Jim, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. His mother's voice grated upon my ears, sloppy and fat; to her he was "Jimmy," her precious boy-child, as innocent as the misnomer might suggest. He was James in scrawled ink, and Jay at the playground. But in my arms he was simply Jim.

Jim would have remained James forever, perhaps, had I not loved a certain boy in the winter of my fourteenth year. Fair but pink, with rounded cheeks swollen and chapped from frigid air and tawny hair poking out from beneath a weft-knit hat; he was mine. We were lovers not long, but passionately, as only young men with no greater woes to contrast bloody hearts can. Neither wise nor prudent, only terribly smitten, we would wander along the frozen banks of the bathing pond coddled in the center of Victoria Park. He was plump around the middle which seemed to tip his balance, and I delighted to hold his chilly hand as he bashfully stumbled over the cracked tarmac. It was only later in a heap of cold, firm skin did we find the anxious fortitude to manifest our childish whims in so adult a manner. His behind, I recall, was soft and white, planted before a warm hearth in my family's upstairs drawing room. The flesh of his sloped shoulders was peppered with drops of melted snow, trembling slightly, which I overzealously attempted to calm with my soggy, be-mittened paws. A surprised shriek was followed by desperate giggles, pretty fingertips slapping away the cold of my own. We loved boldly, that night, kissing with a frightful abandon and touching each other recklessly as we knew not yet how to love men. I attempted to fellate him, sputtering all the while, but as his orgasm filled my mouth I knew quite inexplicably how to be whole. I still remember that sweet, bitter blend, the twitching of his cock lodged between my tongue and palate, his knees squeezing helplessly at my jaw. His hand brought me to climax soon after, and we fell asleep nude on the carpet not twenty minutes later.

We awoke to a severe beating at the hand of my father, of which my William did not survive.

I cannot pretend to know the true motives behind my wicked desires. Am I innately perverse, twisted inside to yearn naturally for the ruddy, buckled knees of youth? Did something within me pass as Will did, immortalized by those weeping blue eyes bludgeoned red? The true vindications behind my bizarre nature remains a mystery, but it matters not—I am ever at the mercy of my own depraved appetite, reasoning be damned.

Now I wish to introduce the following idea: between the tender ages of nine and fourteen there are boys who, to certain men far older than they, reveal their true nature. Such a nature is not human, but nymphic (that is, demonic); and these individuals I call "nymphs." They are boys with mysterious natures; elusive, slick, insidious, clever, shifty—seemingly alike in body to their innocent peers, but antithetic in mind and spirit. He is not merely the most attractive of the lot, and is in fact often not. He possesses a glint of the eye so subtle that only a madman, a hideous soul with such terrible propensities (such as myself) would notice it. Such a boy is a deadly demon among pretty, sweet little children, and to love him is to be mistaken as a corruptor of the sinless. What a ridiculous notion.

I could not have known it at the time, but William was of the nymph kind. Were there ten or twenty years between us I would have recognized the snare concealed behind his soft laugh and his azure eyes immediately. We were equals, then, and so his fawn-like wiles were unclear to me…still manipulating me, sucking me in, but it posed no real danger with my adolescence assuming me faultless.

I digress. The years of military service following my secondary schooling proved heartless, though splendidly informative. Those were blank years, fueled by the hot rage of a frustrated young man whose trigger finger saw more action than his phallus—a crime, to be sure, especially for one with desires so difficult to sate. I was not lacking for nymphs, for every country has them in abundance, though their overall population is but a small fraction of the little children one frequently encounters. Often I would see pretty chestnut boys with willowy limbs, groins bared, watching with wide eyes at the white men passing by. You would think that I, labeled a paedophile in any respectable diagnostic lexicon, would find their young bodies arousing. I did not. It takes a nymph, you must understand, to rouse me so. In my fifth year of service I met one at last, and though his native tongue skimmed his palate like gibberish in my ears, I knew I had been captured.

He was eleven, maybe twelve, quite prim in his traditional garb. Unlike most of Korean boys I had encountered thus far, his hair was quite long, nearly to his shoulders. His oriental eyes had a pleasing slant, but were not thin. It was the first time since my fledgling years that I had such a small hand to hold in my own, heat blossoming outward from his tiny palm. By the crumbled ruins of an old shrine I sank into his body, his knobby knees pressed flush to my armpits. The boy barely give a whimper before we were caught, me in the ardent throes of impassioned lust. I was manacled, sentenced in a little white room that reeked of stale coffee, and was subsequently dishonorably discharged. It was kept, fortunately, heavily under wraps.

I found myself, quite some years later, upon the doorstep of one Mrs. Moriarty. The recent death of her husband had left her a large house and an even larger inheritance, but a lack of company that she found, apparently, quite startling. I was myself out of work, my days filled with useless scribblings that once amounted to great works of militaristic nonfiction. Great, at least, in numbers sold, though sales had waned in the growing years. I myself was nearly forty, as unwitting to enunciate the foreboding number as any man of thirty-seven would have been. Perhaps I have always had slightly vain inclinations, but never before had I invested so heartily in the careful grooming of my declining appearance. My blonde hair was carefully slicked back, forehead glossy with perspiration, broad shoulders sheathed in a well fitted (if not somewhat stifling) brown worsted wool.

I was surprised when Mrs. Moriarty opened the door instead of some priggish maid that a house so exorbitant would be sure to employ. She was a handsome woman, throat bare and unadorned by nothing more than the thick, loose black curls tumbling about her shoulders. Her eyes were slim and dark, lashed thickly, and rimmed with an excess of smudgy liner. Beneath a sharp nose were soft, plump lips, poisonously red. Short in the limbs and wee-waisted, she seemed a wicked woman, a temptress in a floral chiffon dress too light and whimsical to match her sultry affectation. I was at once ushered in with a flick of her cigarette of which she held tightly between sharp nails varnished burgandy. "Mr. Moran…" she crooned with a slight tipping of her hips, to which my body felt no reaction. I smiled politely, removing my hat as a gentleman does, and nodded briefly in salutations. I could not help but notice her eyeing my facial scars. "Please, come in!" She pressed upon my upper back with a surprising boldness, and found myself standing in a rather charming entry-way. The choice of furniture, I observed, was plain—not inexpensive, by any means, but rustic by any aristocrat's standards. The tour of the house was fairly standard…I was impressed by the height of the ceiling, the size of the rooms and the sturdiness of the furnishings therein, along with other notable flourishes of fancy, but could not see myself actually taking up residence here. She saw my hesitance and poised herself against a wall opposite, pursing her lips in a way I could only describe as Machiavellian. Offering her my most congenial smile, I held my hat awkwardly to my belly, nodding restlessly as if to some swinging tempo. "I confess this household has not had proper upkeep; however, I assure that you will find yourself most comfortable here." Though I attempted to keep my face impassive, I must have looked unconvinced, for she hastened to continue. "Please, let me show you the garden." I accepted with as much pleasure as I could muster from my voice, although I was feeling quite bedraggled by the heat and wanted no more than to take my leave and find a cool place to rest. Mrs. Moriarty—or Veronica, as I had been dutifully reminded twice already—guided me to a wide screen door that she opened with a shove. I could immediately tell why she had been so eager to show me the garden…it was voluminous with flowers matured to full bloom, inviting their powdered guts outward in a flamboyant array of colors.

However, it was not the flowers that captured my attention. Veronica gave a roll of her eyes and tossed her glossy hair back, extending two fingers in the general direction of a young boy and flicking them dismissively. "That's James...Jimmy, dear, won't you say hello?" There was a hint of malice in her voice, I presumed from multiple past attempts to lure her son into decent conversation. And oh, oh, he was ravishing. My hat fell from being clung to my belly to hanging limply at my thigh, and I presume that my face was likewise far too telling. The child lay upon his belly, propped up by slender elbows, his face downturned to the pages of a ratty old book. From devastatingly short brown slackettes sprouted slender, pale legs with delicate ankles which he kept positioned in the air and swung slightly to and fro. He could not have been more than thirteen, so narrow were his shoulders, and so small his frame. He looked up at the two of us momentarily, and I recognized a nymph at once. Vast, obsidian eyes burned with latent devilishness, pupils maddeningly blown out as though he had enjoyed his turn at a pipe. The boy's lips were pink and small, curving slowly into a smile that soon showed rows of tiny, pearly teeth in neat rows. My heart skittered and lurched, and I could have sworn that on that blazing July day my little Will was before me, swaddled in snow. Veronica reached out to touch a fern she had planted, twiddling a frond with obvious enthusiasm. This James—my Jim, I would later find, but for now he was James—did something that even I found most surprising, as wizened as I thought myself in regards to the tricky nymph. The boy winked, his grin decidedly malicious, before turning back to his book with the sweetest of countenances.

Veronica took me by the arm, turning me about, utterly oblivious to the thudding in my chest. "That was my James" she said, "and those were my dahlias."

"Yes," I returned, "Yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."