Mars in Retrograde. Chapter 9.

Bees deep inside the stigma.

The world keeps turning. You’re still here reading. Thank you. Be safe. I love you.

Chapter 9. Bees deep inside the stigma.

The story, or what Marshall picked up of it from his mother’s coked out rambling and his father’s mindless admonishment and bestowal of past sins, goes like this: repressed Christian girl who has already developed a God complex and borderline personality disorder meets anti-establishment Walt Whitman enjoyer who smokes pot to complete basic tasks like driving a little sister to softball practice. They call it love at first sight but we’ll call it what it is: an attempt to wrest control over a difficult life in the form of building another person. Where an outsider might have seen a rapturous and maybe even wholesome love, the thing that truly bound Eddie and Elaine was the sheer amount of emotional real estate available for each to corrupt.

From Elaine’s perspective, she saw cracks in the exterior, the parts of a cool guy facade that could be filled with obsession and devotion, how she could make this man care about her the way she cared about her god the way he cared about nothing. She was going to give this loser stoner some purpose to be found in her healthy hips, innocent eyes and virgin thighs. She wanted worship, plain and simple and she saw a boy so utterly aimless that it would be easy to indoctrinate him into the church of loving her however she wanted.

Eddie, known to his friends as Eddie (nicknames are for faggots, he always said–perhaps why Marshall clings so tightly to each one he is gifted) had no interest in worship though the way his eyes could trace a woman’s curves no doubt left them wondering if his tongue could follow the same path from observation to pleasure. Eddie knew Elaine. He knew the church she attended, same church his own father had been kicked out of for being weird to the choir boys, a job best left to the priests, not the churchgoers. He’d seen firsthand Elaine’s devotion to her god and just as easily had seen how flimsy and forced that devotion was. He wanted to make her believe in something the way that he believed there were aliens in the White House and mole people gradually weakening the foundation of the planet. He wanted her to believe in him enough to make his meager existence real, a man propped up against a woman like every other man.

Their mutual desire to give one another something to believe in, mistaken as horniness the way teenagers mistake everything for horniness, collided in a frenzy of intense sex in school locker rooms, late night confessions of wanting to kill fathers and thinly veiled attempts to chisel one another to pieces and kintsugi the fuck out of the scraps like playing god was a normal after school activity for teens to carry out on one another rather than on an anthill or a baby bird abandoned in a nest.

Elaine and Eddie spent a year breaking one another down in carefully calculated moves. Elaine made sure they were caught having sex by her father so Eddie would have to hear the terrors of underage, unmarried sex and be filled with a fear and defiance that made him dependent on her body to express his own autonomy. Eddie traded kisses down her legs in exchange for solvent hits from his pipe. Elaine let him fuck her raw and then called him an idiot for finishing inside of her though she was equally as frustrated when the whole thing didn’t result in pregnancy. Eddie fed her conspiracies mixed with truths, whispered into her ear in the dark, watched her paint vivid fantasies in her mind and he’d do this as he got her higher and higher until she could no longer discern reality from fantasy.

Each party thought themself in control but really they whittled away at one another rather equally and consistently until there was very little left of either of them, together making a singular sort of Frankenstein body, ugly and helpless.

So, when Eddie suggested at the unripe age of seventeen that they skip graduation and run away to a hippie commune in the woods, they found themselves both without god, without a foundation of the self, without anything real to believe in and no true concept of reality or healthy devotion topped off with a penchant for mind altering drugs.

They were indoctrinated into a cult within a week. Neither of them could recall–or refused to recall–much about the cult or the things that happened there except for the fact that they did a lot of drugs, had a lot of sex and worshiped a man who was good and evil and beautiful and did not discriminate when it came to fucking his followers and making them love him.

So when Elaine did finally get pregnant like she’d sort of wanted, it was rather unclear who the father was and they never did care to find out as their cult leader had no interest in the child anyway and the cult was disbanded before the baby was born because their leader had been killing and eating his followers for decades and the FBI finally caught a whiff of it.

It’s the very fact that Marshall incarnate may or may not be the sexual product of a cult leader’s loins that he finds very funny as they pull into the driveway of another cult with only the soft blue light of the departed sun reflecting off of muddy puddles to guide them. The rain has slowed to a drizzle and the windshield wipers make a horrid sound like a duck being crushed under a weight as they squeak across the glass in imperfect swivels.

The sign at the head of the driveway had said Pleasant Farms. Perhaps it was pleasant in the daylight but at dusk beneath a thick, dark storm cloud the cult looks menacing and dangerous, possibly because it is a cult.

At the end of the rocky drive is a big wooden house painted a deep brown with black shutters drawn closed across the old windows. It must be four stories tall with a steep triangle roof. Candle lights flicker within but no electricity sparks up the windows or the sturdy, gabled porch out front.

Jamie kills the engine and without the weak headlights, a hesitant darkness enraptures the scene.

“We’re gonna die here for sure,” Beaver says.

Marshall smacks his lips together. “Nah. See, the thing is cults won’t work on us because it’s too obvious. We know we’re susceptible, right? Their brainwashing tactics can’t work on us, we’re too smart.

Beaver snivels. “Doesn’t mean we won’t die here.”

“I really think they could indoctrinate me,” Lana says, her voice tired. “If they got heroin or coke, it’s over for me.”

Jamie looks to Marshall but he can’t return the gaze without thinking about how he touched himself the night before with Jamie’s name holding the shape of his lips and so he keeps his head down and remains steadfast. “Well, my bones say it’s gonna start coming down again soon and those tents I stole are shit so maybe we’ll die but let’s sleep in real beds tonight, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jamie says. And that is all that they need.

The slamming of their car doors and boots splashing in puddles brings someone to the front porch before they can even knock. She steps out the door like it’s her first time seeing the outside world. Her skin is dark, almost blue in the strange evening light. Her hair falls down her back in long braids that almost reach her calves. She wears a long-sleeved, white, lacy dress that reaches her ankles and her feet are bare.

They step onto the porch and she looks them over not unkindly but with a pinch of petulance. “Can I help you?” She asks. Her voice is a normal woman’s voice.

Marshall steps forward, hands folded carefully, submissively across his chest. “Ma’am, we were hoping to find a place to stay tonight as we are homeless youths and the weather is bad and a man in a diner a few miles back told us y’all might be willing to take us in.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Dick’s Diner?”

They nod in unison, a cult of their own making.

“Fucking grandpa,” she mutters. “I’m June. Dick is my papa. He sends anyone with a kind smile our way.” She trails off.

Lana swallows. “So. Can we come in, or…”

June looks back inside and though she must be a few years older than Marshall, she looks as though she might throw a child-like tantrum. “Fine,” she says, curt. “Come in.” And they follow June inside and she mutters to herself, “fucking new people, she loves new people. Fucking grandpa.”

Beaver is looking at Marshall knowingly and he is ignoring it.

The inside of the house is cavernous. The entire first floor is open and unwalled save for the occasional support beam. A massive low table made of thick, dark wood spans the length of the room, lined with floor pillows. The left side of the room houses an industrial kitchen–a stove with eight burners, a deep basin of a sink, butcher block counters, pots and pans hanging from a rack secured to the ceiling. The right side of the room, beneath the stairs leading up and up, is a pile of blankets and pillows around a sort of game table where four women sit playing some kind of card game in hushed tones. They eye the wet kids warily and the puddles they drip onto the immaculately kept hardwood floors.

June closes the door behind them and her hands dissolve into a flurry removing jackets and smothering them in hand towels to minimize their dripping. “Please,” she says, “shoes off, shoes off, I do have to insist.”

Shoes are removed and left on the porch where they can do no more damage. Marshall offers to help clean the mess they’ve made but June only glares and Marshall feels insulted somehow.

June does not seem to calm down until there is not a single drop of water left on the floor or hanging from the threads of their clothes. How she can be sure of the cleanliness in the warm but minor candle light, Marshall is unsure. He is impressed and a bit afraid.

“Now,” June says, smoothing the perfect folds of her dress, “down to business. You’re a very strange looking group?”

She poses it as a question though Marshall cannot fathom that there is a correct answer. “Well, ma’am, with all due respect, this place is very strange as well. We were just hoping to stay the night, keep out of the rain and then we’ll be out of your hair by sunrise.”

June’s face contorts as if she just smelled something terrible and it’s very possible that the origin of the smell is Marshall. “What’s in that backpack? You’re not some kind of journalist, are you?”

The women playing cards have not made a move since the conversation began. They know that the conversation is the real game.

“No, ma’am. You can search it if you’d like. It’s only got survival tools. Not a journalist in this bunch. I’d burn the New York Times for warmth if I was unfortunate enough to have a copy, ma’am.”

June reacts very strongly to every word that spills from Marshall’s mouth but the reactions are wild and unreadable. Her hands never still, her brows are a constant flurry, writhing caterpillars above her dark eyes. She could be furious or deeply amused or completely misunderstanding. She looks nothing like her grandfather, calm, kind and steady. She is shaky like Lana in withdrawal and skeptical like a man defusing a bomb.

“You look strong,” she says to Marshall.

“I am,” he confirms.

She nods. The women hold their breath and do not veil their observation. Rain pitter patters on the windows and footsteps can be heard padding across the old floors above.

“You can stay the night,” June says. “But you’ll have to meet with Shepherd Maya in the morning. She will decide what work you must do in order to pay for your housing. And then you can be on your way when the work is done, I suppose.”

“You suppose?” inquires Lana.

For the first time, June grins. It is a serene thing that creeps across her face as though she’s just been injected with morphine and is suddenly satisfied with the pain of reality. “Well, Shepherd Maya has a way with words, you know. She is our Trusted Mother for a reason. She just might convince you to stay.”

The women in the corner exhale. Just the name of their leader is a salve to their anxiety. They agree, she does have a way with words. They wouldn’t mind these strangers if Shepherd Maya gave them permission to stay. No, they might even come to love these strangers. The women fold their cards flat on the table and the game ends with no clear winner.

---

June says they’ve already had dinner and the other girls (everyone on the farm is a woman though it doesn’t seem to be a conflict that three men have just arrived) have washed up and gone to bed for the evening.

Out the back door, the porch wraps around the house with more rickety chairs, low tables and abandoned board games that are strangely foreign-looking. In the dark and the fog that follows the rainstorm, it’s difficult to make anything out but June leads them on sure feet down a wet dirt path, unbothered by the mud or the puddles that troubled her so much in the house. She explains as they walk that the big house is called the Big House and is where the cooks, cleaners, anyone who takes on the more menial tasks sleep. The basement serves as a storehouse for produce and manufacturing goods. Pleasant Farm is a self-sustained community that does not interact with the outside world, not to trade or sell or recruit. They are off the grid entirely–electricity free, undocumented on maps, like a tiny island nation in a sea of corn.

The other girls–June insists on calling them girls rather than women–sleep in cabins at the heart of the farm, the center of the produce so they can be one with that which they tend.

Beaver keeps looking at Marshall and making signs that insinuate these girls are crazy but Marshall is swatting his hand away. Thunder cracks overhead and it won’t be long before the sky opens once more and Marshall would like to be in a bed when that happens.

Through the fog, rows of ramshackle cabins appear in crooked lines like miniature versions of the Big House, all dark and quiet. June leads them to one that looks like the rest but she says it’s empty and lets them inside. It’s a tiny thing compared to the house. Just two beds pushed against opposite walls and a door to the bathroom which June explains works on a gray water system. The toilet they shit in filters the water and is recycled as shower water.

Beaver looks as though he might be sick.

“Get some rest,” June says with forced gentleness. “I’ll come get you in the morning and bring you to meet Mother.”

When she’s gone, four sets of shoulders relax. Lightning flashes and illuminates the room for a short moment and then it is submerged in darkness once more. Jamie lights as many candles as he can find. Two beds. Four people. Marshall looks up at the ceiling.

Lana is unbothered, yawning, shaking slightly. “Alright, Beav, up to you kid. Who ya sleeping with tonight?”

He grabs for Lana’s hand. “It’s your turn, Miss Lana. I can take care of you better than either of these two boys.”

“You don’t know how right you are, buddy.” She coughs and clutches at her concave stomach. “I call first shower. I need to throw up for a while.”

The bathroom only has a loose sheet for a door so they all sit around and pretend to be doing other things while Lana retches and groans in chorus with the trickling of refined shit water.

Marshall tucks himself away in a corner on the floor, pulls his notepad and stares at the blank white page while trying not to think about sharing a bed with a man who he’s jerked off to more than once or twice and so on. He brings the tip of his pencil to the page and pushes down until it snaps. He does this with four pencils in a row and decides that he has made some art somehow.

Lana comes out of the shower looking pale and swimming in an off white nightgown. “They got free clothes in there,” she says and then crawls over Beaver and under the covers where she falls asleep in seconds. Beaver goes next.

Marshall picks up the broken tip of lead and rolls it around between his fingertips, staining them charcoal gray. He cannot bring himself to look up at Jamie and what he’s doing in the bed they are going to sleep in. He worries about how he’ll deal with getting a boner, which is inevitable because he already has one and his boners are pretty loud. He takes his stained fingertips and drags them across the page in mindless drifts and swirls. Using the blunt, broken end of the lead, he scratches jagged, hard lines almost tearing into the paper to contrast the blurry, looping swirls. When he finishes, it looks like nothing and feels like desire. Soft and melting and cut through with an intensity so staggering it threatens to rip him apart.

When Beaver comes out, dark skin gleaming, he blows out the candle by their bed. “Night, boys.” He’d procured a big nightcap that swallows his head but he keeps his pot on the table next to the bed where it can be easily reached.

Jamie is looking at him now and so he looks back. He offers Marshall the next shower and Marshall cannot say no.

Under the water, he feels as though he hasn’t bathed in weeks. He feels it all drip from his skin along with the water that refuses to get hot enough to burn his skin the way that he likes. The soreness from the car ride melts away. The stiffness of the sleeping bag. The smoke from the man in the diner. June’s hands tidying their bodies, all of it is pulled from his skin, everything but desire. Under the same roof, he wonders if it is safe to feel. If only Jamie would tell him what is allowed.

He tries to touch himself, from head to toe he rubs his body tenderly and slowly, looking for a spot that will open him up and spill his desire onto the pale bathroom tile but nothing satisfies him the way Jamie’s almost touch does. Nothing compares to the hovering potential, the threat of the thing happening and the post-orgasm feeling of nothing happening at all.

Marshall hopes quietly that he hasn’t led his people astray. He hopes they are safe here but it’s impossible to tell in the deep fog with the wet quiet of the night time resting heavily on the roof. They’ll meet Shepherd Maya tomorrow and she’ll try to convince them to stay. It wouldn’t be impossible. All she’d have to say is that Marshall must share a bed with Jamie each night and he’d get right to work. June called him strong but he is a very weak person.

Marshall towels himself off, pulls on a nightgown that is too small, revealing his knees and the outline of his swinging dick against the thin fabric if he leans too far back, and steps back into the bedroom. Jamie’s eyes linger on his bare legs for an infinitesimal moment and then he nods and takes his turn.

Marshall crawls under the covers. Beaver snores quietly in the other bed or maybe it’s Lana. There are cabins full of other women nearby and somewhere very close by is a cult leader and they are in Missouri and so far from home, far from all the people he’s killed, and all Marshall can think about is kissing. Hard, hot kissing when lips need each other like pollen pulls bees deep inside the stigma. Soft, fluttery kisses, tepid and nervous like a bird’s tiny heartbeat. Quick, fleeting kisses that punctuate a sentence or act as a greeting. Kisses that start and never stop like time is a blanket and so long as you’re enshrouded it can always be wet lips and searching tongues and soft smiles that you feel rather than see.

Marshall wants to be brave enough to do anything. His lips are dry and the rain outside taunts him with its endless pitter patter the way a drop of water does not hesitate to meet the ground with a kiss and the hard earth takes the rain in with wide and loving arms until the sun beckons that water out and the earth releases knowing just as soon that water will come back for another kiss and another into eternity. Perfect, uncompromising devotion.

He listens carefully to his heartbeat, to the sound of the shower water hitting the tiles after rolling off of Jamie’s slim back.

When Marshall was thirteen, he masturbated for the first time with one eye peeking through the blinds in the trailer, watching Truck Willis with his legs spread, too young to be smoking a cigarette and he was filled with shame afterwards, not because he’d touched himself to the vision of a boy but because in the throes of personal exploration he’d watched someone else, a person he didn’t want to become and wondered if his touch could fix the boy to the detriment of his own pleasure. In his very intentional groping, he imagined Truck’s body could be like a cross he would nail himself to in order to purge the evil that burns up the rest. His hands like a sermon could part Truck’s stupid thighs and show him enough love to make him tender. The thought alone of such a power existing made him cum. And so Marshall is decidedly incapable of initiation because he cannot offer himself up in that way and willingly give over his agency, not when he knows how easily it is given. It has to be taken from him.

When the curtain slides open, Marshall stays still beneath the covers. Jamie blows out the remaining candles and climbs into bed. They share the same scent of rain and soap but somehow it feels unique only to Jamie.

Marshall’s fear keeps him from truly pretending to sleep. His breath is uneven. He feels like a child. Small.

Jamie settles in behind him, brings his mouth to Marshall’s ear and almost inaudibly says, “I’m going to hold you, okay?”

“Yes,” Marshall says when what he wants to say is please, please, please, Jamie, please but he cannot ask something like that of another living person. Arms wind their way around his body and he is such a small child that he feels enveloped, encompassed, swaddled in an ancient kind of warmth that he knows the first humans must have discovered and adored and killed for. Only the bare skin of their legs meet in the dark, two layers of cotton keeping the rest of them apart.

Warm breath caresses the back of Marshall’s neck, soft, repetitive almost like a kind of kiss.

the whole world is dying / don’t it seem like a good time for kissing?

Previous chapter. Next chapter.

Table of Contents.

Thank you for being here in this strange time. I hope this story, which hangs on its own apocalyptic precipice offers a sort of relief if a thing like that is possible. As a reminder, if you wanna skip the wait for chapters, you can grab your own digital copy of the whole book on my website or on amazon for your e-reader.. I leave that decision up to you.