Chapter 3
Erik went home after talking to Charles that night. He had been afraid that the strange man would come back to his corner. Besides, he reasoned, he'd made enough off of the man to warrant taking the rest of the night off. But he couldn't afford to say in the next night as well. Erik wrapped his worn-out gray suit jacket tightly around his thin frame and stood at his corner, trying to look as desirable as possible without shivering.
An hour passed, then two, with no sign of a customer. The sky turned black and the temperature dropped another few degrees. Finally, a car pulled to a slow stop in front of him, window rolled down.
"You look cold." The driver was a large man. Erik had seen him around but had never serviced him himself. He tended toward the younger, more feminine types, if he didn't just go with a girl altogether. Rumor had it he liked it rough.
Erik gave him a jaunty grin. "It's a bit chilly. But I can think of a couple things that'll warm me up."
"How much?"
"Depends what you're looking for."
"The Full Monty."
"Thirty."
"Get in."
They drove to the same motel that Erik had taken Charles to. The man, stripped, leaving only a silver chain around his neck, and sat on the bed against the headboard. He was fat and hairy and Erik could smell his body odor from the other side of the room. But it was work. He'd had worse. The fat man pumped his erection slowly as he watched Erik undress.
"No too much meat on ya, is there, boy."
Erik glanced down at his narrow hips and the angular lines of his pelvis. He knew the man wasn't referring to his penis. He'd had no complaints in that area. "You don't like what you see?"
"Didn't say that. Come 'ere." He scooted over, making room for Erik on the bed. The younger man lay down and let the john roll on top of him, pinning him to the mattress by the shoulders. He leaned on the palms of his hands with all of his considerable weight. Erik fought back a wince and wondered if he'd have bruises in the morning.
The man shifted back slightly and slid one hand to Erik's neck, pushing down just enough to send a small flutter of fear to his stomach. "Don't move." He climbed off of him just enough to snatch up the condom and lube Erik had set on the nightstand, then was back between his thighs, condom rolled over his throbbing hard-on. He spread a dab of lubricant over himself. Erik mentally grimaced but kept his features calm. He could have been considerably more generous with the lube.
The john slammed into him without preamble. Erik let the instinctual hiss of pain escape, knowing his client would like that anyway.
The man pounded him relentless, fingernails digging into Erik's flesh. Erik groaned and moaned and bit his lip at all the right moments but his mind was elsewhere. The necklace dangling from the man's neck above him held his attention like a child's mobile. Something about the gline of it in the low light gave him a sense of déjà vu. He closed his eyes to take his mind off of it.
The fat man's fist connected with his cheekbone like a sledgehammer. Erik gasped in shock and pain, eyes flying open wide. The man grabbed him by the neck and squeezed. "Look at me when I'm fucking you, you cheap little whore!"
Suddenly, Erik was in a forest, lying in the dirt, his torn pants discarded. He was crying, begging the man to stop. But then the cock was thrust into his ass and Erik was screaming in agony.
The man went still and Erik looked up through his tears. The silver chain he had stolen from Erik and put around his own neck was strangling him of its own accord. He forgot the little boy beneath him and clawed at the necklace. He face began to turn red, then blue.
He fell over dead on top of Erik.
Erik ran.
In the London motel, Erik recoiled, instinctively bucking the john off of him. The metal lamp on the nightstand flew across the room under its own power. Erik scrambled to his feet and grabbed for his jeans, tripping into the wall in his rush to put them on. The man screamed profanities at him, but Erik heard nothing but white noise. He stumbled from the room with his shirt on backwards, boots unlaced, and underwear forgotten. Once he cleared the front desk, he broke into a full-out sprint, not slowing until he'd burst through the door of his flat, slamming it shut and fumbling with the lock.
He breath was erratic and harsh. He fell backwards onto his mattress and scooted until his back was pressed into the corner, knees pulled tightly to his chest.
Erik didn't know how long he stayed like that, staring at nothing. The same string of thoughts kept cycling through is head: 'The chain moved. The lamp moved. I made them move. Did I? No, that's impossible! But no one touched the lamp. No one touched the chain. The chain strangled someone. I strangled him. I murdered him. That's why I ran. But I never touched him.'
Underneath it all, his pulse pounded. It whispered to him. The sound of drums seemed to reverberate in his eyes. It pulled his attention to his pocket, to the undeniable weight pressing into his thigh. Slowly, he reached in and brought out a small handful of coins. 'Metal coins,' his whispering pulse clarified.
He could feel the metal. Not just in his hand but in his blood, in his very soul. Erik gently set the coins on the mattress in front of him. Minutes passed as he silently stared at them, daring himself to attempt the ridiculous. Finally, he took a deep breath and thought, "Move!"
Nothing happened.
He said it out loud, feeling extra foolish. Still nothing. He tried asking nicely. He tried commanding furiously. He waved his hand over them. They stayed put.
In what he promised himself was a last-ditch attempt at this silliness, Erik stretched his hand out toward the coins. He didn't order them or even think in words per se. But in his head he saw the metal sliding across the mattress. His arm trembled with the effort as if he was tugging at the coins by an invisible rope.
The coins moved.
Erik gasped. They hadn't moved much but he couldn't deny it. The coins had slid a few inches across the mattress before his very eyes, just like he'd visualized. He let his hand hover over the pile and imagined the small chunks of metal flying into his palm. They vibrated slightly but stayed put. Minutes passed. Sweat began to fall into his eyes and his muscles ached with the effort. Just when he thought he'd pass out from the strain, a single penny rose from the mattress, one inch, then slowly two. It shook violently in midair for a moment before falling back to the ground. He collapsed against the wall, gasping for breath. His mind was flooded with a swirling mess of tangled thoughts. Perhaps his unconscious realized he wouldn't be straightening things out tonight because he soon succumbed to a deep sleep, a soft smile on his lips.
Erik slept well into the afternoon, his body and mind both completely spent from his discovery. When he woke, he was dizzy and nauseous. But he could feel every ounce of metal in the room, calling to him, pulling him in a thousand different directions. He sat up and put his head between his knees, breathing deeply until the worst of the nausea subsided. The pull of the metal, however, was strangely familiar, and Erik slowly realized that he had always felt something similar, just much weaker. He was suddenly struck with the knowledge that, on some subconscious lever, he had always been minutely aware of all things metal.
Erik lay back down, still too dizzy to do much else. He tried to think of other instances when he may have inadvertently controlled metal. When he was about 13, he had been caught picking pockets on the streets of Paris. The gendarme kept trying to restrain him but the metal handcuffs wouldn't lock. Erik had managed to break free and run. 'Had he done that?' he wondered now.
One night, when he was 16 and living as a street urchin in Dublin, a group of bigger boys had cornered him in an alley. Though he was curled up at the time trying to protect his stomach and face, Erik caught a flash of silver in the moonlight. He heard a terrible clank and cries of shock and pain. Looking up, the boys were running away, a trash can lid lying innocently in their place. Had he summoned it to his defense?
There was one more incident tugging at the back of his mind, but he didn't want to think about it. He couldn't shake it, though; it crept up on him.
He was eight years old and the army was coming to take them to the ghetto. Erik didn't want to go. He didn't want to leave his bed and his toys and his favorite stuffed bear. He cried and held onto the leg of the kitchen table. His mama and papa tried to coax him from the house, but he wouldn't budge. Finally, the frustrated young soldier in charge of their block grabbed him by the hair and pulled him from the room. Herr Lensherr wasn't a violent man but no one laid a hand on his child. He tried to pull the soldier off and got an elbow to the jaw for his effort. The young Nazi forgot Erik and turned the full force of his rage on his father. He drew his sidearm but had already emptied it in the street. Instead of firing, he swung it at Herr Lensherr's head.
Before it made contact, the pistol flew from his hand, spiraling across the room. It seemed to fly farther and with a higher arc than it should have given the force and angle behind it. But little Erik wasn't a physicist. All he knew was that his papa hadn't been hurt. He ran to him and wrapped his arms around his legs. Herr Lensherr quietly led his wife and son from their home and into the crowd outside while the embarrassed soldier tried to retrieve his weapon from behind the bookshelf.
Erik dug the heels of his palms into his eyes as if he could gouge out the memory. That was another life and it only hurt to think of it. And even if his apparent power over metal had saved his father's life that day, it was his childish insolence that had put it in jeopardy. Besides, it had only been a temporary reprieve.
The sun was beginning to set by the time Erik remembered that he had a life to live, sudden superpowers or no. Business was slow as it was, he certainly couldn't afford to lie in bed alone all night.
He stretched slowly, muscles painfully stiff from lack of use, and padded into the makeshift bathroom. The entire flat was no more than one small room and the cheap drywall that had surrounded the toilet and shower had long since been destroyed by less considerate tenants. Erik had it partitioned off with an old bed sheet that was ripped down and returned to its proper purpose on colder nights.
When he turned on the shower, the pipes rattled and water spit out in cold, brown gushes for a minute. He waited until it had cleared before hopping in, though it hadn't warmed any. He scrubbed himself down quickly with cheap soup and rinsed off in record times. Erik wrapped a thin towel around his shoulders and stood shivering until he could make his frozen limbs move. He slipped on the same jeans from yesterday and a clean t-shirt that was a size too big. Not his best look for working, but he was too distracted to notice.
He needed to work tonight. If business didn't pick up soon, Erik knew he'd be out on the street again by spring. Still, he couldn't help but hope that strange man – Charles, wasn't it? – made another appearance this evening. Erik still wasn't sure he believed everything the man had sad. But he knew for damn sure that Charles couldn't be completely mad.
