Bar and Joey Page 3

  Fire burns within every part of my body. I can’t recall being manhandled by someone like Bar Moore. I’m sure it hasn’t happened in the last dozen months or longer. My stomach turns with shakiness, and my vision blurs. Instantly, my mouth goes dry. It’s not an uncomfortable position with the bed and breakfast owner, though. In fact, I welcome his touch. Our bodies seem to fit well together, balanced in size and shape and affection. Why should I have a problem regarding his attention and attraction?

  When he pulls away from me, I tell him, “Sometimes a man likes to be hugged like that.”

  He winks at me before making his escape from the tower room and tells me to rest before dinner, which should be amazing. “Until we see each other again,” he whispers, waving a simple goodbye.

  * * * *

  I settle in the tower room, unpacking necessary items for the night: all health and beauty supplies, slippers, a cotton robe to stay warm in, and other belongings. The views at two of the four windows extend into the snowy afternoon. A white-out is seen beyond their frosty glass and shaking frames. Snow falls heavily, effortlessly, and willfully from the Pennsylvania sky, filling the night. A true blizzard is at hand, relentless and on a natural warpath of sorts. Not only does it look cold outside the tower, it looks and feels daunting, frigidly deathlike; a possible forewarning to unexplained danger and further unexplained mysteries during this January 21 night.

  Approximately twenty minutes later, there are heavy footsteps on the spiral stairs and two light taps on the bedroom’s only door. “Sir Joey,” Slender Man calls through the plane of wood.

  I open the door and see the man hunched over, far too tall for access to the stairwell. On a silver tray, he balances a hot and steamy drink.

  “An aperitif before dinner. Something to keep you cozy. Mr. Moore wants all of his guests to stay warm this evening because of the storm, particularly you.”

  “Particularly me?” I question, sounding like an imbecile.

  “Yes.” He nods. “Particularly you. This is what he has said to me. Perhaps the master of the house has taken an interest in you, sir, but this isn’t any of my business, of course.”

  It is such an odd thing to tell me, but I feel flattered. I remove the hot beverage from his tray and says, “Thank you, Bertram. I do need this.”

  Once he leaves the tower, making his way into the other parts of the castle, I am left alone. Although the crisp and snowy walk from Kel’s BMW to the castle felt exhausting at the time, I feel quite energized at the moment, refreshed, safe from the wintry storm, and relaxed. Therefore, I make my way downstairs, carry my beverage in hand, and find the sitting room once again.

  I’m not surprised to see Bar’s Aunt Holiday still sleeping: head and back arched forward, light snores escaping her mouth, otherwise motionless. Nor am I surprised to hear the colonel and Lady Vampe arguing; this time over a rare da Vinci painting discovered by a French student in Brussels. Lady Vampe clearly claims the painting authentic, while Colonel McCarmichael deems it rubbish and a bad fake. Rude comments are shared back and forth, some of which are filthy, ludicrous, and somewhat childish.

  I have a seat opposite the pair and sip my still-hot beverage, entertained by their immature antics. A one-act play of sorts unravels in front of me, just for my pleasure. Lady Vampe begins to complain about the colonel’s disgusting relationship with the younger man.

  “Dash isn’t a filthy pet. He’s a young man who takes care of my deepest needs. Perhaps you can start treating him as such.”

  “You’re a disgusting old man, Colonel. Release that stupid gold chain from that young man and set him free.”

  Colonel McCarmichael clears his throat. In a deep voice that sounds condescending, he tells her, “For your information, Dash enjoys his role. He’s under no conviction to stay with me. We’re actually quite in love. I’d be glad to share the details of our romantic interludes with you, but I’m afraid you’re one of those tightly-clenched women who never think freely.”

  Lady Vampe rolls her eyes. “So rude, Colonel McCarmichael. I’m sure you’re well aware of the old cliché that looks are deceiving. I can’t think of you not having a string of men on golden chains, just as Dash is. Don’t forget I’m from Hollywood and have seen situations like this, and many strange others.”

  As the guests banter, I realize they loathe each other. When Lady Vampe rises from her chair with her cocktail in one hand and an unlit cigarillo in the other, she says, “I must have a breather. Perhaps I’ll have a smoke in the kitchen.”

  “Obscene cow,” the colonel mumbles. “No wonder you haven’t had a lucrative gig in the last ten years.”

  Lady Vampe spins on her heels, wobbles, and slurs, “Did you say something, Reginald?”

  He presents her with an uplifting smile and lies, “Of course not, darling. Run along now and enjoy your cigarette. Let us men be alone. We have much to discuss in private.”

  Once she leaves the room, Colonel McCarmichael spills his tale with me about their past.

  “Are you familiar with the artist Gregor Sinn, Joey?”

  I shake my head.

  “He’s a marvelous craftsman who works with wood. He shaves large pieces of trees into human forms, most of which are quite risqué because of their sexual explicitness, for lack of a better term.” He waves a hand at me and then pats Dash on his head. “Anyway, we were all very good friends in our early twenties at the time, being quite youthful and fun while living the high life in SoHo. SoHo used to be so much fun, almost exotic in my opinion. Sinn and the demon hag had a sexual fling. She had fallen in love with the man. What she didn’t know, but eventually learned, broke her, which I full-heartedly expected at the time of this truthful tale. As Sinn banged her, he was being banged by me. Once she discovered such sexual happenings between Sinn and me, Vivian lost part of her mind. She tried to kill me with a steak knife after learning of my indiscretions, but I was quite quick and dodged her attack. To this day, she hasn’t forgiven me, and I her because of her attack. In the end, we are enemies. To think, all over a young artist.”

  “How did the two of you end up here tonight?”

  He continues to pet his pet. Dash doesn’t move. “By mere chance, I presume. The gods of humor obviously like to be entertained by our bumping into each other. What better things are there for them to do on wintery evenings during a blizzard?”

  “Very strange,” I tell him, sip my cooling beverage.

  “The world is filled with ugly karma,” he replies. Following his comment, he begins to ramble about his career in the military and how, as a young man, he worked his way up to colonel. Sipping at his hot and alcoholic beverage, he proclaims, “I’m not ashamed to admit I had to sleep with some of my peers and men of authority and power to gain such a position. Humans aren’t perfect, although Vivian would suggest she is.”

  As if on cue, Lady Vivian Vampe enters the sitting room again. She has snow on her shoulders and complains, “The damn cook sent me outside to smoke. If she weren’t going to feed me this evening, I’d see to her demise. There are many weapons of choice in this castle I can use.”

  “Congratulations, Vivian, you’re coming across as being bitchy, just as always when we accidentally come together. No wonder you can’t do anything better in Hollywood except those dreadful zombie and alien movies. No one will ever take you serious as an actress.”

  She sits, tilts her head back, and laughs. “This coming from someone who has a Latin American young man on a golden leash. Please, Reginald, the evening is young. I expect you to continue to humor me.”

  Aunt Holiday continues to nap in her reading chair during the cluster fuck between Lady and Colonel: motionless, head positioned almost between her legs, hopefully not dead. The pose looks uncomfortable and not something I will ever enjoy partaking in.

  While Aunt Holiday and the ex-friends in the sitting room continue to banter, calling each other unrefined names as children often do to other children, I decide to escape their side and take
a self-guided tour of the castle, becoming lost.

  * * * *

  A prized director can make a stunner of a movie in the Foreboding Castle Bed and Breakfast because its rooms are somewhat eerie. I meander from one room to the next on the first floor within the castle. Most of the rooms are on the smaller scale: ballroom, conservatory, a second sitting room, dining room, and the library. I feel as if I’m in the game Clue, walking from one room to the next, listening to the wind howl outside the castle’s stone walls, prepared to find a murdered victim upon my travels. Each room is decorated with tacky wallpaper and lacks furniture. They each look as if they are being moved in to, or out, minus the packed cardboard boxes here and there.

  I meet Mrs. O’Donnell in the kitchen. She’s a plump, gray-haired Irish woman with somewhat violet-colored eyes. I can’t say she is more than five-feet tall. While stirring something that smells like corn chowder on the massive stove, she watches me enter the room.

  “I see you’re getting along in the castle just fine.” She pauses for effect, leans over her pot of foodies, and inhales. “I’ve always enjoyed self-tours of magical places.” She shakes her head. “There’s nothing magical here, sir. Haunting is more our thing at the Foreboding Castle.”

  “Good to know,” I tell her, smelling the delicious soup on the stove.

  “Just be certain you’re on your best with anything mysterious you see, young man. An upset ghoul or apparition isn’t what you want to face in the middle of the night. Particularly since you’re alone in the Prince room.”

  I decide to take her advice and continue my travels. In the hallway, surfacing outside the kitchen area, I turn a corner as Bar turns the same corner. A collision occurs, and our chests bump into each other. Stomach and shoulders bounce together. Faces almost meld into a kiss. Our crouches ever so slightly collide; not that I deter such an action from happening.

  During the clumsy event, I almost fall to the carpeted floor, but he catches me in his arms.

  “That could have been an ugly fall for you.”

  “Thanks for the catch.”

  “My pleasure. It’s what I’m here for.”

  Our stares mix, and we smile at each other. Something like the heat of a wintertime hearth burns my chest. My legs teeter. My breath feels as if it unhinges. I become dizzy, drunk-like, confused, and semi-hard between my legs, ready for whatever he has to offer me: a lick to the splay of my neck, a simple tongue-kiss to my mouth, a cock-rub with the back of his left hand to my denim-covered package…something…anything.

  Honestly, I really do think he’s going to lean in to me and provide me with a kiss. Bar doesn’t. Instead, he releases me and says, “Visiting the kitchen, I see?”

  I nod. “It’s lovely. There’s a thick chowder that smells delicious in there on the range.”

  “Thick,” he whispers, winks at me. His right eyebrow raises, and he prattles, “I like thick dicks.”

  My eyes grow wide, and I become speechless. Every muscle in my body firms, unmoving. I can’t believe he toys with me this way: sexually and catching me off guard.

  He chuckles. “You turned a very weak white, my friend. I’m only joking. Sometimes, I like to get a rise out of the men I’m attracted to.”

  I feel my cheeks warm, blushing. “You like to play jokes on people, don’t you?”

  “In this old place, there’s sometimes nothing more a man can do.” He reaches for my hand and kindly instructs, “Follow me. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Before I realize it, again, I’m being led astray inside his castle, weaving through three rooms: a music room with a grand piano, an entertainment room with a floor-to-ceiling screen to watch movies on, and a bar area where most of the bed and breakfast’s liquor is stored. Inside a short hallway on the first floor, somewhere near the music room and the conservatory, between the sitting room and foyer, closer to the ballroom than the kitchen, we come to a wall decorated in peacock-covered wallpaper and two sconces with flickering faux candles. He stands directly between the two sconces.

  “Very few people know about this, Joey. But you’re kind of special to me, and I want to share it with you.” He reaches above his head to one of the turquoise-gold peacocks displayed. Bar places two fingertips against the navy-green circle of color at the end of a feather and presses the wall. What occurs is something out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon. The narrow door between the sconces opens, and a secret, dimly-lit hallway appears.

  “What is this?” I ask, surprised.

  He chuckles. “The castle has many secret passages. Its walls have walls. Some of the guests find the passageways. Most don’t. I thought I would give you a treat and show you one.”

  I am amazed, staring into the mouth and throat of a narrow hallway designed by wooden beams that zigzag overhead. The passageway turns a pitch-black hue in the distance. “Very interesting,” I say, seeing cobwebs and smelling an earthy and detesting aroma. A cold sweeps over me, clinging and biting at my bare skin.

  “Follow me, Joey.” He turns his cell phone on flashlight mode, and we enter the silver-white illuminated darkness. “Be careful of the beams. You don’t want to conk your head off one.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” The cold eats at me, sweeping around my body, gnawing at my skin. The noise is a hollow echo of disgruntled moans.

  Bar pushes cobwebs out the way, one after the next. Their eight-legged owners scurry to and fro, temporarily invaded and disturbed. There are so many, I can’t count. Whips of long, silken threads wave in the wind, blowing like flags.

  I hear noises inside the wall as we come to a set of steps that climb upwards. Strong mumbling. Chatter by Lady Vampe and Colonel McCarmichael is heard. Slowly, we climb the darkened stairs. The boards creak and moan under our weight, upset and groggy from maybe too much sleep. Light whispers blow through the cavern-like hallways, apparent ghosts sweeping from one interior passageway to the next.

  Once at the top of the incline, the hallway stops. A T formation gives access to the right and left. I follow Bar to the left. The area becomes much smaller, though, half the size of the previous hallway. We hunch over and continue walking. The silver-white light leads us astray through the castle’s veins. I hear laughter, a growl, a soothing hum, and other sounds, keeping the castle alive. We walk ten, twenty, almost fifty feet straight ahead. Many similar passageways connect to this main seam, veering left and right, leading to various areas of the castle.

  Bar stops, holding out his left arm and hand behind him, informing me not to bump into him. Something devious inside the folds of my mind tells me that he does want me to accomplish such a task, purposely, with my clothes off.

  He turns on his heels, still hunched, and faces the left wall. At eye-level, the flashlight’s beam illuminates a thumb-size knob on the wall. He reaches for the knob, turns off the flashlight, and apparently works the brass device open with a thumb and finger since a beam of light—no larger than the width of a lipstick tube—creates a laser-like shaft of white brightness through the darkness, hitting and reflecting off the opposite joists of lumber.

  Bar leans into me, placing his free hand around my waist, squeezing me against him, and whispers, “Look through the hole.”

  I listen, moving my face forward. My right eye connects with the hole’s opening and…I see a bedroom that looks similar to my own except it is square inside instead of being round like my tower room. There’s a desk, reading chair, a mirror, and a queen-size bed. Upon the bed are two nicely built and naked men. The men are making love, and I study their tight bodies: taut bottoms, pulsing erections, beefy arms entwined, many abs, and hairy chests colliding and falling apart. At first, I’m not sure exactly who the two men are, but finally realize their identity: my sidekick Kel and his number one adult movie performer, Magnum Ride. The pair groan, laugh, bite, and kiss, busy on the bed.

  Truth is, it’s not the first time I have watched either man have sex, just not with each other. Both are beautiful, languid and rich regarding t
heir movements, and pulsing. They suckle, pinch, lick, and moan, filling the not-so-private room with their sounds of heated sex. Their motions on the sky blue sheet become heated and wild. I hear a slap and Magnum calling Kel a vulgar name. And Kel responds, filling the bedroom with his laughter, obviously enjoying the rough play.

  Into my right ear, Bar whispers, “We’ll leave them to play.” He closes the peephole, and we continue our travels forward, through the darkness, and meander deeper through the castle’s interior walls.

  * * * *

  Together, our bodies positioned side by side and very close, there are other rooms we observe inside the castle’s walls, hidden from its occupants, but among its foreboding ghosts. It becomes quite the exciting game, I admit, spying on Aunt Holiday napping in the sitting room, studying the colonel in the library as he tells his mannish pet to “sit and stay” as he thumbs through a collection of rare Hemingways, and peering at Lady Vampe as she drops her Tibetan shawl to the ballroom’s floor, outstretches her arms like an ice dancer, and begins to twirl in mad circles around and around the ballroom’s shiny and freshly waxed floor, spinning and spinning as she hums something from a Broadway musical.

  Most of the bedrooms within the castle are dark and empty. And the Irish cook, Mrs. O’Donnell, isn’t seen in the kitchen, although there are pots bubbling and a layer of steam rising to the high ceiling. Bertram, or Slender Man as I call him, is spotted in the hallway, heading to the billiard room, or what one calls the entertainment room these days.

  Bar and I have fun together, well into evening, spirited within the walls. But eventually our fun ends, and Bar whispers to me, “We shall have dinner now.” He pushes on what appears to be a door, and we immediately walk into the sitting room, closing the plane of wall/secret passageway behind us.

  Aunt Holiday lightly snores, still asleep and unbothered. I follow Bar away from her, exiting the room. We make a left and right through the castle’s hallways and eventually come to the dining room, another small room with ten Edwardian-style chairs, a round table, red-black-gold Oriental rug, and Francis Hayman paintings. The table is set for ten, exquisite china and flatware glinting because of the crystal chandelier’s vivid light.