Page 58 of Soul on Fire
Carla sucked her teeth and shook her head, sighing. “You two must be exhausted, and you certainly smell like you’ve crawled out of the jungle.” She pointed to the ceiling. “It’s not much, but we’ve got bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom. Jim rigged up a shower, so you can both wash up.”
“Thanks,” Elliot said. “Do you have any clothes we can wear?”
“Pull anything you need out of the last bedroom on the left. That’s our storeroom. Across the hall is empty. We’ve thrown some sleeping bags in there for you both. Sorry it’s not five-star accommodations.”
“Not a problem.”
“My team has their assignments through the morning. We’re out of here at dawn to follow up on what we find tonight. We’re meeting back here at nine for next steps. You guys rest until then. You’re about to drop, and you’re not good to me exhausted. Deal?”
Four hours to shower and sleep. He’d been up for twenty-four hard hours, traveled almost seven hundred kilometers through the roughest terrain on the planet. Ambushed fighters who were trying to ambush them. “Yeah, that’s good. Thanks.”
“I’ll pass the word that you’ve arrived. Get some rest.”
Upstairs was cramped and lit by two kerosene lanterns on the floor at each end of the narrow hallway. Six tiny concrete rooms branched off either side and, at the end, there was a tiny cinderblock cutout with a toilet, sink, and drain in the concrete floor. Over the drain, a bewildering array of pipes and—worryingly—wires connected a spigot to a water tank. A lever at eye level was the only obvious on/off switch.
They dumped their packs in the room they’d been given, keeping the filthy gear away from the clean, if musty smelling, sleeping bags the station had unrolled for them both. They’d lined up the sleeping bags on either side of the narrow room, a foot between them.
“C’mon, let’s shower.” Elliot grabbed a thin, ratty towel tossed on his sleeping bag.
“Together?”
Fuck it. What was the point of trying to hide? “Yeah, together. They’re gonna be doing their thing downstairs. If they come up and see—” He shrugged.
Ikolo followed him into the bathroom and shut the sliding door. They stripped quickly, balling up their filthy clothes and throwing them in the corner. There wasn’t a washing machine on earth that could get those clean again.
Elliot stood under the spigot and let the lukewarm water flow over him. Muddy grime came off his body in waves, swirling around the concrete floor and squishing between his toes. He turned his face up to the water and closed his eyes, felt the water run over his head and down his back, slide over all the places Ikolo had handwashed.
Beside him, Ikolo scrubbed his face, rubbed his eyes, and ran his hands through his short, nearly shaved hair. Water sluiced down his body and wrapped around him in ribbons, curling over his biceps and thighs, sliding through his crotch and dripping from his thick cock.
A slimy bar of community soap rested on a concrete shelf. Elliot grabbed it and spun Ikolo, until the water hit the back of his neck and flowed over his shoulders and down his chest. He washed Ikolo’s back, rubbing the soap in with his hands as he massaged his ebony skin and sinewy shoulders.
His fingers found raised ridges from slices and deep, ragged slashes, and, beneath his shoulder blade and above his hip bone, star-shaped scars and healed mounds of roughened flesh. Old bullet wounds.
Kneeling, he soaped Ikolo’s legs, front and back, and then stood and washed his chest, letting his hands linger over Ikolo’s pecs and slide through his sparse, dark chest hair. He reached down and took Ikolo in hand, soaping his heavy balls and his thick cock.
Ikolo groaned and leaned into Elliot, his forehead against Elliot’s cheek. He hardened in Elliot’s palm.
Elliot didn’t spend as long washing himself. He rushed the job, a true navy shower—soap from head to toe and rinsed in under two minutes—and then twisted the spigot off. Dripping, they stared at each other, breathing hard in the humid bathroom.
They toweled quickly and made their way back to their room. It also had a sliding door, and Elliot drew it shut. The kerosene light from the hallway sliced off, leaving only a crack glowing around the thin doorframe. Compared to the forest, it was as bright to them as if a full moon gleamed from the sky.
Exhaustion warred with exhilaration, the itch in his body to reach for Ikolo and pull him close, kiss him and never stop. He wanted to sleep and he wanted to make love to Ikolo. He was too tired to decide which would come first.
Ikolo chose for him, holding out his hand as he lay down on top of the nearest sleeping bag. Elliot followed, taking his hand and lacing their fingers together. Their noses brushed, their foreheads. Ikolo smiled against him and kissed his lips, his chin. Elliot wrapped his leg over Ikolo’s and ran his hands down Ikolo’s back.
His fingers brushed the scars, the bullet wounds in his side. He swallowed. There were things he had to know before he got too close. Before Ikolo burned him in all the wrong ways and he was too far gone to pull back.
“Tell me,” Elliot whispered, “why do you know how to fight? What were you before you were a doctor?”
He could feel Ikolo’s smile against his cheek. It wasn’t the bright one, the one that struck a match to Elliot’s heart and burned him from the inside. This was small and sad, like the echo of a smile reflecting off a memory. When he spoke, his voice seemed to come from a world away, even though Ikolo held his gaze and stared at him without blinking.
“When I was fifteen, I was taken from my village. Me and six other boys. We were put in a truck and driven away. As we left, I saw the smoke rise behind me.”
He thought he wanted to know the truth. He didn’t. Suddenly, he didn’t want to know at all. “Stop. You don’t have to—”
“Where we taken, the only way you survived was if you fought. So I did. I was given a rifle and a handful of bullets, and we marched in front of the adult fighters. We were supposed to catch the first shots that came at us. After a month, when I hadn’t died or shot myself on accident, one of the other fighters decided to train me. He showed me how to be a better killer. He showed me lots of things.”
When Elliot was fifteen, he skateboarded after school in the courtyard and grinded down the ramps, even though the custodians chased him away. He played basketball with his friends. He’d had pimples and flexed in his bedroom mirror, hoping for his muscles to fill out. He’d hated English and loved algebra, watched the football players in the locker room and was jealous of their bodies. He’d flirted with Marissa and asked her to homecoming.
