Prison Intimacy
Part I
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
the small rain down can rain.
Christ, if my love were in my arms,
and I in my bed again.
Chapter One
"What are you afraid of?" The voice was subdued, soft and unthreatening but near and masculine.
Riley licked his lips nervously. "I have some fears but not too many," he replied.
"Mmm, that's a good answer," the faceless presence replied, laughing.
"Yeah, well, I don't want to go into my fears here. You could, uh, use that against me. I mean—"
More laughter, affable, but Riley was afraid. He couldn't see the face of his interlocutor. The thought that this was a dream pierced his consciousness. He felt anxious. He couldn't make himself wake up. But already it was starting to fade.
Riley's eyes snapped open. He gasped.
He looked around his bedroom, at the familiar rock band posters on the walls and his dresser stacked high with books and shoeboxes. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Then he glanced at his phone. "Shit," he muttered under his breath. He needed to be out the door in ten minutes.
"Riley!" His mother yelled from downstairs.
"I'm up," he called out loudly. "I'll be down in a second." He leaned back into the sheets taking a second to enjoy the sensation of his warm duvet around him. He groaned and shifted. He had a raging hard-on. But he pulled himself out of bed and stripped off his pyjamas, glancing at his crotch and then away quickly. He opened his dresser and pulled out clean underwear and socks. He put on one of his white school shirts.
He picked up his school pants, blazer and tie off the floor where he had left them the night before. He leaned into the mirror above his dresser and peered at himself, frowning. His soft sandy hair fell over his forehead and into his eyes. He brushed it to one side. He needed a haircut. He ran his hand over his jaw. He was eighteen but he could get away with not shaving every day. Who was he kidding? He could get away with shaving every third day. He scowled. Still, not bad. At least his skin was clear and he had been told that his grey eyes (blue in some lights) were attractive.
He wished, not for the first time, that he went to school with girls. Instead he went to an all-boys private school, one of the classic and well-established Toronto ones that was well over a century old. He was certain that if he went to a co-ed school he would be able to get a girlfriend.
If only he was around girls all the time, he thought to himself in frustration. Girls would flirt with him. But how could he ask for a date after three songs at a dance with the music blaring? He wasn't like some of the boys in school who were more confident and got girlfriends seemingly by just playing pick-up soccer in the park and striking up a conversation.
"Riley!" His mother yelled. He rushed into the bathroom and then downstairs, taking the steps two at a time.
He paused in the kitchen doorway, hanging back, and looked at everyone. Ever since this so-called "Shift of Government" had begun, his entire extended family had crowded back home and it still gave him a shock in the mornings.
His older sister Julie was home from university now, her thin frame erect and her movements jerky as she flipped the pages of gossip magazine.
His sister-in-law Penelope, the wife of his much older brother, sat next to Julie, her large hoop earrings dangling amid her lush, long brown hair with its golden highlights.
His little niece Emmie, who had just turned three last week, was looking around suspiciously with a furrowed brow, as was usual for her. Riley felt like laughing every time he saw her. There was something about her that was a humorous jolt to the way he had thought life was supposed to be. He had always thought children came into the world happy and optimistic, uncomplicated. But not Emmie.
He took a plate from the counter and pushed a pancake onto it, eating it awkwardly, standing up. He wasn't sure he liked everyone being here. He was used to silent mornings, eating cereal alone at the kitchen table, staring mindlessly out at the garden. Even his parents' presence in the mornings was unusual; they had normally long since departed for work.
Penelope looked up and smiled at Riley as he reached for the maple syrup on the table.
Riley had to look away quickly. He felt himself starting to blush. He felt a twinge of desire left over from this morning. "Are you going to work, mom?" He mumbled, looking down.
His mother sighed. She was standing with her back to him in front of the fridge, her blue bathrobe on and her frizzy red hair so familiar to him. When she styled it, it would look thick and red, with soft waves. But this morning it was a wiry mess.
She turned to Riley, her face etched with wrinkles. She was not a young woman anymore, even though she had only been twenty when Harry was born – a university student whose education and life plan had been derailed by an unexpected pregnancy. No one had even thought she would do as well as she had, marrying Riley's father a decade later.
She shook her head. "Do you want to stay home another day? Maybe you should."
"Mom," Riley muttered with his mouth full. Secretly though there was nothing he would like more. He hated these aliens. He didn't want to walk through the new checkpoints.
But he had talked about it last night with his father. "We have to focus on keeping things normal. I know there have been some rumours and God knows I don't approve of what's happening, but I think everything will work out now."
"Emmie!" His sister Julie said sharply, interrupting his thoughts. "Eat your pancakes. Grandma went to a lot of trouble to make blueberry specially."
"I don't like them," Emmie said truculently, her dark brown eyes inscrutable.
Riley smiled affectionately at Emmie. He liked having a new ally against his sister. He had been surprised four years ago when she left for university by how much easier and more pleasant his life had become since Julie left home.
She was in fourth year of film studies at Queen's now. She had started off in engineering. She was always so proud of her intellect – her French bilingualism, her results in the international physics competition, her admission to the prestigious engineering school. People liked to say, too, that Julie didn't know how beautiful she was – how her skinny frame and blond hair and naturally perfect teeth were made life easier for her. No, she was an intellectual; she didn't care about that shallow stuff. Riley suspected, though, that she was just as vain of her looks as her intellect even if she pretended not to notice the effect she had on men.
His mom had insisted that Julie come home when the first reports of violence started. And now Julie was back, skipping her April exams, watching an endless loop of Oprah and All My Children with mom. It had done nothing for her personality.
"What are you smirking for?" Julie asked peevishly. "Look, you got syrup on your tie. You're such a klutz."
Riley frowned. Penelope glanced away from the window and turned her attention to him. "Are you sure you want to go? I don't like the news. All I can do these days is watch it constantly."
Riley's dad set his phone down and smoothed his tie. "It will be fine. He's a boy. No one will bother him. Besides, everything is settling down. Fenton was just on TV saying everyone should go about their routines. We have to get back to normal. We can't all just stay inside forever now. Look, the garbage men are out!" He added jovially.
Riley glanced out the window. It was true. He could see the truck rumbling down the street. He thought how ordinary everything seemed; he could hear the birds singing and the new spring buds on the trees.
Yet, yet . . . there were all those checkpoints now. And the aliens, so human-looking that you could almost forget they were alien until you caught a glimpse of those claws. "The Edem," they called themselves. They liked to say they were just like humans – that they were human.
Yeah right, Riley thought. He had never believed that. Not even at the beginning. That ship in the sky was as big as the moon – a veritable death star. And the lies – lies of omission.
At first it had seemed as if they had come to make "contact." But then it turned out they were refugees like so many others splashing up on foreign shores everyday.
And they were all men too – a quarter of a billion displaced soldiers with no place to go with their massive warship, the last survivors of a catastrophe of epic proportions.
The prime minister welcomed them; the president of the United States held televised peace talks with them. What could they do?
And now there was this shift of government.
The aliens said things needed to change. They knew better ways. They wanted to improve things.
And there were guns now, on the street, in the aliens' hands, on their backs. And their faces – hard men, from that terrible war-torn place they had come from. What did they think of us? Riley thought. Of boys of eighteen who went to school, and didn't know war, and ate blueberry pancakes that their mothers had cooked for them?
Riley liked to think he didn't know what they thought, that they were too foreign to be able to tell. But his subconscious itched with the fact that they hated him, hated people like him – hated his father's soft midsection and the length of human life spans, spans lived to old age so easily when no slimy predator was awaiting your every move, waiting to defeat and consume you, and your family.
And where were these hard men with their efficient warrior bodies' families? Where were their women and children?
All gone. The home world they had failed to defend. A loss so staggering . . .
Was it unexpected? Riley wondered. Had they known in those last days what was going to happen? Riley thought not. They would have evacuated on their massive warships if they had.
For all their superiority, for all their military might, they had still fallen.
And now they wanted earth.
All the news announcers and the politicians, and even his teachers and his father, could tell him this wasn't the case: that they just wanted to improve things – look at the technology they had brought, the diplomacy, the medicine, the vaccines . . . But Riley knew in his heart, with that shot of fear when he accidentally met their eyes, he knew what they wanted. They were just like humans, right?
Riley was jerked back to reality by the sound of Penelope's voice. "I'm not even stepping outside," Penelope murmured quietly, a trace of her Spanish accent noticeable now, which only happened when she was strained. "I'm so glad I can stay here." She bit her lip.
Riley's mother patted her shoulder. "You just keep sleeping over as long as you want. I love having Emmie here. There could be nothing sweeter."
Julie made a nauseated noise. "For God's sake, she lives across the fence. What? She thinks some alien is going to carry her away if he catches sight of her? It's ridiculous."
Out of the corner of his eye Riley saw Penelope swallow hard.
"I just wish," Penelope said, "that Harry was here. I don't see why he has to be in Ottawa."
Riley's dad patted her hand. "He'll be back by the weekend. We have to carry on. His work is even more important now. Don't worry."
There was a knock at the back door. "Riley, Josh is here," his mother said, putting the syrup in the fridge.
Riley pushed his chair back and glanced around the kitchen. Something made him want to imprint it on his memory, just the way the light was catching through the buds of the trees outside and shining in through the kitchen windows. He loved his mother's kitchen, with the yellow wooden cabinets and the warm terracotta tiles on the floor. He glanced at everyone around the table, Julie and Penelope, and his little niece Emmie with her long brown hair. He glanced at his father, with his blue tie, and the bay window and its bevelled glass behind them all.
"Bye guys!" Riley called out suddenly. The garbage truck was rattling down the street and he saw a grocery delivery truck going heading to old Mrs. Smale's house. He picked his school bag up by the door where he had left it last Friday and opened the back door.
Josh was leaning against the railing of the back porch. His dark hair was longer than Riley's, falling into his eyes. His face was thinner and he did not have quite the same bloom of youth and health that Riley had, although he was generally considered a handsome boy.
"Ready?" Josh said, starting down the stairs.
"Totally. Want to go through the cemetery?"
"Yeah. Let's avoid those checkpoints."
Riley lost himself in his thoughts as he walked along next to Josh. The first bushes were just in bloom. The large old serviceberry in his parents' garden was covered in white flowers. They ducked under the low branches and Josh undid the white, wooden gate. There was a meandering path next to the neighbour's garden and then down onto the old, abandoned train tracks that went behind the houses.
As he walked he thought about Penelope. Last night as he was falling asleep he heard her on the phone in the guest bedroom. "Yes," her soft voice was saying, with just that trace of an accent that made it exotic. "Yes, they always say women change, but it's them who do. They are hardly even the same at eighteen as at thirty-five." There was a pause while the person on the other line spoke. Then Penelope went on. "Well, of course. I know I'm lucky. Yes, Harry is hot. He works out. I just mean he used to be different. It's like as they get older they get coated in testosterone, layer upon layer. When I met him, he was so much like me. He was soft. I just remember his abdomen, so slim and lean and smooth. I like it now, too. Don't get me wrong. The way his shoulders look now, so thickened and strong, powerful. The muscles he's developed. And his arms –"
There was another pause. A rich, warm laugh. "Mmm, yeah. The money is nice, too." A sigh. "I don't know. It's just, they become someone else. I suppose it's the work, too. Always the fighting with the world, the fighting for a place in the world, even before the Edem got here." Another sigh. "Of course. I love him so much." Then Riley heard a door shut and he couldn't make out the rest.
He had lain in bed thinking about those words for a long time. His skin over his abdomen was soft and smooth, hairless. He tensed himself and ran his hand over his own muscles. He could definitely feel the definition. He was shaping up nicely this year since he had joined the swim team. No awards, though – his school, TSC, wasn't really known for its athletics.
Now, walking to school, he felt almost sensual thinking about himself, his own body, and then Penelope's. He loved the way she smelled – always some European perfume. He liked her breasts, too, so much bigger than his flat sister who thought she was all that. He would like to run his hand under one of Penelope's flowy, soft cotton shirts, see what the bra felt like and how smooth and firm that warm flesh was. He would like to squeeze them –
"Are you going to cross country tomorrow?" Josh said, breaking into Riley's pleasant revere.
Riley swallowed and pulled himself back to reality. "Nah."
He had planned on doing it this year. He liked running through the valley in the early morning, watching the sunrise and seeing the mist on the soccer field far below them. But this year, although he never would have admitted it, he didn't like being out of the house.
Julie was the only person to whom he had even hinted at this. She had laughed at him. "What are you afraid of? They're just like humans. Besides, they fixed everything in the Middle East." She shrugged. "Why should we suffer through war? Why should anyone? And especially with the president now. This will be much better."
Riley had bit his lip as he sat on the spare bed in her commodious and messy bedroom. He hoped she was right. But they had those claws on their fingers, black and an inch long if they extended them. They had experience of war. And they were all so big. No bigger than men, true, but as big as men who were fighters, who were chosen for strength, bred for strength.
And they had come all this way, across the universe, without any women. And they were enough like humans in those matters.
Riley didn't like the way they looked at people, the way they looked at him, as if they knew what you were thinking. They knew he was afraid, when they stopped him at checkpoints.
He wanted to be like Penelope and hide out. He already had his university acceptance for next year. The University of Toronto – close to home. Arts and Science, it would be fun. His future was wide open.
And there would be girls at university. He smiled to himself.
He didn't need these marks, what with early acceptance and all – well, not really. They only rarely withdrew early acceptance. I mean, you would really have to mess up, right?
He had some fears, he thought frowning. Yeah, what was he afraid of, indeed. He needed to man up. Have some confidence, he thought to himself. Girls liked confidence – that's what Harry told him.
The tracks met up with the cemetery and then Riley and Josh jumped the fence over onto the sidewalk on the other side.
They found themselves face to face with a 6'2" alien, in uniform, his face severe, his clothes a kind of camouflage grey. "Where did you come from?"
"Umm," Josh replied. "We walk through the cemetery everyday. Umm, just to get to school."
Riley glanced down the street. He could see a checkpoint thirty yards ahead. There was a van and two more alien soldiers in uniform. He watched them push a man in his forties into the van, then a bike courier. They were picking people up. This was new. Riley swallowed hard.
"Show me your ID," the soldier said.
Riley's eyes darted nervously to the alien's face. There was something malicious, almost sadistic about him. Riley had certainly seen aliens who looked friendlier, more balanced.
"Umm," Riley said. "I don't have ID. Umm, we're just going to school . . ." He licked his lips, his mouth dry. "I have my student card, in my bag." He let his bag slide off his shoulder and started to bend down.
He felt the muzzle of the alien's gun jabbed in his ribs. "Stand the fuck up!"
"Okay," Riley said quickly.
"What's your fucking name?"
Riley told him, and then he was asked for his school, and birthday. When he answered the last question the alien grabbed him firmly by the arm. "You're coming with me."
"Why?" Riley said plaintively, nearly unable to talk, but he got no answer.
As the alien restrained him easily, one hand firmly wrapped around his upper arm almost pushing him off balance, he asked Josh the same questions. Riley wanted to try to twist away and run, but kept still and waited.
When Josh got to his birthday, Riley watched him hesitate, almost as if he were tripping over his words. He said the date, and then a slight pause. He set the year back two years, making himself sixteen rather than eighteen.
Riley's pupils dilated watching him. That was smart. He should have done that. Too late now.
"Get the fuck out of here," the alien said. "Go home."
Then he gave Riley's arm a sharp yank and pulled him towards the van.
"Hey, umm . . ." Riley started. He had to think of something. He had a feeling that if he went in that van that it was all over, that he would spending a long time with the aliens.
"Umm, look, I –"
"Shut the fuck up!"
Riley nodded and looked at the ground. The alien pushed him into the van. Riley tripped over his feet, but caught himself against the bike courier who he had seen being pushed into the van earlier. He glanced into his face, panicking. The courier slowly shook his head at Riley, almost imperceptibly, his eyes watching the alien. Riley walked further in and leaned against the wall next to the man in his forties. The man had sweat on his forehead and stains on the underarms of his white shirt. His brief case was at his feet, his jacket folded on top of it. Riley wondered if he had a gun in there. Probably not.
He glanced out the back doors of the van. He could see the courier's bike on the ground, and further up the street he could see his own backpack abandoned on the sidewalk.
The alien was questioning more people now. He let most pass. Two aliens were guarding the doors of the van, their guns and bulk blocking the door.
Riley wondered when he would get a chance to call his mom.
The aliens pushed more men into the van: an old man who looked too weak to be any threat to anyone, a buff younger guy in a paramedic uniform with a thick head of brown hair. Then two men in their twenties, maybe construction workers. Riley leaned towards one of the men to ask him if he knew what was going on. "Hey," he whispered softly.
He felt a crushing blow to his face. He wasn't sure what was happening. He stumbled and landed on his knees against the businessman. "No fucking talking."
One of the aliens guarding the van had leaned in.
Riley brought his hand up to his face. His eye was throbbing and hot to the touch. The businessman grabbed Riley's jacket and tugged him up to standing. Riley looked at the ground, his heart pounding. He tasted blood in his mouth.