preacher. He suffered for you . And Jesusâ pain was all the sweeter once Billy knew he was responsible for it.
He heard the Luger whispering to him as he wandered through the long afternoons, through the resentful house, always avoiding the parlor where Granddad had fallen into his last long sleep, where Grammaw now sat drowsing away the hours until her own. The gun told him stories of his own strength, strength he didn't know he had, strength that would be so very easy to discover if only he would climb to the top of the closet, open the shining walnut case, wrap his hand around that heavy checkered grip...
It took him nearly three years. He had always tried to be a good boy, to push down the anger he had felt rising in him for as long as he could remember, churning like some toxic black wave. But at last the wave crashed and foamed on the shore of his heart, and he saw that it was not black after all, not entirely. It swirled with a thousand oily tendrils of color, iridescent and lovely, and if those tendrils were poisonous ... well, then, he would learn to live on poison.
The day Billy finally made himself lift the gun from its nest of soft red cloth and cradle its amazing heft in both hands was the day he had his first orgasm. He couldn't remember if he had actually produced a squirt of jism; it seemed he'd been too young. But he never forgot the pleasure pounding though him like a summer storm, implacable and cleansing. It was so powerful he thought he would drop the Luger, wondered whether it was loaded, whether it would go off and shoot him, then realized he didn't care.
But he didn't drop the gun. He knew it belonged to him now, just like Granddad had told him.
***
Learning to shoot was more difficult than he had expected. He'd tried it alone at first, as he did everything, skulking into the woods to aim shots at tree trunks that seemed to sway mockingly when he sighted on them. The trigger wouldn't budge at first, and Billy wondered whether it could be rusted; then all at once it clicked back with a dangerous ease, and the muzzle flashed and the sound of the shot filled the world.
All his shots went wide, and the Luger's recoil left his hand sore. He masturbated with that hand, remembering the little blurt of fire and the smell of cordite, the huge hollow noise, the power pounding back up his arm and shoulder, sending electric tendrils into his heart.
But firing wild shots in nighttime woods and vacant lots soon grew dissatisfying. Billy wanted to use the gun right, to aim it and hit what he meant to hit, without crippling his arm for the next day and a half. As soon as he was old enough to go without a parent, he signed up for lessons at a firing range. There he learned how to brace his arm, how to squeeze the trigger slow and gentle. He learned to hit a man-shaped target in the head, the heart, the guts. The instructors praised the cherry condition of the Luger. One offered him two hundred dollars for it, then laughed at the stricken look on Billy's face. When anyone asked why he was learning to shoot, he replied For pleasure .
He began to let himself think about the things he really wanted to do.
***
The ad in B&D Connection promised a âtrue submissive,â an adventurer with no limits. Billy called the number, got an answering machine with no message but silence and a beep, and left his own message nearly as cryptic. When she returned his call, her voice was low and husky, utterly devoid of accent. They talked business. Later that same day he bought a train ticket to the city where she lived.
Not until he was actually on the train, inside the train, like a bullet nestled snugly in the chamber of a long-barrelled gun, did he realize how scared he was. What if the hooker knew he was a virgin and laughed at him? What if she was ugly? What if he simply couldn't bring himself to do what he had come for, what he had dreamed of?
As soon as he met the girl in her cheap hotel room, his first