Crush Read online

  crush

  First published 2011 PeachHam-Beach Publishing

  UK Edition published 2012 by Beaten Track Publishing

  Copyright © 2011, 2012 Laura Susan Johnson (pseudonym)

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  ISBN: 978 1 909192 14 0

  "Split" from Women I Have Known and Been Copyright © 1992 by Carol Lynn Pearson. Used by permission.

  Cover design and all images by the author.

  Fiction/Romance/Gay Men/Relationships/Erotica/Child Abuse/Sexual Dysfunction/Emotional Problems/Hate Crimes/Animal Rights

  this book is dedicated to:

  my parents who love me as I am,

  my Uncle Lionel Clyde "Bob" Purkey,

  the memory of Matthew Shepard,

  and all of the "Tammys" and "Jamies" out there.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to any persons,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Warning:

  Contains sexuality, adult subject matter,

  profanity, disturbing content and violence.

  Intended for readers aged 18 and over.

  author's notes:

  It should be noted that although there may be similarities between "Crush" and the true story of Matthew Shepard, whose brutal attack in Wyoming made headlines in the Autumn of 1998, "Crush" is entirely a work of fiction. Like many bystanders, I had heard about the hate-crime by watching CNN, but I never learned any of the details or followed the trial of his killers. I have only recently read Judy Shepard's inspiring tribute to her beautiful gay son, The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed, two months after the completion of "Crush". Any similarities to Mr. Shepard's story are completely coincidental.

  There are four hospitals in this book: UC Davis Medical Centre is a real hospital and is located near downtown Sacramento, California, not in the town of Davis, CA. For clarity's sake, I created the fictitious "Davis Hospital" to which Tammy drives Jamie, after Jamie is attacked by classmates. "Saint Paul's Hospital", also a fictitious creation, is located in West Sac, CA. "Yolo County Hospital" in the city of Woodland is also fictitious.

  Laura Susan Johnson

  book one:

  love's first kisses

  prologue:

  thames lee mattheis

  (december 30)

  Interrogation room, Sommerville Police Department

  "Please state your full name," the first officer says, and I do, as it reads above.

  It's like the English river, pronounced "Tems". Everyone calls me "Tammy", but it's not the girl's name, it's pronounced "Temmy" (as if they even sound all that different from one another!). Mom's made life a lot harder than it has to be. First of all: she named me after a river. The woman isn't even English! Our ancestors were French, Greek and Irish. Second: she decides to nickname me "Tam" or "Tammy", which is an Irish form of the name "Thomas". Third: I get teased constantly that "Tammy" is a girl's name. And fourth: the way it's pronounced "Temmy". My life has been spent spelling it for people, teaching them to pronounce it correctly, and fending off the guys calling me, "Tammy, Tell Me True"! Mom could have named me "Thomas", so I could be nicknamed "Tommy". She could have named me "Timothy", so I could be nicknamed "Timmy". But no, I'm named after a river, with a weird nickname that's perceived as girlish, which everyone has to be taught isn't even pronounced phonetically.

  As I sit here in this claustrophobic grey cubicle, my eyes tracing each graffiti-carved inch of the metallic table before me, I contemplate how much my life has changed in the past few weeks since I came home from L.A. to help Mom.

  How different I am.

  In spite of how love once touched me in high school many years ago, and before discovering an unforeseen tender-heartedness for stray cats not many years ago, I used to have only one true goal driving me, and that was to hurt people. It was my only real source of joy and fulfilment.

  Disregarding the chill in the air drawing this year to a terrible close, a conclusion I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined, large beads of clandestine sweat are forming on the nape of my neck.

  No, it wasn't.

  I only wanted it to work that way.

  And since it didn't, I couldn't keep it up. Deceiving women and men didn't really give me the thrill I wanted.

  I had become evil.

  And I wanted to be happy being evil.

  But I could not.

  I continued to love someone I'd left behind, and I saved a kitten from certain death. Saving Bootsy was a catalyst, an act of kindness that sparked my heart back to life.

  And I could not ignore the real me, the longing in my heart to be human again.

  To care, to love.

  To love and to be loved back.

  I didn't love being mean. I didn't love hurting people the way I'd hoped I would.

  And I missed my friend. I didn't get away from him by moving three hundred miles away. He was always with me, day after day, year after year, always in my dreams, asleep and awake.

  I missed him. I had never stopped missing him, from the day I left him behind to try to "find myself", to the day I was called home.

  He means more to me than anything.

  No matter how mean, selfish and narcissistic I had wanted to be, I loved him.

  I still love him.

  And he loved me.

  I want him to love me, present tense.

  But I think he's going to die.

  I want to go back in time, not years, just hours, just a day. I want to do what my instinct told me to do.

  I can't. I can't do what I want to do. I can't go back in time.

  I didn't try to end his life, contrary to what the police think, but he wasn't safe to be left alone that night. I had a premonition.

  I failed him.

  Dozens of bodies at my feet, in a wasteland I'd created, women and men, crawling blindly and weeping for me to assuage their pangs. I sat above, smiling down at them like an evil goddess, like Kali, luxuriating, listening to them wailing their misery, their cries dying slowly until every last voice quieted and all the bodies stilled.

  "Address?" the policeman barks.

  He's just my type, or what I had once thought my type. Big, tall and craggy like Huey Lewis. No delicacy about him. I had fun once or twice, bringing down a guy looking like this. It gave me a heady feeling, to conquer the kind of man that everyone assumes, by his looks, is "manly".

  I'm pretty. I don't mean to sound conceited. It's just something I've been told too many times not to believe.

  Jamie's pretty too. Prettier than I am.

  Because he never has cared about that kind of thing. Not like I have.

  And I used my prettiness to harm people.

  The first time I took down a "man's man", I was twenty-eight. I thought I'd have a hell of a challenge. I thought he'd beat the shit out of me for hitting on him. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. He fell like a leaf in October, the big brute.

  But by then, the thrill of soul hunting had passed. I had thought that I could resurrect it, and find nothing more titillating and satisfying than snatching him, body and soul, and then leaving him desolate and aching for more of me.

  Deliberate, precise, just plain heartless, I'd made capturing and collecting people's love without giving anything back my supreme o
bjective in life.

  I'd toppled many women, the number somewhere in the sixties or seventies, before I'd moved on to men. I hadn't had more than maybe four or five guys before I decided I was finished playing games with their lives and mine.

  It was those kind of men... players, fratboys, meatheads, the kind of men who eat like pigs and burp loudly, drink beer and then piss on pavements, worship both playing and watching football and stack themselves on 'roids until they become butterball turkeys in their later years, that I'd practised on.

  But always, there was something in the way of me enjoying myself totally.

  Always that beautiful little face in the way, obstructing my view. That delicate, refined visage, the face of an angel, the face of a child-man, a face so exquisite, so unique, so unforgettably beautiful, that not even the most glamorous movie-star can begin to compare...

  "Please state your current residence!" squawks the second cop.

  "809 Truckee Street, Sommerville."

  The tape recorder in his hand has a little glowing red light on top. I lick my lips, knowing that the words that are about to slip through them will be sucked onto the shiny entrails of the audio cassette. Forever.

  My mouth is dry, tastes bitter, like I've been chewing on a bar of Ivory soap.

  I fell in love for the first time, ever, sixteen years ago. I ran away from that love. And I stayed away, for a long time, before Mom fell, before I was called home.

  "Please, can I have a soda? I'm so thirsty." The moisture trickles down my back, cooling it, before being absorbed by the elastic of my Jockeys.

  I'd never been in love with anyone before him, and I've never been in love with anyone since.

  I finally received... no... I finally accepted, truly accepted his love only days ago.

  The second police officer leaves for a moment and returns with an ice cold can of Dr. Pepper. "This okay?"

  "Anything," I mutter through sticky lips, popping it open with a refreshing "sssst!" sound and gulping several freezing swallows before releasing a quiet belch.

  "So," begins the rugged-faced cop, "These... uh... journals..."

  Now, I'm in jail, accused of a violent crime.

  "Pretty sick stuff, wouldn't you agree?" Rugged Cop asks.

  "Yeah," the second cop shudders.

  I tell the cop that I didn't do it, that I didn't hurt Jamie, that I've never hurt anyone, at least not in the way they're thinking. Guilt rears its head again, and I begin to confess my sins. I tell them that I've killed many people emotionally, not physically, that I was a serial soul stealer.

  "A what?" sneers the Rugged Cop.

  I repeat myself and he says, "No, what you are is a pathetic piece of shit who deserves to burn in hell." I wonder if it's because of the crime I'm being accused of, or because of who the victim of the crime was... is...

  "I wrote in those diaries when I was twelve, thirteen years old! I was angry... I was a kid!"

  "The way these are written," the second cop says with a repulsed shiver, "I'd say you're capable of committing a crime this violent."

  "I was only a kid!" I reiterate angrily.

  "Keep your temper," warns Rugged Cop.

  "I didn't do this, I swear it!"

  "I'd like to ask you about the bruise on the back of the victim's neck," Rugged Cop scowls. "What's that from? It almost looks like a hickey or something."

  They don't laugh, they don't spout innuendoes. Still, under the surface, I feel the attitude, and it has me wondering just how many allies we even have around here in the wake of this brutal beating of which I have been named the chief suspect. Do they care about Jamie? Do they care about him at all? Or do they think he deserves it, like I deserve to "burn in hell"?

  I try to tell the police that I love my boyfriend, present tense, that I'd never, ever hurt him.

  That I'm not that boy anymore.

  That when I was that kid, I was in pain, and, yes, I acted out, but I've never hurt anyone... not physically.

  I try to tell them, but my despair muzzles me. My natural propensity to blame myself for all that has gone wrong, even after I tried to get Jamie to take the fateful night off, even after I begged him to let me go to work with him, asserts itself, and my uncooperative lips crumple.

  I don't think they believe me anyway.

  two:

  james michael pearce

  (aged three to thirteen)

  I never find out why they hate me. I've always wanted to know. I love them. Why do they hate me? I am three—that's my earliest memory—when they start hitting me. My mom reaches back and slaps me hard at the table during breakfast. I don't know what I've done to make her slap me. When I am old enough to be in school, I remember my preschool teacher taking me aside and asking about the bruises, welts and burns. Nothing comes of it, or my life would be different than it is.

  My kindergarten teacher calls a meeting with Mom and Daddy because I've slapped a boy in class for calling me an ashtray.

  Before the Child Protection people come, my parents cram me into the car and drive north, from our house in south Sacramento to Oregon, to live with people on Mom's side of the family. Arguments erupt between Mom and a lady I believe is my Grandma. None of the people in that house talk to me or pay any attention to me.

  I prefer never to be left alone with Mom and Daddy. I always am.

  From what I can scrape together from my memories, Mom is dark-haired and slender, with bright blue eyes. In earlier years, she is elegant, projecting an image of a well-groomed professional at her job as a secretary for an attorney somewhere in Salem. Later, she turns stringy-haired and wild-eyed. She scares me.

  Daddy is fair-haired with large brown eyes. He's quiet. I never hear him raise his voice, but he's susceptible to suggestion and battles several addictions.

  The folks in Oregon kick us out after Daddy gets busted shoplifting at a Payless, and we move back to the Florin neighbourhood of Sacramento. My first grade teacher calls the cops when she sees how I look one morning—a black eye and blood drying in my hair. I have no idea how my parents manage to sneak me out of the police station.

  We move to the small town of Sommerville, a hamlet of less than eight thousand people, just east-north-east of Davis off the interstate, into a two bedroom house that has some measure of privacy. It is on a corner parcel surrounded by weed-infested, loamy-soiled reject lots. The walls are of plaster, which has much better soundproofing than sheetrock.

  That's when they decide that in order to avoid having to move around, I should stay hidden. I'm locked in my room. At first, I get fed two or three times a day. Then there comes a time when I don't get a crumb for at least four or five days. I remember crying for them to let me out to go to the toilet. They bring me a bucket, and they beat me because I have to use it, because they have to dump it every now and again. They lug it out to the real toilet across the hall, cursing me and covering their noses at the stench I've caused.

  Once a week, sometimes every other week, they let me out to shower and stretch my legs. My muscles ache. Daddy begins to make me accompany him when he showers. He tells me I mustn't run away and to do what he asks. I've tried to forget that first shower he made me take with him, and I do try to run. I prize open the stubborn, splintery window in my room, and I have almost wriggled halfway out when they catch me. Mom rips chunks of my hair out while lashing me with a thick black belt with round metal studs in it. When it's over, I try to hide from the hot, throbbing pain by curling in a ball and rubbing my bloodied body against my filthy bedsheets, praying for another chance to escape.

  "Why you wanna run away, Pretty?" asks Daddy with sad, dark eyes. "I love you."

  And then they put the chains on my legs, and I can't even leave my bed to see what time of year it is, what colour the sky and leaves are.

  After the first shower, Daddy shows me how to do the things he likes the right way. At first I close my eyes. I don't want to watch what he's doing to me, but Mom yells, "Pay attention!" So I have to wa
tch. I watch, and I learn, but I hate the sight of him down there—the weird, crazy, scary faces he's making at me. I hate that part of my body—I hate it even more when he's down there, because he's doing things that feel good, and my body begins to do funny things in response.

  I'm afraid.

  I know this is wrong.

  It's so wrong.

  I hate myself.

  When I'm seven or eight, they begin to make the videos, usually one or two a month.

  I've tried to bury those years deep inside my mind. I'd be lying if I said I don't remember. I remember liking some of it, and feeling dirty and guilty. I remember hating other things. The truth is I remember so much that I shudder and cower down like I'm caught in an ambush. Any moment, a deadly memory will strike home and kill me. When I'm awake, it's easier to be in control. I can shoo the memories and the visions away. I can stay busy at work, with friends. Asleep, the nightmares are brutal, impossibly as graphic and horrific as the real thing so long ago. I relive those seven years every night in my sleep, my senses functioning perfectly in dreamstate. I see everything, I hear everything, I smell everything, I feel everything, I taste everything. Every so often, when I'm just waking, cosy in my bed, the dreams seemingly over, I'll see it, and it's so real, and I'll hear his soft voice. "Come on, pretty baby. Show Daddy you love him. Show Daddy..."

  I should die in that room, but I don't. When Daddy's not loving me, I feel so alone. When I don't see him for a few days, I cry and beg him to come. Of course, he never comes in without her. Sometimes they ignore me. Sometimes my cries only anger them, and Mom hits me with the studded black belt until I'm covered with glowing red welts for days after.

  So I try harder to please them. I'm so hungry.

  I want to die, but every day I'm still breathing. The food they bring me becomes less and less in amount and frequency. When my daddy finally returns to my bed I'm so happy I readily service him, loving his presence, his warmth, his soft solidity, the closeness, the way I feel so safe...