Markwildyr.com, Post #210
Got some comments on Don Morgan’s “Spirit Wolf” short story guest blog last week. Thanks, Don, for helping out.
And here’s another of
my Wildyr short stories for this week. Let’ meet Jude Manchild.
* * * * *
JUDE MANCHILD
I closed
the cellphone and stood shivering. I’d have made a pretty good aspen in a
windstorm right then. The call had been short, just five words. “I’m coming
over. Be there.”
An aspen
leaf has two sides, right, one pale and the other a darker green. When the wind
blows, those leaves twist this way and that, revealing all to the onlooker.
That pretty well described me. My reaction to Bart Jewelson’s instructions
stroked both sides of my personality. My name, which is Jude Manchild, both
identifies me and reveals my weakness. The Jude part is okay, it’s macho enough
for anybody. But Manchild? That’s a contradiction in terms. And I’m a
contradiction in today’s world, as well. I don’t know if Bart was the first to
discern it or not, but he was the first to act on it. It had been a year ago
that he caught me hiking from a buddy’s house back home and stopped to offer a
ride on his cycle.
As soon as
I threw a leg over the long seat that accommodated both rider and passenger, he
gunned the motor revealing the power of the machine and that of his muscular
thighs my inner legs caressed. Without asking, he took an abrupt U-turn.
“Hey!” I
yelled. “My house is back the other way.”
He threw
his response over his left shoulder. “We’re not going to your house.”
“Where?” I
squealed.
He didn’t
bother to answer, merely raced out of town at a speed that raised the hair on
my arms. Still without uttering a word, Bart took a quick—and to my
mind—reckless turn down a little used, overgrown road. In my uncertainty—no,
let’s be honest—fear, I grasped his trim torso more firmly, which brought my
crotch up against the rear of his jeans.
After
another quarter of a mile of bouncing over ruts and dodging saplings growing in
the middle of the road, I saw our probable destination: a fall-down, ramshackle
building of split, weather-beaten planks that probably once served as a garage
for someone’s truck or tractor.
“Go open
the doors,” he ordered. “And close them after us.”
In the
nanosecond before I moved to obey his instructions, I thought of racing back
down that rough road. Nah, he’d catch me before I got a hundred yards. Across one
of the fallow fields that surrounded us? He could probably ride through those
too.
Anyway, part
of me didn’t want to escape. Part of me went giddy at the thought of spending
some alone time with the baddest boy in town. The handsomest baddest boy
in town. I’d known Bart—two years older’n me—all my life. He wasn’t really an
outlaw biker, he just had the hog and the leather jacket with a hunting hawk
emblazoned on the back. Still, he was always the one to take the risk or dare
or opportunity, especially if it involved a little danger. And in all those
years, he’d never paid me the slightest bit of attention. So what was he up to
now? But he silenced all my questions with a raised hand.
Bart
dismounted and lowered the bike’s stand. Then he sat sidewise on the saddle,
legs wide, looking every inch the tragic Hollywood thug who would doubtlessly redeem
himself by the end of the film. He swiped his chin in an off-hand, masculine
way.
“You’re my
bitch now, Manchild. Whoever you’re doing it with, quit it. You don’t do it
with nobody but me until I tell you different, hear?” Apparently, I waited too
long to respond. He stood, legs spread. “You got that, kid?”
“It was all
too fast for me. “Got what? Quit doing what with whom?”
“Don’t play
dumb with me. Quit fooling around… fucking.”
A wave of
pimples patterned my back and rolled down to grab hold of my buttocks. “I
don’t—”
“Don’t
waste your breath, kid. You’re pretty as a girl. Prettier’n most.”
“Look, just
’cause my name’s Manchild, doesn’t mean—”
“Manchild.
That describes you perfectly. Got a kid’s face, but enough definition to know
you got a man’s package too.”
“What makes
you think—”
I don’t
think, I know. I’ve seen you look at me. Always watching
me. And I’ve seen where your gaze always ends up.” He grasped his fly and shook
it.
I felt my
cheeks burn. “I… I don’t—”
“Stop stalling
and come over here.”
So help me,
I tried to get my feet to behave, but they scooted me right over to him.
And there
it was, the two sides of my nature: scandalized by this dangerous, hunky guy,
but at the same time drawn to him. What would happen if I went along with him…
at least part of the way? As soon as he put his hand to the back of my neck and
pulled me to him, I knew I was lost.
* * * *
Looks like Jude’s
got himself in a situation, doesn’t it? What will he do about it? Let’s see
next week.
Please friend
this site. Apparently, that matters in the internet world.
JMS Books has contracted to publish an anthology of nineteen of my short stories under the title Wildyr Tales in April of this year.
My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:
Website and blog: markwildyr.com
Email:
markwildyr@aol.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr
Twitter: @markwildyr
Now my
mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing.
You have something to say, so say it!
See you later.
Mark
New posts the first and third Thursday of the month at
6:00 a.m., US Mountain time.
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