you,' i say, more in gratitude than anything else.
he smiles down at me and replies, softly, 'just hold me, father.' i nod and obey, reaching up to where he is and putting my large arms around him, drawing him close, feeling the warm body rest against mine. his arms go around my waist and i think about what i have to do...later, not now. i nuzzle him, gently, until butterfly kisses begin to fall on my forehead, then my closed eyes, then the tip of my nose, which i smile at. finally his lips reach mine and time stands still.
i stand up and lift him, as if i would a child, carrying him in my arms and to my bed...very gently i lay him down, then i lie down beside him, reaching over to put my great arms around him, enfolding him. he curls up against me, back to my gut, right hand on my right leg and left hand in my right hand. for hours we talk, watching the fire dance in the fireplace, his voice is soft, but almost tuneful, as if he's singing. he tells me about living as an outcast, the disease. anything and everything and i find, to my dismay, that i'm falling in love with him. i don't want to do what i have to, but i know that if i don't this job...this curse...whatever it is will never end.
it's in one of the lulls in the conversation that i begin to make love to him, whimpering softly with each stroke, because it feels like the last...i'm afraid of that last stroke, knowing that it will be time then.
he takes my kisses and gives them back to me, pressing his lips and tongue into mine. time stretches and scenes blur into each other, his hands in my hands, his little body curled up on top of mine, my large body on top of his, thrusting, as gently as i can, then faster and faster...finally, his smiling face and peaceful eyes look into mine from his perch on my chest. he reminds me of a dog, obedient, benevolent, gentle.
'father,' he whispers.
'i know,' i reply. it's time.
he sits up and looks down at me one last time. i can imagine what he's seeing. i am by no means small. my hair is a mixture of grey and black, which it was when i took this office, at age fifty. my eyes are silver-grey, my face is round and framed by a beard that's grey mixed with black and that refuses to be shaved. my arms are thick and covered in hair which tapers out towards the broad expanse of my hands. i keep thinking that my neck is that of a bull, and it's hard not to. my chest is covered in a deep layer of silver-black fur, which also covers my vast gut. the hair continues down my legs, which i liken to tree-trunks sometimes...
i stand and reach out to him, take him in my arms and hold him, kissing him, softly one last time before...without thinking my hands wrap themselves around his waist and my lips open wider, wider, encircling his mouth, then his beard. i want this to be over soon. stroking his sides, i make my lips bigger, encircling his nose. then, increasing the size of my mouth again i cover his eyes, blotting out the fire and tickling the sides of his ears...stopping myself from reflexively choking on his head hair. i take in the crown of his head, then the top half is inside my mouth. i'm pretty sure he can hear the gentle sucking noises as i caress his ears with my tongue...trying to keep him occupied, i let my tongue play into his mouth, searching out his own tongue, curling around it, licking it... slipping my mouth down further, i collar his neck. now i start to swallow his head down into my throat, feeling it widen out as his head enters. my hands are still caressing his sides when i widen my mouth still further to get his shoulders into my mouth. being as gentle, but as stern as i can, i pin his hands to his sides and swallow again.
his head is nearly, nearly out of my throat now. i imagine my heart beating somewhere near his left ear and hope to god that it's a soothing sound. i stop, breathing mentally and counting to ten. this next part is the most difficult. swallowing, gently, i resume feeding him into my mouth, watching as his back makes it's way in. i don't want to think about slowing the process down by sexually stimulating him, but know that in a sense it'll help to calm him down, so i rub my rough tongue against his nipples and get them erect. then i let my tongue dance down to his belly-button, playing with it, teasing it. i close my eyes and hate myself.
feeding more of him into me, i get to his genitalia, reaching my tongue down and stroking the head of his penis with my tongue, willing it to come to life, but not going so far as to overstimulate him. the top half of his shoulders are down my throat now and his little, lithe stomach is making it's way across my tongue and down...it's when all of his nether regions are in my mouth that i let him do what he must, feeling him thrust himself against my tongue. i swallow hard and try to stop the burning in my eyes, knowing that if the tears come now i'll never go through with it.
his upper thighs and legs make their way into my mouth, while the swallowing has forced his head into my cavernous belly...now his arms are free and it's as if he has sensed my distress, because from inside of me comes the gentlest of touches. the touches seem to say 'i'm ok...don't worry about me...'
the tears are threatening to be a problem, so i speed up, swallowing his lower legs like two strings of spaghetti.
it's only at this last bit of him that my mouth returns to its normal size and closes. i keep swallowing hard, making sure that all of him makes it's way to my stomach as quickly as possible. when that's done
i sit down, belly full and heavy, yet somehow feeling so empty inside. it's at this point that the sun begins to rise outside, painting the sky red...blood...While feeling the warmth on my face and watching as the fire burns down to embers i let myself do what i've never done in six hundred and eleven years. like a baby i rock back and forth and cry, feeling my final cargo move inside of me.
while i'm sitting there, too afraid to fall asleep, lest i see him in my dreams, the sun turns white outside my room...as i watch the gold, red, amber, yellow, green, purple, blue anoint me and a voice that i never heard when the young man was downstairs in the room of the gate of souls whispers inside of my head, like a soft rainfall. 'this one is yours,' the voice says, softly, 'as you have cured him, so i cure you. go now...you are free, you need not transfer souls anymore...' with that the white light fades and the colours from the gate recede, but they never fade...from deep inside me a fire begins to burn, it's like nothing i've ever felt before...and suddenly he's there, inside of me, inside my mind, smiling, peaceful.
wherever he goes i look out of his eyes...and wherever we go the lights follow us, anointing all of the things we see...
[authors note: ok. i lied. *grins* :)
i said i'd probably not write another piece of vore...and here, all in one evening is *another* story in the vein of 'an invitation to the table.'
curiously, though, this isn't the original version of this story. when i was running amok, thinking about actually writing it [putting the pieces together in my head] all i had was this image of a young man who had a disease of some kind, lying with his back to an older man...as he lay there the young one would cough up blood, which led to the older man's idea of swallowing him to save him from the sickness. ah yes. then my hands took over and delivered the thing you see before you now. my hands do too much thinking for my own good.
you see, when i started writing this, i posed the question: 'what if the eater is reluctant...what if he actually develops some sort of interest in the thing he's eating?' so i began to add images, fleshing out the basic story, building two characters who were essentially opposites and putting them together. the old man is compassionate, gentle, loving, but also large and outgoing. the young man is withdrawn, closed, probably afraid that he'd volunteered himself, but wanting this more than anything else in the world. in this world [and perhaps i didn't explain this very well] the soul gates take the souls of the living, who are essentially dying and deliver them to their final destinations. heaven, hell, that cool place purgatory...etc. [yes, yes, i was catholic.]
the shocking [and sort of scary] thing about this story was that from start to finish it took about three hours to write and *i* will admit, right now, that the vore part of it isn't the major part, though it is the axis around which the whole catharsis ethic is based. To all intents and purposes, the only thing keeping the older man on planet earth was the fact that he had a job to do, that is, to ferry souls. up until this final ferrying he has managed to keep himself in check every time he has had to do his job, but this last time, the fragility of the young man probably catches in his throat, this in turn causes a chain reaction. knowing that the young man has no place left to go he wants to give him peace, so he shows him the soul gate, which in turn allows the young young man to let go of his sickness and in turn cure the older man.
ok. i'm going to stop being dead serious now and hop off of my soapbox. feel free to mail me, or whatever... :) - the address is at the top of the page.
*hugs* 'n stuff :)]
[further note:bastardized version:21 may 1998]
[thanks to my editor, sagebear who, once again undertook this bastardization.
there were no utterly drastic changes between this version[1.01] and the original, where possible the word 'elder' was replaced with older, but the nature of the story hasn't changed at all since version 1.00.]
[copyright (c) 1998, julian comley/nicodemus caine/greywolfe]