Devil’s Island

I know Leader loves us all, but I like to think he loves me most.

“What do you need?” he asks, his voice rough.

“Tell me I’m your favorite,” I whisper.

He hugs me close, my cheek pressing into the wiry hair of his chest. His heavy arm squeezes my back, and I know I don’t have to leave just yet, though others are waiting.

This he can give. He can let me feel the truth, even if he won’t let himself say it.

“You know I can’t tell you that,” he says into my hair. “I love the whole flock. But you must know that I love you.”

“I do,” I say.

“Do you know the story of King Cepheus?” he asks, his voice a deep, crackling whisper.

“No.”

“He was an ancient king. He loved his wife Cassiopeia so much, and she was so stunning to him, that he had to tell her every day that she was the most beautiful creature in the universe. But he told her this so much that she began to believe it. She became convinced that she was more beautiful than the gods themselves, which made them angry, and they sent the great beast, Cetus, to drown Cepheus’ entire kingdom.”

He strokes my thigh as he whispers to me, and it is almost too romantic. Not his words; I’m barely hearing them. But to have his full attention is overwhelming. To be this close to him, to have him all to myself. He’s become like water to me; I need him to survive, but also to cleanse me.

“So he had to sacrifice his daughter, Andromeda, to Cetus. He could save half of his heart only by giving up the other half.”

“That’s so sad,” I say, nuzzling his chest.

“It is. And all of it could have prevented if Cepheus had showed his love rather than speak it. And if Cassiopeia had trusted his love rather than boasted of it.”

Too much. If I stay here, I’ll drown in him. I kiss his neck, my beard rubbing against his own as I pull myself from his bed.

“Don’t forget the harness,” he says, pointing to the pile of leathery straps in the corner. “It’s going to be a hell of a party.”

I find my discarded clothes and pull them on, then walk over to grab a harness, finding it surprisingly heavy.

“You’re looking so well, Lover,” he says.

Whenever he calls me that, I imagine for a second that it’s just the two of us. That I’m his only lover.

*

I pass a line of Lovers on my way out of his trailer and into the afternoon air. I know them all: Wildcat, Boar, Goose, Ox, and Fawn. They’re all waiting for Leader’s embrace. I smile, and try to make it friendly, not smug. But I’ve tired him out. I was first today, and they’ll get very little from him.

Another Lover, Gazelle, lurks behind them, waiting for today’s batch of Lovers to spend their allotted time with Leader. Then Gazelle will go in and bathe Leader, and I tell myself it’s not because Gazelle is Leader’s favorite but rather that he’s simply been here the longest.

I make my way along the narrow dirt path that winds through the main garden, heading towards my tent. The whole community is laid out around the square central garden. Leader’s trailer, pool, and private garden take up one side. If you’re going clockwise, then the amphitheater occupies the next side, followed by the side where all of the Lovers’ tents are squished together, and then finally the side with the kitchen, bathhouse, an outdoor fitness area, and herb garden.

Every day in the fitness area, either Leader or Gazelle leads us in nude yoga, Pilates, or Tai Chi. Leader loves big, muscular butts, and he likes them nice and tan. We keep ourselves fit to keep him happy, serving him in rotating groups every afternoon.

The community is ringed by a thick, tropical forest, filled with abundant banana and avocado trees that jut out of a wavy carpet of dense jungle ferns. Bright birds and orchids and snakes and insects provide bursts of radiant color in the green curtain of the forest and beyond that, out of sight, are the warm blue waves that surround our small island.

While the trees are the backdrop of our little brotherhood, it’s the sea that serves as the barrier between us and the outside world. Leader says that the warm water is swallowing up Devil’s Island, inch by inch, and when I stop and take a moment I can almost feel it pressing in, the world pushing along with it. But then I remind myself that by living here I’m taking my own small stand against the rising tide. We live in harmony with the Earth here, and through our work a piece of land that was once polluted – tarnished even – is being rejuvenated even as it slowly slips into the sea.

My tent is right at the edge of the cluster, nestled up against the forest. I should go to the bathhouse first, but I want Leader’s smell to linger on me for a while. I unzip my tent and flinch when I see that it’s almost entirely filled by another person, one who yanks me in and presses his hand over my mouth.

“I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to zip up the tent like nothing is wrong, okay?” the deep, familiar voice rumbles into my ear.

I nod.

He lets me go, and I zip the tent’s flap up with feigned nonchalance and then turn to face the intruder.

“Jackson, what the hell are you doing here?” I hiss at my ex-boyfriend, who, terribly, has gotten even more attractive in the twenty-one months since I last saw him.

He looks at me warily, like I could break easily or explode. Like I’m a porcelain grenade.        “Connor, I’m here to save you from this doomsday cult,” he says.

“I go by Lamb here,” I say, before the rest of what he said hits me. “And this is a farm, not a cult. We just farm and…”

…Fuck, but Jackson doesn’t need all of the details.

Jackson sighs heavily, which draws my attention to his muscular chest. He’s wearing a tank top and tight shorts that are both the same green-brown color, which stands out nicely against his dark skin. His hair is braided and pulled back. He used to wear a number of brightly colored beads in it, a kind of colorful trademark that went well with his effervescent personality, but those are gone.

“Are you dressed in camouflage?” I ask, trying not to scoff but also wanting to scoff.

“Of course I am, Connor. This is serious shit. There are men with guns guarding all of the trails from the beach to the farm. I had to hide my boat, scuttle up the beach, and cut through with a machete, for fuck’s sake.”

I hear Jackson as he speaks, but it’s as if he’s talking to me through a wall of water. The same water that’s slowly drowning the island, that’s pressing us in. Rather than actually hear his words, they are smothering me, drowning me. I hear Leader’s voice, a distant memory from when I first arrived. I see him looking me in the eye. Do you want to be mine, and only mine?

Yes, I’d said.

Jackson he won’t stop talking.

“ …and the dude who runs this place is planning a big ceremony tonight…”

I stare at his mouth while he talks, but he’s distorted. This isn’t the Jackson I left behind. He feels like an imposter. A puppet.

I can see him through the water, but I can see the lies pushing out of his mouth, like small, poisonous fish. I don’t think he even knows he’s lying.

I need to take him to Leader.

“Just come to the party and you’ll see for yourself,” I say.

I know the water’s in my mind, but it feels so real. I’m drowning in it. Our island is sinking into the sea and Jackson is trying to drag me down, too.

“I can’t come to the ceremony. Have you noticed that your creepy leader has a type? And that ‘type’ is skinny white dudes?”

This has me off-balance. Has anyone, other than Leader, spoken to me so directly since I’ve been here? Looked at me like this? It’s not banned or anything, but we all know that Leader doesn’t like his Lovers to interact, as he calls it.

I can see Jackson looking for a way to trick me. Another angle.

“Connor, he’s tying you all up in harnesses and having ceremony for a comet on Midsummer’s Eve, which is exactly 666 days after he started growing his ‘flock,’” Jackson says, air-quoting “flock.”

“We’re wearing harnesses because it’s leather night. We might live in a sustainable community, Jackson, but we’re still gay. We have needs!”

“Connor,” he says.

That’s not your name.

Leader’s voice in my head, again, as if he’s thinking for me.

“It’s Lamb now,” I tell Jackson.

“Connor,” Jackson says, and grabs my chin so that I’m looking in his eyes, “lambs get sacrificed! What does he call the others?”

Your names for one another are gifts, I hear Leader say. Names that represent how necessary and unique we are for our Island.

Gazelle is fast. Ox is twice as strong as the next strongest Lover. Bull can fuck for days.

“Leader calls us all Lovers,” I say.

“Is there going to be Kool-Aid?” Jackson asks, and at first I think he’s joking.

He’s mocking you.

“Of course not. Does anyone even drink Kool-Aid anymore?”

“What will you be drinking then? At the ceremony? Sorry, I mean, at the “’party?’”

“Punch,” I say. “Like always.”

“And what’s in this punch?” Jackson asks, and I’m irritated. He looks distorted again. I vaguely remember Leader saying something about how to catch the liars. Imposters. Puppets.

They’ll try to get you to leave the Island, he said.

“Tang,” I say, struggling to focus on Jackson, or whoever this is.

“Just so I have this clear,” he says, his hot, anise-scented breath on my face, “you’re living in a militia-guarded place called Devil’s Island with a creepy dude who calls himself ‘Leader’ who’s making you drink ‘not-Kool-Aid-but-basically-Kool-Aid’ at a bondage ‘party’ on the night that an comet appears in the middle of a solstice?”

Anger – my own –  makes the water fade away. I haven’t felt anger like this in forever. It clears my mind.

“Well, when you put it that way and use all of those air quotes then sure it sounds like a doomsday cult. But when you say I’m living rent-free in a sustainable organic queer community on a tropical island with great security and that I’ve been invited to a wild leather party by the hottest daddy this side of Tom of Finland to celebrate a major astronomical event, then it just sounds like I hit the jackpot, doesn’t it?” I say, and sit in my righteous anger.

“Damn it, Connor, this is serious.”

“You broke my heart,” I say, angrier than I expected.

“Connor,” Jackson says, narrowing his eyes and wiping the sweat from his forehead in an angry flick, “are you saying this is my fault?”

“I told you, it’s Lamb, and yes I am,” I reply and then turn around. I don’t want my anger to fade because it has freed me of something, something I can’t quite get a grip on.

Jackson he gently grabs my shoulder and turns me around.

“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t be here. If I wasn’t sorry, I wouldn’t be here,” he says quietly.

I lick my lips, feel the heat rising in my cheeks.

And he kisses me, our sweaty noses touching in a gross but strangely sweet way.

In the kiss, I feel that he is the real Jackson. The distortion – the clear, curving water – can’t do anything to stop the feel of him. The smell, the taste. The presence.

“I love you, too, even if you’re wrong.”

Jackson huffs, but he can’t back up in the small space so he just glowers at me from a few inches away.

“Who is making this punch?” he asks.

Liar. Puppet. Imposter.

I can hear Leader’s voice in my head again, but it sounds off, and the water’s all gone. I know Jackson isn’t a threat. My anger is leading me in another direction.

“Gazelle always makes the punch,” I say, my voice tightening, “in Leader’s trailer.”

“And is this trailer locked?”

“Yes,” I whisper, the hair standing up on my arms.

“And who is this Gazelle?”

“He’s a Lover.”

“Is there anything special about him? Sketchy? Creepy?”

“Well, Leader calls him his acolyte, but only on Sundays,” I say, keeping my eyes on the ground to avoid Jackson’s incredulous eyes.

He just lets it simmer.

“Ah, fuck,” I say.

I’m in a doomsday cult.

Jackson doesn’t let me sink away. Drown in denial. He grabs my face and kisses me again, pulling me up for air.

*

“Okay,” he says…later. “I’ve got guns. We’ll wait for dark, and then we’re going to have to fight our way to the boat. Then we’ll get out of here.”

He finds his bag and starts pulling weapons out.

I put my hand on his forearm and he looks up at me.

“We can’t go,” I say.

“Fuck, what is it now?” he says.

“There’s nearly fifty of us. I can’t just let Leader kill everyone. Now that I know, we have to find a way to stop him.”

“Connor, you’re sweet, but there’s nothing we can do. I’m not the first person who has tried to get in here.”

“But they’re my…” Friends? Not really.

“They’re my family,” I say, and it feels right.

“Honey, I’ve barely been able to convince you to come with me. How are we going to change fifty minds in the next two hours?”

I think for a second, scanning my brain for an idea.

Then suddenly I have it.

“I know what to do,” I say.

“And what’s that?” Jackson asks.

“We’re going to crash a party.”

*

A long time ago, Devil’s Island was a penal colony, and as such the island is home to a number of strange, grim ruins. Though no prisoners have been sent here for nearly one-hundred years, there are surely scars left given all the torture that took place. Leader told me once that the penal colony had a death rate of seventy-five percent. The island’s life after hadn’t been much of an improvement. As it sat under the launch path for any launches from the nearby Guiana Space Center, Devil’s Island got covered in a variety of noxious gases and other chemical excretions every time a satellite or probe was launched. The Space Center has been dormant for the past few years, as there simply isn’t the funding to keep it open in the aftermath of the myriad global crises we’ve all suffered through. And that’s where we come in. Just by living on Devil’s Island – by digging, tilling, planting, growing – we are restoring it. Undoing some of its past. While it bears the scars of its life before, we’re cleaning the land of poison and replacing a legacy of death and incarceration with one of freedom and life. That, more than anything, was what had attracted me to Leader. When he’d come to my university in French Guiana and spoke of restoring a piece of poisoned land with not the evils of colonialism or religious extremism but instead with queer love, I knew I had to be a part of it.

The amphitheater is built out of the shell of one of the strange ruins. A piece of shrapnel must have fallen from a launch and crashed into the earth just in front of a stone guardhouse or utility shed. The path of the crashing body had scooped the ground up and forward before smashing into the building, carving out a smooth platform on the ground and then a semicircle of stone and rock that stretched up to the highest point on the island. An armed guard is always stationed there, so the amphitheater also serves as a makeshift watch tower.

The wall of the stage – or backdrop, I guess – is the most dramatic part. Whatever building the shrapnel had destroyed had been simple in design. Two small windows sitting either side of the front door, like two eyes above an open mouth. When it had been obliterated, it had smashed backward into the hard rock of the wall behind it, flattening the building and those within it. Now the backdrop looked like a large, stretched, screaming face, the frames of the windows and doors stretched while basically retaining their shape. The bones of whatever poor souls had been inside had been flattened against the wall as well, and they were sprinkled around the face like white tendrils of smoke rising from an invisible cigarette.

I walk back along the main garden’s path, the amphitheater to my right. It’s on the western side of the island, so the sun sets there. Dramatic shadows and bursts of snapdragon-orange light stretch across the island in the evening when the sun’s rays hit the top of the amphitheater’s tallest point, and it’s nearly there now. Leader’s cabin is at the southern tip of our community, though there is a strip of land that juts out beyond the forest that rubs up against Leader’s trailer. The island as a whole is shaped like a cock with an impressive set of balls, and when taking that image into account the strip of land would be the shaft, which is what we call it. The Shaft is home to a small runway and makeshift marina runs up its western side, where our fishing boats and canoes are locked up and guarded. The eastern side of The Shaft is where our Three Sisters’ Garden – with its corn, beans, and squash – is located.

The amphitheater is filling up; Lovers are hauling tables, boxes of fruit, flowers, and fairy lights over to set up for the party. Someone – Gazelle, presumably – has pulled the backup generator out, and Rooster and Jackal are setting up a DJ table. Jackson is hopefully waiting in the forest behind my tent, where he’ll wait until it’s time for him to complete his part of the plan.

Now that I’m alone, I’m starting to question Jackson just a bit. Surely, I would know if Leader was running a cult? But whenever I make any progress defending him in my mind, my brain returns to the obvious. Of course he’s a cult leader! He calls himself Leader, for Christ’s sake. That should have been a warning sign.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that I was drinking a lot when I made the decision to come to Devil’s Island. In order to drown out the pain over Jackson dumping me and with increasingly grim world events, I was downing a couple of bottles of wine a day at that point. And when a new Lover arrives on the island, Leader devotes a lot of time just to him. So Leader had swept me in with his presentation on how queer farming could save the Earth, bit-by-bit, and then I’d actually arrived on Devil’s Island and he’d acted like I was the only other one person in the entire world. So I’d fallen hard and fast. My heart was broken and empty and Leader filled it up with himself.

But there are cracks everywhere. Just as Devil’s Island itself was poisoned, the dream of it is, too. For all of his talk about undoing the scars of colonialism, colonialism is what had allowed Leader to purchase the land. From what I’d gathered, Leader is just the latest in a long line of Frenchmen with a claim to a governorship that had been handed out by Napoleon over 200 years ago. That and a huge chunk of change had been enough to claim the island. Before I’d come to French Guiana to study abroad, I’d had no idea that it was still claimed by France, and I certainly didn’t know you could inherit an island from the government.

And there is something scary in that, that even after everything we still lived in a world where islands can be bought and sold and bartered over despite having been gained through murder and worse.

I also take comfort from the fact that lots of people had been in cults over the years. Sure, some of them were probably nuts, but surely there were folks like me who had just inadvertently gotten caught up in such a thing? People wouldn’t need to be rescued from cults if no one ever ended up in a cult! I read somewhere that even the cast of Smallville joined a cult. And that was a family show!

I adjust my harness, which makes my tits look great, and strut right up to Leader’s door. My plan is bold rather than brilliant, and heavily based on the educated guess that Leader must be feeling frisky from all of the energy his impending mass murder must be giving him.

I knock and Gazelle answers, his long, lean body making him have to hunch to see out the door.

“He’s not seeing anyone until the party,” Gazelle says, and moves to shut the door.

“I need to talk to Leader,” I say. Jackson and I had rehearsed this part. “About someone I saw, hiding in the trees.”

“Shit!” Gazelle barks, and backs up to let me through.

Leader is pulling up a pair of leather pants as I enter.

“What’s up, Lover?” he asks, then flicks his eyes from me to Gazelle. He gives him a look that screams, why the hell did you let him in here? which stings a little bit.

Jackson had told me what to say, but I still feel awkward saying it.

“I saw a man hiding in the woods behind our tents. I knew it wasn’t a Lover because he was Black.”

Leader’s dark eyebrows shoot up. He has an angled, intense face. There is something old-fashioned about it, like the face of a swarthy mountain king or Transylvanian warlord from some long-ago century. His features are so aggressive and intense that even a glance is like being stabbed with attention.

“Gazelle, go,” Leader says, then points to a small closet by the door. “Take Rita.”

Gazelle takes a long key from the chain around his neck and uses it to unlock the closet. Then he pulls out an utterly massive gun, one that looks heavy and automatic.

Without another word, Gazelle walks out the door.

I’m now very worried for Jackson. The idea was to send Gazelle into the forest by the tents, where Jackson could hide and easily take Gazelle out. But that plan was based on Gazelle only being armed with his machete, which he carried around dramatically, presumably to compensate for one shortcoming or another. I hadn’t known about the guns. But I hadn’t known about a lot of things.

Still, I have to trust that Jackson knows what he’s doing.

But did he? The Jackson I’d known, the one I’d loved, was a different person than the man who had just appeared in my tent. He’d been fun, relaxed, quick-to-cry, obsessed with Marvel. Not someone who could sneak onto a heavily-guarded island.

When he’d gotten rid of his colorful braids, had he been growing up? Embracing reality? And had I really done the opposite? How quickly, how easily I’d just let myself be submerged into a fantasy world.

And why, after all this time, am I suddenly worth remembering?

I can’t think of an answer, but if Jackson is wrong it will only be me that gets hurt. If he’s right, and if we do nothing, then all of the Lovers will die. I have to do my part.

“Come here, Lover” Leader says.

I look to Leader, the largeness of him, his strange magnetism. Maybe Jackson is wrong. Maybe his whole spiel is some weird, jealous fantasy. How could Leader be a bad person? He cares so much about me. About all of us.

And Jackson was doing just what Leader said an imposter would try to do. He was trying to get me off the island.

“Come here,” Leader repeats, and sits down in the big chair next to his bed. I go to him, trying to subtly scan the room on my way over. I see the cooler sitting on the table in the kitchen, one of those ugly yellow things that they use to serve water at soccer games. A discarded Tang container sits next to it, on its side and empty.

Shit. Have they already made it?

I sit on the chair’s armrest, and Leader pulls me into his lap, smelling my neck once I’m in his embrace.

“Remember that story I was telling you earlier? About Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and Cetus?” he asks, his breath smelling strongly of rum.

“Yes,” I say absently as I consider how to get at the punch. I’ve mistimed this. The idea was that I would get here before the punch was made.

“They had to feed Cetus in order to please a greater god. They had to sacrifice what they loved most – Andromeda – in order to save the whole kingdom from Poseidon. I’m sure you’ve heard of him?”

“Ariel’s dad, right?” I say, wondering if the poison was already in the punch. I scan the kitchen. What am I even looking for? A bottle with a skull and cross bones on it? A big box labelled POISON?

To my surprise, Leader starts laughing.

“You’re always full of surprises,” Leader says, stroking my hair.

He has no idea.

I turn to Leader and try to look scared. Then I realize that I am scared – terrified – so that’s not too hard. I whisper, “I’m afraid. Of the man in the woods.”

Leader loves submission. Vulnerability. Fear, I guess, if he can be the one to calm it. He wants us to be willing to do anything for him, which, of course, we were.

He’s on me in a second, his hot mouth over mine. Like the water in a hot spring, igniting me as I plunge in. He pulls me up, and we’re standing, pressed together, our beards rubbing together. His fingers are on my chest immediately and I wonder if he knows every Lover’s body this well. I assume he does. I moan into his mouth, knowing how he gets off on being such a sensitive lover. He whips me around, kisses my neck, and hauls my pants down with one large hand while continuing to work my chest with the other.

There are bidets in the bathhouse, so as usual, I’m fresh as a daisy. Leader knows this, and he’s a butt guy, so I’m not at all surprised that I’m bent over in front of him and he’s eating me out in a matter of seconds. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get turned on knowing that he intends to kill us all, but if anything, I’m harder than ever before.

I pause though because I’m also stressing about having sex with a racist, which I’d completely missed but now seems pretty obvious. Or maybe it isn’t a racist thing; maybe it’s a cult thing! Are white people easier to trick into cults? That seems like a pretty obvious yes.

I’d always thought I was so progressive because I didn’t “pay attention” to race. “I don’t see color,” I’d say, which is the worst. But not only was that a lie, my commitment to putting blinders on had made me miss big warning signs like the fact that all the Lovers are white and that the island is less queer garden of Eden and more a colonial poker chip. And I’ve put the burden of saving me on Jackson, someone who couldn’t afford to “forget” race.

I don’t want Jackson to have to save me anymore than he already has. I need to do this.

I allow Leader to press me into the bed and his tongue is magic as ever. I’ve perfected my whimper in my time with Leader, tuned it to exactly the way he wants it. I don’t even know what I’d really sound like having sex if I just had sex without thinking about it. Would I be silent? How had it been before? I can barely remember before.

As the need to take action approaches, I waver. I couldn’t have missed something like being in a cult. Jackson had to be the one tricking me. Leader knew every inch of me, and I knew him.

I know that if I sound worked up enough Leader will get so turned on that he’ll need to see my face. And I am that worked up. Something about being pleasured by him while other the other Lovers are anxiously waiting for him to show up at the party fills me with righteous, superior horniness.

After a bit more moaning, I’m proven right as Leader flips me onto my back, pushing me back on the bed as he puts my legs up over his shoulders and eats me out while looking into my eyes. My cock is hard and swinging back and forth in front of his eyes like a desperate palm tree in a monsoon. His eyes are huge and hungry, wolf eyes, and I’m close to cumming just from his mouth.

It’s so dirty and so dangerous that my body is boiling. My moans accelerate, close to screams now. In the small sliver of me that isn’t lost to lust, I again wonder how it could be possible that Leader wants to kill me. If he’s this focused on pleasing me, how could there be anything evil about him? He’s probably fucked five times today, yet he’s still taking the time to pleasure me. Isn’t that love?

I can’t do it. How could I? Leader isn’t distorted, like Jackson was. My eyes are clear.

But clear eyes let me really see Leader. I see his focus increase, and I see from the movement of his right shoulder that he’s pulled his pants down and is jacking off while he eats me out. It’s for his pleasure, too, of course. It’s all for his pleasure.

He takes pleasure in me. And Wildcat, Boar, Goose, Ox, and Fawn. Gazelle, too, probably. And that’s just Wednesday’s menu.

His eyes meet mine and I can see he’s completely given himself over to lust, and I’m thrilled to be the one to get him there. He can think of nothing but hole at the moment. He wants me to shoot without using my hands; he wants to be proven to be the ultimate lover. He’s completely into me. Into this.

Bingo.

I squish my sizable thighs together, pulling Leader’s head further into my ass. At first, he thinks I’m just trying to get him even deeper. And if this were a normal moment, that’s exactly what I would be doing. But I clamp down harder, trapping him.

And I’m still not sure that I’m doing the right thing. But I really let myself think about him fucking all of the others. Sage, Rooster, Wine, Gold, Stallion, Wicker, Cygnet, all with their legs spread for him. Maybe I can’t be righteous. But I know I can be jealous.

If he’d been giving head, I would have had to worry about biting. But my ass is as smooth and firm as a honeydew. What is it about gay men wanting a man with a hairy face and a waxed asshole? I do it for Leader, and now he’s paying the price. I feel his teeth trying to catch some excess skin or hair, but my hide is tight, tan, and hairless, just how he likes it.

I squeeze harder and harder, and Leader’s bucking body is boner killer. My cock goes limp, waddling against his forehead.

Then Leader goes limp, too, and I strain my abs to hold him up a bit longer. I don’t know if he’s faking and can’t release him too soon. I scream with the strain as I hold his whole body up by the head with only my thighs, abs, and glutes. I can barely breathe, like I’m drowning myself as I suffocate him.

Finally, I release him. His heavy body falls to the floor, his face wet with saliva and bile, his eyes closed. I start to cry. I love him so much. I love him more than anything.

I jump off the bed, pull my shorts up, and run to the punch. I unscrew the red top of the cooler and shove the whole thing over, the orange Tang pouring out in a bright orange wave. It splashes onto the floor and just lays there in a massive puddle. I guess I expected it to sizzle or smell like sulfur or something.

I run back to Leader. I reach down, feel for a pulse. There’s one there and I can feel his body rising and falling in quick little beats as he takes shallow breaths. I know it shouldn’t be, but it’s a relief.

I undo my harness and wrap it around his wrists, the heavy metal buckles clunking against each other as I try to tie a knot. It works, I think, but I go to the pile in the corner and grab three more harnesses and loop those around his wrists as well, making sure they are all tied as tight as I can get them. Then I wrap another around his ankles for good measure.

My crying has accelerated to weeping, and I realize I must look crazy wearing nothing but black hot pants and comfy sandals that I’ve accessorized with sex hair and streams of saliva running down the back of my thighs.

I move towards the trailer’s door, but I turn back to the prostrate Leader and whisper “I love you. I love you. I love you” as I back away. I practically fall out the door and run into the central garden, not bothering to use the path.

I look across to the tents and see Jackson hunched in mine, holding the flap open and waving. Gazelle is nowhere to be seen and Rita, his obnoxious gun, is under Jackson’s arm, so I assume that part of the plan went well. Jackson looks so out of place on the island. He’s too cool, to metropolitan. Was he always like this?

I try to think back, but that water is in my eyes again.

Could he be lying?

Liar. Puppet. Imposter.

I hear Leader’s voice in the water and it’s so vivid that I look back to see if he’s calling from the trailer.

But he isn’t. The only sound is the deep bass thuds of dance music that are rippling through the air like summer thunder. I turn to the amphitheater.

And gasp. A big, ugly gasp, like the needle being pulled all the way across a record.

The dancefloor – and the massive, screaming face of the amphitheater wall behind it – are lit by the strangely red-yellow light of the full moon. The Lovers are all dancing, twirling, and making out to the music, oblivious to what just happened in Leader’s trailer and, more importantly, in the heavens directly above them.

The moon looms just over the crest of the hill that makes up the back of the amphitheater. It’s a rusty golden color, but pulsing, and the stars framing it are glowing blood red. It’s as if the moon is radiating something onto them, even though in reality they are millions of miles beyond it.

A large bite of the moon is missing as an eclipse tracks across it, but the blackness of that bite isn’t empty. In it, glowing and growing, is something. Something green and bilious, something that feels, somehow, wicked. Something that is rocketing right towards us.

The comet.

Jackson must sense that something is wrong, because he’s suddenly at my side, looking up as well.

“Holy shit,” he says.

I lean into him, not knowing where to go or what to do. I want to tell him I love him, even though I had another man’s tongue in my ass less than five minutes ago. I want to ask him if he’s real.

But I can’t speak. I can’t breathe.

The comet is getting closer.

Jackson pulls his phone out and opens an app. I want to make a Grindr joke, but my brain is screaming.

Jackson shakes my shoulder. He points to the sky, waving his hand in a circle around the moon.

“Those stars. That constellation. That’s Cetus,” he says.

“Connor, Cetus isn’t supposed to be here. We’re under the wrong stars!”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name Cetus before, and now three times in one day.

I can feel Leader’s voice in my head, in my gut.

They sent the great beast, Cetus, to drown Cepheus’ entire kingdom.

So he had to sacrifice his daughter Andromeda to Cetus. He could only save half of his heart by giving up the other half.

They had to feed Cetus in order to please a greater god. They had to sacrifice what they loved most – Andromeda – in order to save the whole kingdom from Poseidon.

“Leader does love us,” I say, and Jackson turns to face me.

I look at him, and he’s staring at me, horrified.

“He had to sacrifice everything he loved to save…everyone else,” I try to explain, and Jackson continues to stare at me like I’ve gone insane.

Then a roar fills the air and the sky catches fire.

We spin back and see that the comet has pierced in the atmosphere. Spiky tentacles of fire and something else, something wet and green, shoot out of the comet.

Flame and green liquid falls from the sky, lighting the dance floor a rainy mist and with strobes of wild pink and red light. Jackal turns the volume up and plays Rihanna’s “Umbrella.” The Lovers go wild, dancing with increasing abandon as the sky churns and pulses. They kick the flames and space goo with wild glee as Rihanna’s pristine voice mingles with the bass and synthesize beats.

Jackson and I watch in horror as pieces of the comet break off and fall into the ocean in fiery bursts. The body of the comet remains mostly intact, though, and as it falls, I see that it isn’t simply a comet. It isn’t made of rock.

It’s alive.

It has a face.

The face is an amalgamation of hog, fish, human, fire, and stone. It’s an evil face, and one that takes up far too much of its round body. At first I think it’s a ball of living horror, but then I notice a fiery tail rising up and down behind it. It must be huge, as it is still so far in the air, but I can see its hungry, demonic face, its eyes made of blue fire, its rocky face oozing something wet and scaly into the sky, its mouth huge and toothsome.

I scream, but the sound is lost in the bass beats of the celebration. I see Bread grinding on Rooster, and there’s Fawn dry-humping Blood as the music pulses through the hot island air. I wonder why no one has looked up and screamed, but then I realize that amphitheater wall is blocking most of their view. If they look up, they will simply see the curved – what? chin? – of the comet, if they can even see through the liquid and fire pouring from the sky.

Jackson grabs my arm and pulls me towards Leader’s trailer.

“We can’t go back there,” I yell at him, trying to break through the music.

“There are bigger boats on that side of the island. Boats with guns. I don’t think anyone is going to be looking at us right now.”

I look back to the falling comet. It’s closer now, like a cloud, and its huge.

I swing my head towards to the dancing Lovers again. Something is off about the scene, but I can’t figure out what at first.

“Fuck,” Jackson hisses, and starts running, dragging me behind him. I keep swinging my head over to the dancefloor. Then I see the problem.

The Lovers are still dancing, but no feet touch the dancefloor. The Lovers are floating upward, lifted by their chests.

By the metal on their harnesses.

They lift, and as they do, they slowly start to notice they are flying. A few, who probably took something to enjoy themselves a little more, smile and twirl like they are having on the best trip ever.

The rest start to scream.

All of the dancers float upwards, willing or not, and they are all so beautiful in the red light. All of those lithe bodies twirling and stretching into the sky. All those yoga-rounded butts are individual eclipses against the devilish comet. They all look like shooting stars returning to the heavens. Reclaimed stardust.

The music pumps, even though Jackal is ascending alongside the rest.

Some of the Lovers spin. Some kiss. Some cry. They gracefully flow into the air, soaring upward with increasing speed.

The beast opens its mouth as they float upward, and wet saliva falls from its demon mouth, making waterfalls of spit fall around my ascending comrades. They spin and dance through the watery goo, angels in some unknowable mist.

I wonder if I should watch. Bear witness. But then the roof of the trailer, now directly in front of Jackson and I, explodes upward as Leader’s struggling body bursts through it like a sexy, leather-clad cannonball.

He twists and screams as he flies into the sky, faster than the others. Because I put so many harnesses on him. I’ve killed him.

He rockets upward, and I can see he’s screaming and crying but I can’t hear him over Nicki Minaj’s “Starships,” which is pounding out of the empty dancefloor’s speakers.

Leader and the rest of the Lovers all start spinning as they close in on the beast’s mouth, swirling like an upside down cyclone. They sparkle in the beast’s red light, dazzling as they spin faster and faster, and I feel a pressure in my ears as their sparkling becomes closer together, then redder, then wetter.

Then they’re all gone, and the beast drops, suddenly, and I realize it was floating down before, managing its fall. Now, sated, it begins to plummet.

As it falls, I feel something beneath me, as if the island itself is being pulled up towards the beast. I look down and see little bits of dirt floating upwards, and roots swirling out of the ground.

The island is rising to meet the beast.

Then it hits, colliding with ocean out past the amphitheater wall.

Jackson starts to sprint, pulling me behind him. We run up The Shaft, but I know we won’t make it in time. We’ll be submerged in seconds. Drowned in minutes, if we make it that long.

Only the splash isn’t nearly as big as it should be. Instead, I can feel a pulling in the pit of my stomach, as if I have some connection to the beast from the sky. I feel it sink into the ocean and then crush up against something beneath the island.

Whatever that something is, it gives way, and the beast – Cetus – slots in and comes to a rest. And as it does, the ground beneath us elevates, pushing the island up by nearly a meter.

I wait for more horror to unfold, but the night stills. I look out The Shaft and see that it has grown significantly.

The water that has been sneaking up the edge of the island has been pushed back. The island has risen and grown.

Leader’s sacrifice worked.

Jackson, terror in his eyes, pulls me up the Shaft and stops in front of the first boat.

He clambers over the edge and reaches out to me. I stop.

“Jackson,” I say, and he waves his hand for me to speed up.

“What is it?” he yells.

Why don’t we stay? I want to ask. Why don’t we make this place ours?

But I look back, see the empty dancefloor and Leader’s bent, lurid trailer. The island will always be his.

The island is alive because of him.

But I’m not. I’d just been another piece of monster feed to him. If he’d had his way, I’d be drowning in its throat right now. The thought sinks me. I’m drowning in it. Breathless.

I look at Jackson.

“Tell me I’m your favorite,” I whisper.

He shakes his head, but then he looks me in the eye.

“You’re my favorite,” he says, and I can breathe.

_____

Like Sharon Stone and the zipper, Mike McClelland is originally from Meadville, Pennsylvania. He has lived on five different continents but now resides in Georgia with his husband, two sons, and a menagerie of rescue dogs. He is the author of the short fiction collection Gay Zoo Day and his creative work has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Review, Vox, The Baffler, and a number of literary magazines and anthologies. Find him online at magicmikewrites.com.