Eden's Past

PrologueHe took a deep swig of the bottle, not his first of the night, and felt the warmth spread throughout his body and infiltrate his bloodstream. The world was fuzzy…yet somehow as a result sounds were heightened and what he could hear even from the outside could only have been one thing. The urgent cries of s*x. Stumbling forward into the carriage house, he tried to focus his eyes. He knew the lay of the land like he knew the back of his hand. This had been his home for all of his fifty-eight years. Well, not the carriage house, because that was for guests and he could hardly be considered a transient here. He had always lived up at the main house, a sprawling Colonial-style structure named Edenwood by some long-ago generation that came with more rooms than relatives. That was the case even more so today, with only himself and his aging mother calling it home. Each night, year after year, it was the same routine—dine, argue, annoy, drink away the problems—and tonight had been no different. Except for the argument. He’d rarely seen Eleanor so angry as she had been tonight when he’d informed her of the news. It was one of the reasons he’d sought an escape after she went to sleep, but not before he’d grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet in the library. Now the long-necked bottle was half finished and he couldn’t even focus on what the old battle-axe and he had argued about. Wait, his addled brain conjured, something having to do with the family business, or about the family itself…she’d even gone so far as to mention his ill-begotten son…bastard kid. “That kid’s dead,” he remembered saying. “You’re a fool, Silas. You’ve ruined us all.” Even in this inebriated state, those words he recalled. Silas Singleton took another hard pull of the whiskey, feeling it slide down his throat as if it were water. Then he stepped over the threshold, trying to be as stealthy in his movements as his drunken self would allow. But from what he heard, he could have blasted a trombone through the dark night and he wouldn’t have disturbed the actions of whoever these horny interlopers were. It was probably the gardener and some sleazy woman he’d picked up at the Snake Pit using private property for their secret, s****l tryst. No doubt porking the w***e something good. It had been too long since Silas had indulged in the pleasures of the flesh that weren’t found on a computer screen, so he moved forward, hoping to get a peek at a live show. Maybe she had big jugs and they were jiggling something fierce. The sounds emanating from the bedroom grew in intensity, or maybe it was just because he was getting closer. He began to hear voices, he could make out words. Dirty words. “Oh, oh…fuck me, harder…” Silas’ eyes widened, knowing that wasn’t a woman’s voice. It was deep, gravelly, with a thriving hunger to it. A man, he surmised inside his boozy brain. He heard a raw grunt, a cry. Both voices masculine. One man…with another man. Heat grew inside him and this time not from the booze. “Why, you f*****g fags…” Silas threw open the bedroom door and there writhing on the bed were two men, naked, one on his knees, his white-knuckled hands gripping the headboard. The second man, his body broad and muscular, pushed at him from behind, thrusting his hard body with force at his prey, a hard c**k embedded inside the recipient’s ass. They’d paid no mind to his arrival and he had to wonder if he’d spoken those words only inside his head. The two men continued their fierce copulation, the man on the receiving end begging for more, more. A sliver of moonlight sliced through the lace curtains, illuminating their shadows on the white wall. Like the scene before Silas had erupted from one couple to two and all of them were men and they were grunting and crying and f*****g, the sounds escalating in Silas’ mind. He tried to speak but he was transfixed by what he saw, disgusted, too. The aggressor was dark-haired, with a dense pelt of black hair covering his chest. His arms were similarly coiled with hair. With his eyes closed, the man concentrated on the driving beat of his engulfed body, of each hungry thrust of his hips. The bottom man was crying more, his pleasure filling the room. “I’m close, man…so close…give it harder…” The man on top rammed at him, his cries guttural. Silas knew what was going to happen, it didn’t take science to understand, just the sound of their heated breaths. Both men were near climax. But that wasn’t going to happen, not if he could help it. “Just what the hell is going on here? Who are you damned trespassers…you perverts?” he asked and this time he knew he’d spoken the words aloud, slurred as they were. The creaking of the bed ceased and the aggressive, hairy-chested beast turned to him, his c**k still buried deep in the other’s man ass. Anger flared up in his enflamed eyes. No man liked to be disturbed seconds from climax. It was like poking a wounded animal. “What the f**k…oh s**t…get out…” Getting a look at the man’s face, Silas’ expression whitened and the bottle slipped from his hand, crashing to the floor. Shards of glass mixed with wasted whiskey on the carpeted floor. He stumbled out of the bedroom, nearly losing his balance as he backtracked to the main entrance of the carriage house. Unable to find his footing, he crashed to the floor, taking with him a lamp that shattered against the hardwood floor, the pop of the broken light bulb eliciting a final burst of life before being doused. Silas turned, looked up to see one of the men coming at him. The man was still naked, his thick c**k leading the way, rising up from a nest of black hair. Hair trailed upward over a six-pack stomach until it fanned out over his chest in a sprawling dark mat. Like a creature was coming for him, on the attack. Before the man could reach him, Silas had scrambled to his feet and dashed out of the carriage house and into the warm, black night. The moonlight that moments ago had given light to their intense f*****g had disappeared behind a thickening cloud. He thought he could feel a raindrop splash on his face. He tried to get control of himself but all of the booze floating inside his body wouldn’t let him. He fell again, this time on concrete, and his face landed hard enough to jolt him. He felt blood trickle from a fresh wound on his forehead, all while he thought he detected the smell of chlorine. He’d landed near the pool. He wasn’t sure how long the ground claimed him. Trying to get up, he ended up crawling on all fours to the very edge of the pool, where he stuck his head in the warm water, both to clean the fresh wound and refresh his mind. He felt the sting of chlorine in the cut. His mind reeled. What he’d seen…who he’d seen…it just wasn’t possible. He’d known one damn faggot in his life and he’d tossed him out on his ear the moment he’d discovered the truth. But this…it was almost too much to absorb, a worse betrayal. Warm water swirled around him and it felt so welcoming. He lifted his head, felt more water. He couldn’t tell which came from the pool, which from the now-falling rain. That’s when his eyes rolled up inside his head and he tried to open his mouth. All he did was inhale water. Wetness enveloped him, as though he were trapped by water all around him. Like he was being held down deliberately. A last, lucid moment hit him, a burst of adrenaline-fueled fear ripping through him, but it was too late. His thrashing failed to save him and Silas Singleton’s body suddenly went slack. The last drink he would take was not of whiskey. As his body lay there, forever silent, the violent storm passed overhead. He never heard the thunder that was rumbling over Eden. Part 1: The Garden of Secrets